Chardonnay Descendant Of 'Peasant' Grape

Chardonnay is still considered an unsophisticated wine and is generally shunned by the middle classes Photo: GETTY IMAGES

From The Telegraph:

Turning your nose up at chardonnay is nothing new claim scientists who found the grape is a descendant of a "peasant" variety banned by nobleman hundreds of years ago.

Despite it being one of the main ingredients of champagne, chardonnay is still considered an unsophisticated wine and is generally shunned by the middle classes.

Now scientists believe that the reason may be historical.

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The Big Question: Has A Key Breakthrough Been Made In The Search For A Cure For Cancer?

From The Independent:

Why are we asking this now?

British scientists announced yesterday that they have sequenced a "cancer genome" for the first time. It means they have identified all of the many thousands of genetic mistakes that make a tumour cell different from a healthy cell taken from the same cancer patient.

Not all of these mistakes, or DNA mutations, were involved in triggering the cancer, but some of them – the "drivers" – clearly were. Scientists believe it will be possible eventually to identify these driver mutations and find the genetic faults that led to the changes in a healthy human cell that caused it to divide uncontrollably to form a cancerous tumour.

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Davy Jones's Lock-Up

Photo from ADIC Technologies

From The Economist:

Underwater robots can help study the world’s shipwrecks, a trove of information about the past, more easily and cheaply.

A SHIPWRECK is a catastrophe for those involved, but for historians and archaeologists of future generations it is an opportunity. Wrecks offer glimpses not only of the nautical technology of the past but also of its economy, trade, culture and, sometimes, its warfare. Until recently, though, most of the 3m ships estimated to be lying on the seabed have been out of reach. Underwater archaeology has mainly been the preserve of scuba divers. That has limited the endeavour to waters less than 50 metres deep, excluding 98% of the sea floor from inspection. Even allowing for the tendency of trading vessels to be coasters rather than ocean-going ships, that limits the number of wrecks available for discovery and examination.

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Texting Now More Popular Than Cell Calls

Photo from AP

From CBS News:

(AP) R u kidding me? Americans punched out more than 110 billion text messages last year, double the number in the previous year and growing, as the shorthand communication becomes a popular alternative to cell phone calls.

The nation's 270 million cell phone subscribers each sent out an average of 407 text messages in 2008, according to government statistics released Tuesday by the Census Bureau. That's more than double the 188 messages sent by the average cell subscriber in 2007. The figures did not break down the texting by age, but the overall numbers understate the thousands of texts sent each month by many teens - balanced out by older folks who don't text as much.

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Violence Follows Common Patterns

Photo: Armed conflicts show striking statistical similarities.

From The BBC:

Researchers have uncovered common patterns in the scale and timings of attacks across a variety of different violent conflicts.

A total of 54,679 violent events spanning several decades were analysed.

The team searched for statistical similarities across nine historic and ongoing insurgencies including those of Iraq, Afghanistan and Northern Ireland.

The results, published in Nature journal, may offer the hope of reducing casualties in future conflicts.

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Close-Up Photos Of Dying Star Show Our Sun's Fate

Chi Cygni, shown in this artist's conception, is a red giant star nearing the end of its life. As it runs out of fuel, it pulses in and out, beating like a giant heart and ejecting shells of material. Observations by the Infrared Optical Telescope Array found that, at minimum radius, Chi Cygni shows marked inhomogeneities due to roiling "hotspots" on its surface. (Credit: ESO/L. Calçada)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Dec. 17, 2009) — About 550 light-years from Earth, a star like our Sun is writhing in its death throes. Chi Cygni has swollen in size to become a red giant star so large that it would swallow every planet out to Mars in our solar system. Moreover, it has begun to pulse dramatically in and out, beating like a giant heart. New close-up photos of the surface of this distant star show its throbbing motions in unprecedented detail.

"This work opens a window onto the fate of our Sun five billion years from now, when it will near the end of its life," said lead author Sylvestre Lacour of the Observatoire de Paris.

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Geeks Drive Girls Out of Computer Science

From Live Science:

The stereotype of computer scientists as geeks who memorize Star Trek lines and never leave the lab may be driving women away from the field, a new study suggests.

And women can be turned off by just the physical environment, say, of a computer-science classroom or office that's strewn with objects considered "masculine geeky," such as video games and science-fiction stuff.

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The Science Behind James Cameron's Avatar

From Popular Mechanics:

It's the year 2154 and humankind has reached out to the stars in director James Cameron's new science-fiction epic Avatar. The movie takes us to an exotic jungle moon called Pandora where humans are the aliens and a clash is brewing with the natives. Cameron, who has served as an adviser to NASA to investigate a camera for a Mars mission, is known for taking the science in his flicks very seriously. So how did he do? Here we check on some of the movie's scientific bona fides with top researchers in their respective fields to see where artistic license and scientific plausibility meld.

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The Amalgamated Flying Saucer Club Of America, Headquartered In Los Angeles, Released This Photo, Taken By A Member, Reportedly Showing A Flying Sauce

The Amalgamated Flying Saucer Club of America, headquartered in Los Angeles, released this photo, taken by a member, reportedly showing a flying saucer estimated at 70 ft. in diameter. Bettmann / CORBIS

From Time Magazine:

The year 1969 was a great time for hippies, a bad year for Beatles fans and an even worse year for UFO enthusiasts. Forty years ago, on Dec. 17th, the U.S. Air Force officially shuttered Project Blue Book, the agency's third and final attempt to investigate extraterrestrial sightings and the country's longest official inquiry into UFOs. From 1952 until 1969, more than 12,000 reports were compiled and either classified as "identified" — explained by astronomical, atmospheric or artificial phenomenon — or "unidentified," which made up just 6% of the accounts. Because of such a meager percentage and an overall drop in sightings, officials axed the program and ended the research. So much for the truth being out there.

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Flowers Found In Bronze Age Grave

In August a four tonne capstone was removed to reveal a burial chamber
near Forteviot in Perthshire Photo: PA

From The Telegraph:

Grieving relatives have been leaving flowers beside the graves of their loved ones for at least 4,000 years, archeologists have found.

A bunch of meadowsweet blossoms were discovered in a Bronze Age grave at Forteviot, south of Perth.

The find is reported in the journal "British Archaeology", out this week.

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Moon Poses Radiation Risk To Future Travelers

Astronaut Edwin E 'Buzz' Aldrin Jr. walks on the surface of the moon. Future lunar travelers face a radiation dose 30 percent to 40 percent higher than originally expected from radioactive lunar soil. NASA/Neil Armstrong

From Discovery News:

Rather than blocking cosmic rays, the moon itself is a powerful source of radiation, measurements show.

Future lunar explorers counting on the moon to shield themselves from galactic cosmic rays might want to think about Plan B.

In a surprising discovery, scientists have found that the moon itself is a source of potentially deadly radiation.

Measurements taken by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter show that the number of high energy particles streaming in from space did not tail off closer to the moon's surface, as would be expected with the body of the moon blocking half the sky.

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Military Could Use iPhones To Track Friends, Enemies in War

From The Gadget Lab:

What if the iPhone could be used in war? True, it’s primarily a consumer product, but it’s versatile and always connected to the internet (assuming you have network reception) — so why not?

That’s the idea behind new iPhone apps being showcased by Raytheon, a military contractor, at the Intelligence Warfighting Summit in Tucson. One app called the One Force Tracker will provide live data tracking the location of friends and foes on real-time maps. The app will also be used to communicate with other units.

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My Comment: This is just another example on the revolution that is occurring in the intelligence community. The key is to know who are foes and who are not .... and provide this information to the men and women in the field. What was science fiction a few years ago .... is rapidly becoming reality today.

More Homes Seen Dumping Landlines

Photo: From iStockphoto

From CBS News:

Age And Location Biggest Factor In Decisions To Abandon Landlines.

(AP) The number of households with cell phones but no landlines continues to grow, but the recession doesn't seem to be forcing poor cellular users to abandon their traditional wired phones any faster than are higher-income people.

The finding, from data compiled by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, suggests that when it comes to telephone habits, peoples' decisions are affected more by age and where they live than by their economic situations.

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Climate Change Is Nature's Way -- A Commentary

From The Wall Street Journal:

Climate Change Is Nature's Way.

Climate change activists are right. We are in for walloping shifts in the planet's climate. Catastrophic shifts. But the activists are wrong about the reason. Very wrong. And the prescription for a solution—a $27 trillion solution—is likely to be even more wrong. Why?

Climate change is not the fault of man. It's Mother Nature's way. And sucking greenhouse gases from the atmosphere is too limited a solution. We have to be prepared for fire or ice, for fry or freeze. We have to be prepared for change.

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'Jesus-Era' Burial Shroud Found

From The BBC:

A team of archaeologists and scientists says it has, for the first time, found pieces of a burial shroud from the time of Jesus in a tomb in Jerusalem.

The researchers, from Hebrew University and institutions in Canada and the US, said the shroud was very different from the controversial Turin Shroud.

Some people believe the Turin Shroud to have been Christ's burial cloth, but others believe it is a fake.

The newly found cloth has a simpler weave than Turin's, the scientists say.

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Will 2010 Be The Breakout Year For E-Book Readers?

Mike Erickson, of Webster Groves, checks out a Sony Reader an e-book at Best Buy, Friday aternoon. "I'm just waiting to see what other kinds of books will be available." Erickson said. Erickson is at the Best Buy in Brentwood. (Dawn Majors/P-D)

From Stltoday:

When Sheila Effan found a Kindle electronic reader among her gifts last Christmas, one of her first thoughts was whether she'd miss the smell and feel of real paper. She got her answer five months later.

That's when a friend lent her a paperback. She lugged it around for a couple of days before tiring of the burden.

"I got annoyed with it. So I just downloaded it to my Kindle," Effan said. "I thought I would miss books. But I don't."

Oh, how the folks behind Amazon.com's Kindle, Sony's Reader and Barnes & Noble's Nook love the sound of that.

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Climate Change Does Not Always Lead to Conflict

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Dec. 17, 2009) — The climate change that took place in Mesopotamia around 2000 BC did not lead to war, but in fact led to the development of a new shared identity. Although increasing drought often leads to competition and conflict, there seems to be no evidence of this in northern Mesopotamia according to Dutch researcher Arne Wossink.

Wossink studied how the farmers and nomads in northern Mesopotamia -- currently the border area between Turkey, Syria and Iraq -- responded to the changes in climate that took place between 3000 and 1600 BC. He expected to find considerable evidence of competition: as food and water became scarcer the natural result could well be conflict. He discovered, however, that the farmers developed much closer bonds with the semi-nomadic cattle farmers.

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Earth's Upper Atmosphere Cooling Dramatically

New research shows that the outermost layer of the atmosphere will lose 3 percent of its density over the coming decade, a sign of the far-reaching impacts of greenhouse gas emissions. As the density declines, orbiting satellites experience less drag. Credit: ©UCAR.

From Live Science:

SAN FRANCISCO — When the sun is relatively inactive — as it has been in recent years — the outermost layer of Earth's atmosphere cools dramatically, new observations find.

The results could help scientists better understand the swelling and shrinking of our planet's atmosphere, a phenomenon that affects the orbits of satellites and space junk.

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McDonald's Free Wi-Fi Part Of Growing Trend

From Computerworld:

Everybody wants free Wi-Fi, and McDonald's Corp. is responding to that demand with Wednesday's announcement that more than 11,000 of its U.S. restaurants will have free Wi-Fi in January.

"We've had Wi-Fi working in our restaurants for five years under the pay-to-play model, but now is the time, with the ubiquity of Wi-Fi devices -- including handhelds and laptops -- to extend that offer," McDonald's USA CIO David Grooms said in an interview today.

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A Global 'Planetary Skin' Network Will Monitor Earth's Resources

Planetary Skin Satellites join forces with drones and
surface sensors to monitor the Earth NASA/Cisco

From Popular Science:

NASA and Cisco officially launch a $100 million effort to integrate ground, sea, air and space sensors.

Every day, farmers and legislators make billions of small- and large-scale decisions that affect the Earth's resources, and typically rely on thousands of fragmented sources of data. Now NASA has joined tech firm Cisco in creating a $100 million "Planetary Skin" that would integrate all the Earth data from satellites, aerial drones and ground sensors, and put it in the hands of any decisionmakers who need it.

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