Congressional UAV Caucus Courts Robot Voters

Go Long via Buck McKeon's Flickr

From Popular Science:

The US Congress has well over 100 caucuses, or groups of common interests. They're like the clubs in a high school that play chess or work on the year book, except they usually focus on a constituency like fiscal conservatives or Americans of Asian descent. Well, thanks to California Representative Howard "Buck" McKeon, Congress has a new caucus focused entirely on unmanned aerial vehicles.

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The Year In Biomedicine

From Technology Review:

Advances in antiaging drugs, acoustic brain surgery, flu vaccines--and the secret to IQ.

We may look back on 2009 as the year human genome sequencing finally became routine enough to generate useful medical information ("A Turning Point for Personal Genomes"). The number of sequenced and published genomes shot up from two or three to approximately nine, with another 40 or so genomes sequenced but not yet published. In a few cases, scientists have already found the genetic cause of a disorder by sequencing an affected person's genome.

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Revenge Of The Chilli: Why Pepper Seeds Are Designed To Burn Your Mouth

Professor Sue Hartley (right) supports volunteer Adam after he eats a Naga chilli

From The Daily Telegraph:

Ever wondered why chilli peppers are so mind-blowingly hot? It's all down to their ultra-effective defense system developed in the ongoing war between plants and animals.

When humans bite down on chillis they crush the seeds the plants want to spread with their molar teeth. The peppers extract their revenge by releasing a mouth-burning mix of chemicals called capsinoids.

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BlackBerry Struggles With Second Outage In Less Than A Week

BlackBerry Users See The Fail Whale Twice In A Week -- Gadget Lab

The cult of the BlackBerry phone is based on the device’s ability to can bring e-mails to users faster than they can click through them.

But that could become history. BlackBerry users faced a service outage on Tuesday evening–the second time in less than a week–that made e-mail, text messages and web services such as Twitter and Facebook inaccessible.

BlackBerry maker Research In Motion restored the service Wednesday morning and blamed it on a glitch in its instant messaging program called the BlackBerry messenger.

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Can We Find A Living Planet By 2020?

From Discovery News:

There was a lot of excitement last week about the discovery of a “waterworld” planet called GJ 1214b, as reported on Discovery News by my colleague Ian O’Neill.

This world belongs to an emerging class of planets dubbed “super-Earths.” It is 6.5 times Earth’s mass and nearly three times our diameter. Its mass, diameter and density suggest the planet is largely a ball of water with and icy/rocky core.

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Review Of The Year 2009: Discoveries

Skeleton key: the 47 million-year-old remains of 'Ida' are the most complete fossil of a primate ever found. The young female specimen was found in Germany. AFP/GETTY IMAGES

From The Independent:

We saw Darwin in a whole new light.

Climate change, stem cells and evolution were the three big science themes of 2009, which happened to be the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin and the 150th anniversary of his seminal book, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. It was the year when Darwin's remarkable insight into the evolution of life on earth was celebrated around the world.

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Brown Dwarf Pair Mystifies Astronomers

Artist's rendition of a brown dwarf and its moon orbiting a triple star system. (Credit: NASA)

From Daily Space:

Science Daily (Dec. 23, 2009) — Two brown dwarf-sized objects orbiting a giant old star show that planets may assemble around stars more quickly and efficiently than anyone thought possible, according to an international team of astronomers.

"We have found two brown dwarf-sized masses around an ordinary star, which is very rare," said Alex Wolszczan, Evan Pugh professor of astronomy and astrophysics, Penn State and lead scientist on the project.

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Santa Claus: The Real Man Behind The Myth

It wasn't until 1809 that Santa Clause got fat, and by the late 1800s he was wearing the full red suit with the fur trim and leather boots. Image credit: stockxpert

From Live Science:

Like America itself, the jolly figure we call Santa Claus is a melting pot of cultures, blending elements of folklore with the fantastical.

Santa Claus the man is actually loosely rooted in fact, though he hasn't always looked the way he does today, having evolved from a gift-giving Catholic saint who lived during the third century.

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Report: FBI Investigating Citibank Cyberattack

From CNET:

Citigroup denies it, but its Citibank unit was reportedly robbed of tens of millions of dollars, the victim of a cyberattack by members of a Russian criminal gang, says Tuesday's Wall Steet Journal (subscription required).

The attack was discovered this past summer, says the Journal, but investigators for the FBI and National Security Agency believe it could have happened months or a year prior. The two agencies have reportedly shared information with the Department of Homeland Security and Citigroup to defend against the attack. The investigation is supposedly ongoing, with no word on whether or not any of the stolen money has been found.

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Robotic Knee Helps Perfectly Healthy Runners Run Even Better

The Cyborg Leg It helps perfectly healthy runners run 30 percent more efficiently.
Tsukuba University

From Popular Science:

Attention cyborg wonks and lazy people: Japanese scientists at Tsukuba University have created a motorized knee that you can attach to your leg to increase your muscle power and running speed. The 11-pound kit's weight is shared by an exoskeleton-like attachment for your leg and a power source that's carried in a small backpack. But here's the best part: the device is not designed with any kind of rehabilitation or handicap-assisting function in mind; it's simply to make it easier for regular folks to run faster!

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Dams Linked To More Extreme Weather

Influencing the weather (Image: J.C Dahlig/Bereau of Reclamation)

From New Scientist:

DAM-BUILDERS: be careful when you create a reservoir because bigger storms and flooding could be on the way. That's the warning from an analysis of more than 600 dams, many of which have brought more extreme rainfall.

The idea that large bodies of water might influence rainfall is not new. But until now, no one had studied the effect of large dams and their reservoirs.

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Biofuels: Can They Fuel Our Lifestyle Without Taking Food From The Poor?

Green crude from oil processed from algae

From The Guardian:

A consultation by the UK Nuffield Council on Bioethics wants to hear public opinion on the new generation of biofuels.

Just in case you thought it was safe to stop thinking about biofuels, here comes another study – this time into the ethics. Can a new generation of biofuels ensure we don't increase greenhouse gas emissions and take food from the poor to fuel our cars?

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New Pipe Organ Sounds Echo Of Age Of Bach

The organ at Christ Church, Episcopal, in Rochester. Stewart Cairns for The New York Times

From The New York Times:

ROCHESTER — The ceremonial pipe organ of the 18th century was the Formula One racer of its time, a masterpiece of human ingenuity so elegant in its outward appearance that a casual observer could only guess at the complexity that lay within.

Each organ was designed to fit its intended space, ranging in size from local churches where townspeople could worship to vast cathedrals fit for royalty. The builders were precision craftsmen celebrated for their skill in hand-making thousands of moving parts and in shaping and tuning metal and wooden pipes to mimic the sounds of each instrument in an orchestra.

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New Crew Reaches International Space Station

A Soyuz-FG rocket booster with Soyuz TMA-17 space ship, carrying a new crew to the international space station (ISS), lifts off from the Russian leased Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, Monday, Dec. 21, 2009. The Soyuz TMA-17's three astronauts will take the orbiting laboratory's permanent crew to five following the early-hours launch, the first-ever blastoff of a Soyuz rocket on a winter night.(Xinhua/Reuters Photo)

From ABC News:

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - A fresh three-member crew arrived at the International Space Station on Tuesday, bolstering the two-man skeleton crew that has been keeping the outpost operational since December 1.

A Russian Soyuz capsule carrying cosmonaut Oleg Kotov, Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi and NASA rookie flier Timothy Creamer coasted into its berthing port at 5:48 p.m. EST (2248 GMT), as the station sailed 220 miles above Rio de Janeiro. The men were launched into space on Monday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

The trio is expected to remain aboard the station until May.

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Pioneering Stem Cell Treatment Restores Sight

From The Telegraph:

A man blinded in one eye by a chemical attack as he intervened to stop a fight has had his sight restored thanks to pioneering new stem cell treatment.

Russell Turnbull, 38, lost most of the vision in his right eye when he had ammonia sprayed into it as he tried to break up a fight on a late night bus journey home.

The attack, which badly burned and scarred his cornea, left him with permanent blurred sight and pain whenever he blinked.

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U.S. Sets Up World's Largest Face Transplant Programme For Disfigured War Veterans

U.S. soldiers disfigured in combat will now be able to get face transplants

From The Daily Mail:

The world's biggest face transplant programme is being set up in Boston for veterans left severely deformed after surviving horrific war injuries in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The U.S. Department of Defence has given Brigham and Women’s Hospital in the city a $3.4million contract to pay for the first batch of operations.

It is hoped the Boston doctors will carry out face transplants on six to eight patients over the next 18 months - nearly doubling the nine known procedures completed worldwide.

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My Comment: These doctors will have enough work to last them a lifetime.

Modern Behavior of Early Humans Found Half-Million Years Earlier Than Thought

Stone tools from the Benot Ya'aqov arah.
(Credit: Image courtesy of Hebrew University of Jerusalem)

From The Science Daily:

Science Daily (Dec. 22, 2009) — Evidence of sophisticated, human behavior has been discovered by Hebrew University of Jerusalem researchers as early as 750,000 years ago -- some half a million years earlier than has previously been estimated by archaeologists.

The discovery was made in the course of excavations at the prehistoric Gesher Benot Ya'aqov site, located along the Dead Sea rift in the southern Hula Valley of northern Israel, by a team from the Hebrew University Institute of Archaeology. Analysis of the spatial distribution of the findings there reveals a pattern of specific areas in which various activities were carried out.

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Music Linked To Marijuana Use

From Live Science:

Teens who listen to music that mentions marijuana are significantly more likely to use the drug, a new study finds.

The research was based on surveys with 959 ninth-graders.

"Students who listen to music with the most references to marijuana are almost twice as likely to have used the drug than their peers whose musical tastes favor songs less focused on substance use," said University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine researcher Dr. Brian Primack, who led the study.

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Platoon-Level 'Cloud' Lets Soldiers Swap Data, Increases 'Network Lethality'

Better Connectivity A unit-level "cloud" will allow soldiers in the field to communicate vertically up the chain of command, as well as with other ground and air units operating nearby for seamless sharing of intel, orders, and other data. U.S. Army

From Popular Science:

There's no question that the U.S. military is operating at a very high technological capacity, but the tactical edge that commanders have back at HQ doesn't always translate to grunts in the field. That gap is closing however, as the Army recently networked two distant infantry units together in a mobile "cloud," allowing them to trade video imagery, voice commands, text messages and other data between between them as they operated, as well as with far-flung command posts.

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2010 Preview: Genome Sequencing For All

Illuminating the "dark matter" of the genome
(Image: Roz Woodward/Stone/Getty)

From New Scientist:

Fancy having your genome sequenced? It's becoming affordable, and 2010 will see the launch of a wave of genetic discovery that could turn it into a purchase worth making.

In the coming months, plummeting costs will allow gene hunters to start routinely working with complete human genome sequences. These should start to illuminate the "dark matter" of the genome - the as yet unknown genetic influences on our health that are missed by current scans.

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