Skiff E-Reader Has Some New Tricks

From Popular Mechanics:

LAS VEGAS—The barrage of new products from CES includes a number of e-Ink devices, all lining up to dislodge the Kindle from its perch at the top of the market. Among the double fistful of readers for sale in 2010 will be the Skiff Reader, a sleek 11.5-inch device that has received a healthy share of buzz in the past few days. We've refrained from writing about Skiff until now because it's backed by Hearst, Popular Mechanics' own parent company, and because over the past year we've been sharing ideas on the device with the company's development team. (As you can see from the photo, we've created sample content for Skiff that will be shown this week in Las Vegas.)

Read more ....

Tripping The Light Fantastic: 66 Black Holes Found 'Dancing' The Galactic Night Away

Hubble Space Telescope images of two small galaxies colliding to form one

From The Daily Mail:

It is the ultimate dance routine but get too close and it may be your last.

A team of astronomers have discovered 33 pairs of 'waltzing' black holes in distant galaxies which will eventually combine to form one.

Nearly every galaxy has a central super-massive black hole with a mass up to a billion times the mass of the Sun and galaxies often collide.

Read more ....

97 Reasons To Quit Smoking

Image: (FOTOLIA/ISTOCKPHOTO)

From Health.com:

1. You won't have to pay more and more and more and more each year.
Yup, taxes will almost certainly continue to go up. New Jersey, Vermont, and Connecticut are among the states leaning harder on smokers for revenue, but even some tobacco-growing states are beginning to milk the coffin-nail cash cow. Lawmakers' reasoning: There is evidence that price increases cause smokers to reduce consumption. And the medical costs of smoking are astronomical—a huge burden to the states.

2. You'll inhale fewer germs.
New research suggests cigarettes are crawling with germs, which can be inhaled along with the smoke. It’s not clear if the germs can make you sick, but the yuck factor is undeniable.

Read more ....

Physicists Beginning To See Data From The Large Hadron Collider

Last month the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider began recording proton-proton collisions at a record energy of 2.36 trillion electron volts. Image courtesy of the ATLAS experiment. (Credit: Image courtesy of Iowa State University)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Jan. 7, 2010) — Three Iowa State University physicists who took winter trips to the Large Hadron Collider for meetings and experimental work are starting to see real data from the planet's biggest science experiment.

Finally.

The multibillion-dollar collider made international news on Sept. 10, 2008, when it sent its first beam of protons around 17 miles of underground tunnel near Geneva, Switzerland. But breakdowns in the machine's high-current electrical connections forced a complete shutdown for more than a year of repairs and tests.

Read more ....

Can A Person Freeze To Death?

From Live Science:

Extremely cold weather has descended upon most of the nation this week, and this frigid air may have you feeling like you could "freeze to death." Paranoia aside, when temperatures dip, frostbite and other health risks are real concerns. And death strikes long before the body actually freezes.

Yet our bodies are pretty hardy, as we have two built-in mechanisms to protect us from the cold.

Read more ....

Free Flipper! Argues Scientist

Studies show how dolphins have distinct personalities, a strong sense of self and can think about the future. Photo: JASON HELLER / BARCROFT MEDIA

From The Telegraph:

Dolphins should be treated as “non-human persons” and merit special rights above other animals because they are so bright, scientists claim.

Researchers argue that it is morally unacceptable to keep such intelligent animals in captivity or to kill them for food.

Dolphins have long been recognised as among the most intelligent of animals but many researchers had placed them below chimps, which some studies have found can reach the intelligence levels of three-year-old children.

Read more ....

Landmark DNA Study Of 3,000 People To Unlock Mystery Of Type 2 Diabetes

Type 2 diabetes, characterised by insulin resistance, can cause blindness and impotence

From Times Online:

The genetic roots of type 2 diabetes are to be explored in unprecedented depth to help to find better ways to diagnose and treat a disease that affects more than 2 million people in Britain.

A £15 million study is to read the complete DNA of 3,000 people, more than ten times more than have so far had their genomes sequenced, The Times has learnt.

Read more ....

The World In 2020: Thrift, Hard Work – And No Smoking

'Labelling on all alcohol drinks was altered to proclaim 'drinking kills''. Matt Murphy

From The Independent:

What will our lives be like a decade from now? In the second part of our series, Independent writers glimpse the future.

By 2020 the people of Britain had grown accustomed to the "nanny state" telling them what to do. Smoking had been totally unacceptable for several years, after the smoking ban had been extended to outdoor public spaces such as parks, beaches and playgrounds. There was even talk of banning smoking in blocks of flats.

Read more ....

One In Ten Stars 'Have Solar Systems Like Ours'

The findings were presented at the annual meeting of the
American Astronomical Society in Washington DC Photo: NASA

From The Telegraph:

One in ten stars in the universe may host solar systems like the Sun's family of planets, astronomers believe.

Potentially hundreds of millions of stars may have solar systems that could harbour life-supporting Earth-like planets.

Our solar system has far-flung gas-giant planets with small rocky worlds such as the Earth and Mars nearer the parent star.

Read more ....

Chilling Out In The Coldest Place on Earth

Just when you think it can't get any colder (Image: Michael Studinger/Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory/Columbia University)

From New Scientist:

VOSTOK Station in Antarctica currently holds the crown for the coldest place on the planet. It recorded -89.2 °C on 21 July 1983. But it could get even colder, with temperatures dropping to about -96 °C, if "perfect" cold-weather conditions prevail.

John Turner of the British Antarctic Survey and colleagues analysed the weather conditions that brought about the record chill and found it was caused by an unusual, near-stationary atmospheric vortex. "This isolated Vostok and prevented the waves of warm air that normally come up from the ocean," says Turner. After that big chill, the temperature bounced up by over 20 °C in one day (Journal of Geophysical Research - Atmospheres, DOI: 10.1029/2009JD012104).

Read more ....

The Top 4 Sites To Land On Mars And Their Biggest Mysteries

Holden Crater

From Popular Mechanics:

The Spirit Rover is nearly history, stuck deep in sand, and while Opportunity travels on, it's not likely that it will travel much farther. Now, scientists are building the next rover to be sent to Mars. But before they fuel the rockets, researchers have to pick a spot to explore. Here are NASA's frontrunners.

Call it the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's version of the Final Four. Scientists at the Pasadena, Calif.–based NASA research center will decide within the next two years where to send the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) rover after it launches in the fall of 2011. MSL's mission is to scour the Red Planet for environments that may once have harbored, or may still harbor, microbial organisms. Such an environment would have to contain the basic ingredients of life—including water, organic carbon and a source of energy to sustain the microbes' metabolism.

Read more ....

Nearby T Pyxidis Supernova Could Destroy Life On Earth

Too Close for Comfort T Pyxidis, a star on the verge of growing too massive and collapsing into a type Ia supernova, was discovered to be closer to Earth than previously thought – close enough to end life here when it finally explodes. NASA

From Popular Science:

Doomsdayers and 2012 blog-keepers, take note. Astronomers at this week's American Astronomical Society meeting revealed that a massive white dwarf star in the throes of multiple nova is much closer to our solar system than once thought. When it does finally collapse into a type Ia supernova -- okay, if it collapses into a type Ia supernova -- the resulting thermonuclear blast will destroy life on earth. Seriously.

Read more ....

NASA's Kepler Finds Its First Five Planets - An Odd Assortment

Kepler's first five exoplanets are compared to those in our
solar system in this illustration from NASA. NASA

From Christian Science Monitor:

NASA's Kepler space telescope is just beginning its three-year mission to find Earth-like planets in habitable zones around stars. The first new planets it has found, announced Monday, include two so hot they would melt iron.

NASA's planet-hunting telescope Kepler has bagged its first quarry: five new planets Neptune's size and larger, including one with the density of Styrofoam, making it one of the lightest planets yet found.

In addition to the new planets, Kepler results suggest that the light output from two-thirds of some 43,000 sun-like stars in its field of view is virtually as stable as the sun's output.

Read more ....

'Ferropaper' Is New Technology For Small Motors, Robots

Purdue researchers have created a magnetic "ferropaper" that might be used to make low-cost "micromotors" for surgical instruments, tiny tweezers to study cells and miniature speakers. Babak Ziaie, a professor of electrical and computer engineering and biomedical engineering, holds a miniature birdlike shape made from the material. The wings move slowly, but the structure is not capable of flight. (Credit: Purdue University photo/Andrew Hancock)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Jan. 6, 2010) — Researchers at Purdue University have created a magnetic "ferropaper" that might be used to make low-cost "micromotors" for surgical instruments, tiny tweezers to study cells and miniature speakers.

The material is made by impregnating ordinary paper -- even newsprint -- with a mixture of mineral oil and "magnetic nanoparticles" of iron oxide. The nanoparticle-laden paper can then be moved using a magnetic field.

Read more ....

Mystery of World's Biggest Beasts Possibly Solved

The primitive whale Mammalodon colliveri might have sucked up prey from seafloor mud, suggesting the origin of today's giant filter-feeding whales. Credit: Brian Choo, Museum Victoria

From Live Science:

The origins of the largest animals in the world, the baleen whales, might be rooted in the mud, which they potentially sucked up like vacuum cleaners, analysis of a bizarre extinct dwarf whale now suggests.

The baleen whales include the largest animal to have ever lived, the blue whale. Instead of teeth, they use baleen to feed — plates with frayed edges in the upper jaw that filter seafood from the water.

Read more ....

Milky Way's Dark Matter 'Turned On Its Side'

From New Scientist:

The cloud of dark matter that is thought to surround the Milky Way may be shaped like a squashed beach ball. This halo of invisible matter also seems to sit at an unexpected angle – which could be a strike against a theory that challenges Einstein's account of gravity.

Read more ....

Intermediate Black Hole Implicated In Star's Death

From Discovery News:

Astronomers presenting at the American Astronomical Society (AAS) meeting in Washington D.C. on Jan. 4, have reported the detection of the emission generated by a black hole as it devoured a white dwarf star in the elliptical galaxy NGC 1399.

This may not appear to be a huge deal to begin with -- stars being eaten by supermassive black holes in the centers of galaxies have been detected before -- but it would appear that this particular white dwarf was ripped apart and then devoured by a mysterious "intermediate-mass" black hole.

Read more ....

Study Pinpoints Autism Clusters in Calif.

Image: (CBS/iStockphoto)

From CBS News:

More Cases Found in Areas where Parents are Better Educated and Near Autism Treatment Centers

(CBS) Researchers in California have identified 10 regions in the state where cases of autism are higher than in nearby regions.

The study finds that the areas, called clusters, are in places where parents have above average levels of education, or are also places located near large autism treatment facilities.

The research, conducted by scientists at UC Davis, showed that the clusters appear in highly populated areas of Southern California and the Bay Area.

Read more ....

Two Killer Whale Types Found In UK Waters

Forming a new species? The 'type 2' dolphin hunting killer whales.

From The BBC:

Scientists have revealed that there is not one but two types of killer whale living in UK waters.

Each differs in its appearance and diet, with males of one type being almost two metres longer than the other.

The killer whales could be at an early stage of becoming two separate species, the researchers say.

The international group of scientists has published its results in the journal Molecular Ecology.

Read more ....

Oil And Gas Drilling In Greenland To Begin This Summer

From Popular Mechanics:

When the 748-foot Stena Forth plows into the deep waters of Greenland’s Disko West zone next summer, the advanced drillship will be taking the first crack at what could be the world’s biggest untapped reservoir of oil and gas. The ship, built by Samsung in South Korea’s Geoje shipyard just over a year ago, can drill to 35,000 feet, in 10,000 feet of water.

Read more ....