At The Edge Of Thought

From New Scientist:

I know that the New Year has officially arrived when John Brockman publishes the responses to his Annual Question over at the Edge website.

This year, Brockman asked his crew of intellectual heavy-hitters, "How is the internet changing the way you think?"

The answers range from "It's not" to "Everything's going to hell" to "The internet is making us smarter, more social and more evolved" to "Who the hell knows?", with a dose of everything in between.

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Laminated Linen Protected Alexander The Great

Image: This mosaic of Alexander the Great shows the king wearing linothorax -- an armor made from laminated linen. Martin Beckmann

From Discovery News:

Alexander's men wore linothorax, a highly effective type of body armor created by laminating together layers of linen, research finds.

A Kevlar-like armor might have helped Alexander the Great (356–323 B.C.) conquer nearly the entirety of the known world in little more than two decades, according to new reconstructive archaeology research.

Presented at the annual meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America in Anaheim, Calif., the study suggests that Alexander and his soldiers protected themselves with linothorax, a type of body armor made by laminating together layers of linen.

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How e-Books Are Changing The Printed Word

Photo: The printed word, from Gutenberg's Bible to the Kindle. (CBS/AP)

From CBS News:

As Sales of Physical Books Decline, Digital Books Are Expected to Soon Be a Billion-Dollar Business.

When Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press in the mid-1400s, he built a system - moveable type that worked, and worked very well (with incremental advances) for more than 500 years.

The system STILL works. But in this new decade, the book business is undergoing its biggest change since, well, forever.

When asked about the status of books as we enter 2010, literary agent and former publishing house CEO Larry Kirshbaum says, "We are at the crossroads in terms of this new technology."

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Neanderthal 'Make-Up' Containers Discovered

Photo: The shells were coated with residues of mixed pigments

From The BBC:

Scientists claim to have the first persuasive evidence that Neanderthals wore "body paint" 50,000 years ago.

The team report in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) that shells containing pigment residues were Neanderthal make-up containers.

Scientists unearthed the shells at two archaeological sites in the Murcia province of southern Spain.

The team says its find buries "the view of Neanderthals as half-wits" and shows they were capable of symbolic thinking.

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Egypt Tombs Suggest Pyramids Not Built By Slaves

An Egyptian antiquities worker walks past a newly discovered ancient site in this June 6, 2002 file photo. New tombs found in Giza support the view that the Great Pyramids were built by free workers and not slaves, as widely believed, Egypt's chief archaeologist said on Sunday. REUTERS/Aladin Abdel Naby/Files

From Yahoo News/Reuters:

CAIRO (Reuters) – New tombs found in Giza support the view that the Great Pyramids were built by free workers and not slaves, as widely believed, Egypt's chief archaeologist said on Sunday.

Films and media have long depicted slaves toiling away in the desert to build the mammoth pyramids only to meet a miserable death at the end of their efforts.

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From High School Robotics To The White House

From Geek Dad:

A few months ago, President Obama launched the “Educate to Innovate” campaign to strengthen competency in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. During this event, some students were invited to demonstrate their robot they built as part of the 2009 FIRST Robotics competition. One of those students, Steven Harris, commented on the importance of high school robotics teams and his experience with his own team:

“I have been a part of FIRST Robotics for eight years. My first exposure to FIRST Robotics was in fourth grade. On Saturdays, when my brother was a member of the team at Oakton High School, I got to go to the team meetings because my father was a parent mentor for the team, helping the members of the team build and design the robots…

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The Mini Ice Age Starts Here

From The Daily Mail:

The bitter winter afflicting much of the Northern Hemisphere is only the start of a global trend towards cooler weather that is likely to last for 20 or 30 years, say some of the world’s most eminent climate scientists.

Their predictions – based on an analysis of natural cycles in water temperatures in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans – challenge some of the global warming orthodoxy’s most deeply cherished beliefs, such as the claim that the North Pole will be free of ice in
summer by 2013.

According to the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado, Arctic summer sea ice has increased by 409,000 square miles, or 26 per cent, since 2007 – and even the most committed global warming activists do not dispute this.

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Get Ready For China's Domination Of Science

Science goes east (Image: Guang Niu/Getty)

From The New Scientist:

SINCE its economic reform began in 1978, China has gone from being a poor developing country to the second-largest economy in the world. China has also emerged from isolation to become a political superpower. Its meteoric rise has been one of the most important global changes of recent years: the rise of China was the most-read news story of the decade, surpassing even 9/11 and the Iraq war.

Yet when it comes to science and technology, most people still think of China as being stuck in the past and only visualise a country with massive steelworks and vast smoking factories.

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Most Earth-Like Exoplanet Ever Found Started Out As A Gas Giant

This artist's impression shows sunrise over CoRoT-7b, the smallest-known exoplanet. The world is about 70 percent larger than Earth. Now, a team led by Brian Jackson at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center finds that the planet may be the rocky remains of a gas giant planet whose atmosphere was evaporated by close proximity to the star. (Credit: ESO/L. Calçada)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Jan. 10, 2010) — The most earthlike planet yet found around another star may be the rocky remains of a Saturn-sized gas giant, according to research presented January 6 at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Washington.

"The first planets detected outside our solar system 15 years ago turned out to be enormous gas-giants in very tight orbits around their stars. We call them 'hot Jupiters,' and they weren't what astronomers expected to find," said Brian Jackson at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "Now, we're beginning to see Earth-sized objects in similar orbits. Could there be a connection?"

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Fish Punish Fish For Bad Manners

Male cleaner fish will punish females when the females misbehave at mealtime, a new study finds. Here, the cleaner fish Labroides dimidiatus cleans the larger N. nigrosis. Credit: Richard Smith.

From Live Science:

Fish may dine underwater, but they still need to remember their manners at mealtime.

Males of a certain fish species will punish females when they misbehave while eating, a new study finds.

And the chastisement occurs even though the males are not directly affected by the female's trouble-making, indicating that these fish may exhibit a form of human social behavior known as third-party punishment, the researchers say.

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Plastic Logic Aims New Que E-Reader At Business Users

From Gadget Lab:

LAS VEGAS — After months of offering tantalizing bits of information, Plastic Logic has finally launched its new e-reader Que.

The Que proReader has an 8.5 x 11-inch touchscreen display and the ability to handle a range of documents such as Microsoft Word files, PowerPoint presentations, Excel spreadsheets, digital books, PDFs, magazines and newspapers.

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Washington Area Students Enter Robotics Competition

Jerry Skene, right, of Chantilly Robotics mentors a group from Anacostia High School participating in the FIRST Robotics Competition. (Jahi Chikwendiu - Washington Post)

From The Washington Post:

Tyler Saunders, a sophomore at Phelps Architecture, Construction and Engineering High School, says she should really be devoting her Saturdays to the algebra that she finds so vexing.

But she and a group of other students from the District school find something compelling about the challenge they received Saturday: in just six weeks, turn two big boxes of bolts, gears, hydraulics and electronic components into a robot that can maneuver with a soccer ball.

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Record 232-Digit Number From Cryptography Challenge Factored

From Scientific American:

A team of researchers has successfully factored a 232-digit number into its two composite prime-number factors, but too late to claim a $50,000 prize once attached to the achievement. The number, RSA-768, was part of a cryptography challenge that technically ended in 2007 that had been sponsored by RSA Laboratories, a prominent computer-security firm. RSA-768, so named because its binary representation is 768 bits long, is the largest number from the now-defunct challenge to be cracked.

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Trio Of NASA Craft Will Boost Climate Data

Endeavour, part of the retiring shuttle fleet, rolls to the launch pad in Florida. NASA will also launch crafts to aid the study of sea salinity, the sun and aerosols. (Matt Stroshane / Getty Images / January 6, 2010)

From the L.A. Times:

Reporting from Washington - NASA heads into 2010 with the bittersweet assignment of retiring the space shuttle after nearly three decades. But the agency also plans to launch three new satellites aimed at better understanding the sun and Earth's climate and oceans.

Two satellites will examine Earth -- specifically, the concentration of salt in the world's oceans and the presence of aerosols, or minute particles, such as dust or ash, in the atmosphere. A third satellite mission will study the sun and its effect on space weather, including solar flares that can disrupt communication on Earth.

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Hands-On: Twin Screens Pack Potential In eDGe Netbook, E-Reader Combo

From Gadget Lab:

LAS VEGAS — The enTourage eDGe is an unusual device. With two screens that fold together like a book, the eDGe promises to be an electronic book reader and a netbook at the same time so users can switch from reading on the black-and-white E Ink screen to the adjacent LCD screen to send e-mails, browse and watch videos.

The eDGe, which was announced in October, made its debut Tuesday at a preview event for the Consumer Electronics Show here.

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High-Tech Sex? Porn Flirts With The Cutting Edge

An adult entertainer dances at the 2010 AVN Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas, Nev., Friday Dec. 8, 2010. It's no accident that each year as the Consumer Electronics Show winds down in Las Vegas, the Adult Entertainment Expo heats up. (Zuma Press/Newscom)

From ABC News:

The porn industry peddles a product as old as Adam and Eve, and it's always found the most cutting edge ways to do it.

It's no accident that each year as the Consumer Electronics Show winds down in Las Vegas, the Adult Entertainment Expo heats up. Bespectacled techies cross paths with corseted porn stars selling high-tech sex toys and tools of all shapes and sizes.

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How To Make A Liquid Invisibility Cloak

Hiding behind water (Image: Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP/Getty)

From New Scientist:

When J. K. Rowling described Harry Potter's invisibility cloak as "fluid and silvery", she probably wasn't thinking specifically about silver-plated nanoparticles suspended in water. But a team of theorists believe that using such a set-up would make the first soft, tunable metamaterial – the "active ingredient" in an invisibility device.

The fluid proposed by Ji-Ping Huang of Fudan University in Shanghai, China, and colleagues, contains magnetite balls 10 nanometres in diameter, coated with a 5-nanometre-thick layer of silver, possibly with polymer chains attached to keep them from clumping.

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CES: Apple Looms Over CES From Afar

Photo: Steve Ballmer shows off a slate PC during his opening keynote at CES 2010. (Credit: James Martin/CNET)

From CNET:

LAS VEGAS--The most buzzed-about device at CES 2010 wasn't even on display here.

A tablet or slate computer from Apple was basically all anyone wanted to talk about, and it's not even a confirmed product yet. As a result, Lady Gaga might be the only thing that was actually at CES 2010 that could even be described as generating large-scale buzz.

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30,000-Year-Old Child's Teeth Shed New Light On Human Evolution

Virtual 3D reconstruction of four deciduous and one permanent teeth assessed for linear, surface, and volumetric tissue proportions. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of Bristol)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Jan. 8, 2010) — The teeth of a 30,000-year-old child are shedding new light on the evolution of modern humans, thanks to research from the University of Bristol published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The teeth are part of the remarkably complete remains of a child found in the Abrigo do Lagar Velho, Portugal and excavated in 1998-9 under the leadership of Professor João Zilhão of the University of Bristol. Classified as a modern human with Neanderthal ancestry, the child raises controversial questions about how extensively Neanderthals and modern human groups of African descent interbred when they came into contact in Europe.

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Record–Breaking Snow And Cold Reminiscent Of The Late '70s

White areas show where snow covers the ground completely as of Jan. 5, 2010. Credit: NOAA

From Live Science:

If this winter's record-breaking snowfalls and bitter cold remind you of your childhood, perhaps you grew up when disco was alive and well.

"People who were around in the late '70s remember several winters similar to this," said Deke Arndt, who was a child of the 70s and now makes his living by monitoring climate data for the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC).

For those who don't recall those years, this winter may seem unprecedented. It's not.

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