When It Comes To Salt, No Rights Or Wrongs. Yet.

From The New York Times:

Suppose, as some experts advise, that the new national dietary guidelines due this spring will lower the recommended level of salt. Suppose further that public health officials in New York and Washington succeed in forcing food companies to use less salt. What would be the effect?

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Tiny Ear Listens To Hidden Worlds

From The BBC:

A micro-ear could soon help scientists eavesdrop on tiny events just like microscopes make them visible.

Initially, researchers will use it to snoop on cells as they go about their daily business.

It may allow researchers to listen to how a drug disrupts micro-organisms, in the same way as a mechanic might listen to a car's engine to find a fault.

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Apple's iTunes Store Serves up 10 Billionth Song

From ABC News/PC World:

'Guess Things Happen That Way' by Johnny Cash Reportedly 10 Billionth Song.

Apple's iTunes Store hit a landmark on Wednesday with the download of its 10 billionth song.

A counter on the company's home page hit the 10 billion mark at 9:43 p.m. GMT -- approximately 6 years and 10 months since the store first opened in the U.S.

Back then it was known as the iTunes Music Store and served just music but it has since expanded to include video, TV shows and podcasts.

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Video: In Attempt at True VTOL, F-35 Makes Shortest, Slowest Landing Yet

From Popular Science:

To perfect the vertical and short takeoff and landing ability of the F-35 Lightning II, test pilots have been taking off and landing at progressively shorter distances and slower speeds, building up to the final, true vertical boost. And today, engine manufacturers Pratt and Whitney released video of the slowest, shortest takeoff and landing yet, in which the jet cruises to a stop at 130 knots.

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Twitter Attack Affects Thousands Of Users

Twitter has been hit by two phishing scams in a week, and is warning users not to click on suspicious links in direct messages

From The Telegraph:

The microblogging site has been hit by a second phishing attack in a week.

Twitter users have been warned not to click links in some tweets, after the microblogging service fell victim to its second phishing attack in a week.

Cyber criminals are using the service to trick people in to giving away their username and password for the site. Users have been receiving direct messages from friends on the site which contain a shortened link. When users click on that link, they are directed to a malicious website, which looks just like the Twitter home page, where they are prompted to enter their login details.

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Lasers Lift Dirt Of Ages From Artworks

The angel on the right of the wall painting has been partially cleaned with a laser

From The BBC:

Physicists have applied the same laser techniques commonly used for tattoo removal to clean several famous works of art, including wall paintings.

Laser cleaning is well established for stone and metal artefacts already.

It has now been successfully applied to the wall paintings of the Sagrestia Vecchia and the Cappella del Manto in Santa Maria della Scala, Siena, Italy.

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Optical System Promises To Revolutionize Undersea Communications

An artist's conception of how the optical modem could function at a deep ocean cabled observatory. Autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) collect sonar images (downward bands of light) and other data at a hydrothermal vent site and transmit the data through an optical modem to receivers stationed on moorings in the ocean. The moorings are connected to a cabled observatory, and the data are sent back to scientists on shore. Scientists, in turn, can send new instructions to the AUVs via the optical modem as well. (Credit: E. Paul Oberlander, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Feb. 25, 2010) — In a technological advance that its developers are likening to the cell phone and wireless Internet access, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) scientists and engineers have devised an undersea optical communications system that -- complemented by acoustics -- enables a virtual revolution in high-speed undersea data collection and transmission.

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Much Of U.S. Water Safe, But Problems Remain

A recent study suggests that fixtures could leach lead into drinking water, even if the devices received passing grades from standard testing protocols. Credit: Josh Chamot, National Science Foundation.

From Live Science:

The United States has benefitted from centuries of improvements in drinking water safety, and most Americans can trust that clean water comes from their tap. Yet, closer inspection is showing that on a house-by-house basis, water quality is not guaranteed — even in communities with high marks for water safety.

Marc Edwards, of Virginia Tech University, has been part of a growing contingent of engineers and scientists looking more carefully at the water we drink, and finding that in some cases harmful sources are overlooked.

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Perfect Insulator Could Eliminate Heating Bills

Besides eliminating your heating bill, perfect insulators could make computers cooler and speed up cell phone downloads. Stockbyte

From Discovery News:

With this insulator, the body heat produced by one person would be enough to warm an entire home.

THE GIST:

* A new material developed by MIT scientists perfectly reflects heat and absorbs none of it.
* This perfect insulator could eliminate heating bills and solve cell phone network overload issues.
* Currently, the material only works under freezing conditions, but a perfect insulator that functions at room temperature is soon expected.

A perfect insulator, or a material that reflects heat while absorbing none of it, has been created by scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Sandia National Laboratories.

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Microsoft Battles Cyber Criminals

From The Wall Street Journal:

Microsoft Corp. launched a novel legal assault to take down a global network of PCs suspected of spreading spam and harmful computer code, adding what the company believes could become a potent weapon in the battle against cyber criminals.

But security experts say it isn't yet clear how effective Microsoft's approach will be, while online rights groups warn that the activities of innocent computer users could be inadvertently disrupted.

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Giant Iceberg Could Change Weather Patterns

From The Australian/AFP:

AN iceberg the size of Luxembourg knocked loose from the Antarctic continent earlier this month could disrupt the ocean currents driving weather patterns around the globe, researchers said.

While the impact would not be felt for decades or longer, a slowdown in the production of colder, dense water could result in less temperate winters in the north Atlantic, they said.

The 2550 sq km block broke off on February 12 or 13 from the Mertz Glacier Tongue, a 160km spit of floating ice protruding into the Southern Ocean from East Antarctica due south of Melbourne, researchers said.

Some 400m thick, the iceberg could fill Sydney Harbour more than 100 times over.

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The Crazies' Franken-Virus Toxins: How Scared Should We Be?

From Popular Mechanics:

In director Breck Eisner's remake of George Romero's 1973 gem, The Crazies, in theaters today, a genetically engineered toxin created by the military escapes into the water supply of idyllic Ogden Marsh, Iowa, transforming the town's residents into a bloody, infected horde with severe attitude problems. But how much is the portrayal of the disease—and the military response—Hollywood hyperbole? Popular Mechanics spoke to experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to find out.

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World's Most Sensitive Neutrino Experiment Launches, To Seek Answers About Matter's Origins

Super-Kamiokande Built in an abandoned mine, the "Super-K" neutrino detector surrounds 50,000 gallons of super pure water with 11,200 photomultiplier tubes. To give an idea of the scale, that object in the distance is two men in a rubber raft. courtesy of the Science and Technology Facilities Council of the UK

From Popular Science:

The questions that plague particle physicists and cosmology buffs seem fundamental, but it's startling how little we really know about some of them; for instance, why does matter exist? Researchers in Japan are undertaking the most sensitive subatomic particle experiment ever ventured in attempt to get to the bottom of that question, shooting neutrinos nearly 300 miles under the mountains, straight through the bedrock under Japan to a detector on the opposite coast, in an attempt to hash out exactly why neutrinos appear to spontaneously change from one kind to another.

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'Explicit' Category Rumoured To Be Coming To App Store

Screengrabs show a new 'explicit' category for App Store apps. The listing has since disappeared. Image courtesy of Recombu Photo: Recombu

From The Telegraph:

Apple is thought to be considering introducing a new category to its App Store, as the row over 'overtly sexual' apps rumbles on

Several developers have reported seeing a new category appearing in the drop-down menus of iTunes Connect, the platform they use to distribute apps through the App Store. Alongside standard categories, such as "entertainment", "games" and "productivity", is a new tag: "explicit".

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Disaster Awaits Cities In Earthquake Zones

Istanbul has a program to secure its schools against earthquakes. Above, construction at the Atakoy Lisesi school. Johan Spanner for The New York Times

From The New York Times:

ISTANBUL — As he surveys the streets of this sprawling mega-city, Mustafa Erdik, the director of an earthquake engineering institute here, says he sometimes feels like a doctor scanning a crowded hospital ward.

It is not so much the city’s modern core, where two sleek Trump Towers and a huge airport terminal were built to withstand a major earthquake that is considered all but inevitable in the next few decades. Nor does Dr. Erdik agonize over Istanbul’s ancient monuments, whose yards-thick walls have largely withstood more than a dozen potent seismic blows over the past two millenniums.

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Ocean Robot 'Plans Experiments'

From The BBC:

Scientists in the US are using an underwater vehicle that can "plan its own experiments" on the seafloor.

The "Gulper AUV" is programmed to look for the information that scientists want and plan its own route, avoiding hazardous currents and obstacles.

The research team described this advance at the Ocean Sciences meeting in Portland.

The group explained how it could "train" the robot to bring the best science back to the surface.

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U.N. To Create Science Panel To Review IPCC

From ABC News:

NUSA DUA, Indonesia (Reuters) - An independent board of scientists is to review the work of a U.N. climate panel, whose credibility came under attack after it published errors, a U.N. environment spokesman said on Friday.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) accepted last month that its 2007 report had exaggerated the pace of melt of Himalayan glaciers, and this month admitted the report had also overstated how much of the Netherlands is below sea level.

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Torn Apart By Its Own Tides, Massive Planet Is On A 'Death March'

Illustration of WASP-12b in orbit about its host star. (Credit: ESA/C Carreau)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Feb. 25, 2010) — An international group of astrophysicists has determined that a massive planet outside our Solar System is being distorted and destroyed by its host star -- a finding that helps explain the unexpectedly large size of the planet, WASP-12b.

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Killer Whales Don't Usually Kill People

From Live Science:

News of a trainer being killed by a killer whale at SeaWorld Orlando today doesn't change the fact that these giants, while deadly predators, do not kill humans at sea.

"They have never killed a human in the wild," said Nancy Black, a marine biologist with Monterey Bay Whale Watch. That's mostly because, unlike sharks, killer whales don't frequent near-shore areas where people swim. (Even shark attacks on humans are generally accidental, experts say, with sharks mistaking humans for seals or other typical food.)

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Interval Training Can Cut Exercise Hours Sharply

By training intensely, people can cut their training hours
dramatically, research finds. Getty Images

From Discovery News:

By working out in intense intervals, people can squeeze a week's worth of exercise into less than an hour.

THE GIST:

* Intense exercise sessions can help squeeze a whole week's workout into less than an hour.
* Experts say interval training is twice as effective as normal exercise.
* Researchers are trying to learn now if older and less fit people can handle this type of exercise.

People who complain they have no time to exercise may soon need another excuse.

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