Thursday, March 11, 2010
Half Million Seeds Now in "Doomsday" Vault
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From CBS News:
Secure Crop Seed Bank on Arctic Island Hits Record Inventory 2 Years after 1st Samples Arrived.
(AP) Two years after receiving Its first deposits, a "doomsday" seed vault on an Arctic island has amassed half a million seed samples, making it the world's most diverse repository of crop seeds, the vault's operators announced Thursday.
Cary Fowler - who heads the trust that oversees the seed collection, which is 620 miles from the North Pole, said the facility now houses at least one-third of the world's crop seeds.
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Safety Issues Loom As Humanoid Invasion Approaches
From New Scientist:
Pressure-sensing skins, smarter limbs and even bemused facial expressions. All these features will be needed to make future humanoid robots safe enough to hang out with humans in our homes, a symposium on humanoid robotics at the Institute of Engineering and Technology in London heard this week.
"We want robots to operate in our human world but they need to be safe," says Chris Melhuish of the Bristol Robotics Laboratory in the UK. "It's no good if they fall over on a 2-year-old or poke someone in the eye."
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Pressure-sensing skins, smarter limbs and even bemused facial expressions. All these features will be needed to make future humanoid robots safe enough to hang out with humans in our homes, a symposium on humanoid robotics at the Institute of Engineering and Technology in London heard this week.
"We want robots to operate in our human world but they need to be safe," says Chris Melhuish of the Bristol Robotics Laboratory in the UK. "It's no good if they fall over on a 2-year-old or poke someone in the eye."
Read more ....
DARPA Plans Lightning-Based GPS For Underground Warfighters
Lightning Strikes for Navigation So if lightning strikes position a, b and c ... NASA From Popular Science:
DARPA envisions a future in which U.S. Special Forces or spooks have to assault underground bases. And the Pentagon agency wants to give those warriors an underground navigation system that works on lightning bolts, The Register reports.
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'Minority Report' Digital Billboard 'Watches Consumers Shop'
The billboard's are similar to ones featured in the Tom Cruise film, Minority report.From The Telegraph:
A “Minority Report” styled digital billboard that targets consumers using customised advertising based on their demographics is being developed by Japanese researchers.
Engineers have developed the billboard, similar to one used in the Tom Cruise blockbuster, that uses in built cameras to instantly identifies a shopper’s age and gender as they walk past.
The facial-recognition system, called the Next Generation Digital Signage Solution, then offers consumers a product it thinks is suited to their demographic.
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Formula Reveals 11am Is The Ideal Time For The Perfect Coffee Break
The perfect coffee break is taken at 11am in a brightly lit room with friendsFrom The Daily Mail:
A team of university experts have come up with a formula that proves that Elevenses really is the best time for a coffee break.
But the research also shows that a tasty Americano is not the only requirement - lights, music, aroma and good company need to be added to the mix.
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Scientists To Review Climate Body
From The BBC:
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has asked the world's science academies to review work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Work will be co-ordinated by the Inter-Academy Council, which brings together bodies such as the UK's Royal Society.
The IPCC has been under pressure over errors in its last major assessment of climate science in 2007.
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Google Maps Rolls Out Trail And Street Directions For Cyclists
A cyclist crosses the Brooklyn Bridge. Starting today, Google Maps will feature a biking layer, where users can plan their route according to the grade of the hills or the level of traffic congestion. NewscomFrom The Christian Science Monitor:
A new layer on Google Maps will let cyclists access maps of 150 cities around the US. It's a bike geek's dream come true.
On Wednesday morning, Google added bike directions and trail information to Google Maps – a long-awaited functionality that product manager Shannon Guymon said would "encourage folks to hop on their bikes." By selecting the "Bicycling" layer on Google Maps, cyclists can now see the closest trails and bike lanes in area, or plan around particularly congested urban arteries and calf-busting hill climbs.
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Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Life Is Shorter For Men, But Sexually Active Life Expectancy Is Longer
From Science Daily:
Science Daily (Mar. 10, 2010) — At age 55, men can expect another 15 years of sexual activity, but women that age should expect less than 11 years, according to a study by University of Chicago researchers published early online March 10 by the British Medical Journal. Men in good or excellent health at 55 can add 5 to 7 years to that number. Equally healthy women gain slightly less, 3 to 6 years.
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Donating A Kidney Doesn't Shorten Donor's Life
From Live Science:
People who donate one of their kidneys are likely to live just as long as someone with two healthy kidneys, assuming they survive the initial somewhat riskier period.
A new study, which involved more than 80,000 live kidney donors in the United States and looked at survival rates over a 15-year period, is the first to use data from a national level, rather than from single-transplant centers with similar populations.
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Large Hadron Collider To Shut Down, Not Baguette This Time
From Techeye.net:World record collision energies aren’t enough - it needs more power!!
The Large Hardon Collider (LHC) is to shut down at the end of 2011, just in time to cause the (speculated) end of the world by 2012.
According to reports, the atom smashing machine needs to fix design and safety issues which is stopping it from reaching its potential. Apparently, world record collisions of 7 trillion electron volts isn’t enough - the LHC needs to be made safer before collisions at about twice that level can start.
The LHC is the world’s largest and highest-energy particle accelerator built by the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN), with the goal of colliding protons or lead ions at very high energy, recreating the conditions after the Big Bang.
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Music And lyrics: How The Brain Splits Songs
When tunes and lyrics divergeFrom The New Scientist:
Your favourite song comes on the radio. You hum the tune; the lyrics remind you of someone you know. Is your brain processing the words and music separately or as one? It's a hotly debated question that may finally have an answer.
People with aphasia, who can't speak, can still hum a tune, suggesting music and lyrics are processed separately. Yet brain scans show that music and language activate the same areas, which might mean the brain treats them as one signal.
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China's Moon Rocket May Take A Cue From The Saturn V
Saturn V A behemoth rocket to reach the moon NASA From Popular Science:
My rocket is almost as big as your rocket.
China's new moon rocket design is in the class of the old Saturn V that once launched U.S. Apollo astronauts to the moon. The China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology says that the proposed rocket would have a thrust of 3,000 metric tons, just shy of the 3,470 metric tons of thrust generated by the Saturn V's first stage, Aviation Week reports.
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Opposites Do Attract As 'Stressed Men Make Odd Sexual Decisions', Study Suggests
The study could explain why some couples end up together for example Nicholas Sarkozy, the French President and his wife Carla Bruni-Sarkozy.From The Telegraph:
Opposites really do attract in people, according to scientists who researched the psychology of sexual attraction.
Researchers in Germany discovered that stressed men made unconventional choices in sexual preferences.
Scientists at the University of Trier found that young men who were under pressure preferred erotic pictures of female nudes who were had the opposite facial expressions to themselves.
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Large Hadron Collider Will Finally Reach Full Power In 2013... Eight Years Behind Schedule
The magnet core of the world's largest superconducting solenoid magnet at the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva. Scientists at Cern said the machine will not reach full capacity until 2013From The Daily Mail:
The Large Hadron Collider, which scientists hope will recreate the conditions just moments after the Big Bang, is to shut down for a whole year.
Scientists are set to run the particle-accelerating machine at half power for at least 18 months, sending seven trillion electron volts around the specially-built 17-mile tunnel.
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UK Skynet Military Satellite System Extended
The new spacecraft will use payload items held in reserveFrom The BBC:
Skynet 5, the UK's single biggest space project, is to be extended.
The £3.6bn system, which provides secure satellite telecommunications to British armed forces, will be boosted by the addition of a fourth spacecraft.
The first three satellites were only launched in 2007-2008, but military planners envisage even more bandwidth will be needed in the future.
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Tailored Diet May Slow Down DNA Damage
In the future, our recommended dietary intake may be dictated by our genetic makeup(Source: stock.xchng)
From ABC News (Australia):
Mounting evidence on the effect of micronutrients on DNA damage calls for a re-evaluation of recommended dietary intake values, say researchers.
Professor Michael Fenech of CSIRO's Food and Nutritional Sciences Division in Adelaide lays out his argument in a paper accepted for publication in the journal American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
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Farm Aid From Space
A Kenyan Masai farmer stands next to his three cows exhausted by lack of nutrition near Kajiado, south of Nairobi. A NOAA environmental satellite was launched in February (below). Its images will be used in an index that helps determine payouts for climate insurance. Antony Njuguana/Reuters/FileFrom Christian Science Monitor:
Dusty northern Kenya doesn't look like a laboratory, but across its dry plains, cattle herders are pioneering a new way to fend off poverty and teaming up with unlikely partners – insurance agents.
The two groups have been brought together by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), headquartered in Kenya's capital, Nairobi. A few years ago, scientists at ILRI wondered if a new innovation, called weather-indexed insurance, might help impoverished cattle farmers survive the loss of their cows during times of drought.
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Ancient DNA Teased From Fossil Eggshells
Fragments of ancient moa eggshells. Eggshells are surprisingly good at protecting ancient DNA, and are often found at archaeological sites. Credit: University of OtagoFrom Cosmos:
PARIS: DNA from the fossilised eggshells of extinct birds - including iconic giants such as the moa and elephant bird - have been extracted for the first time, Australian scientists have reported.
The achievement marks a major step towards drafting the genome of birds wiped out by human greed, although the scientists warn this does not mean an extinct species should - or even can - be resurrected in the style of Jurassic Park.
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Scientists Discover 'Catastrophic Event' Behind The Halt Of Star Birth in Early Galaxy Formation
Artist’s representation showing outflow from a supermassive black hole inside the middle of a galaxy. (Credit: NASA/CXC/M. Weiss)From Science Daily:
Science Daily (Mar. 10, 2010) — Scientists have found evidence of a catastrophic event they believe was responsible for halting the birth of stars in a galaxy in the early Universe.
The researchers, led by Durham University's Department of Physics, observed the massive galaxy as it would have appeared just three billion years after the Big Bang when the Universe was a quarter of its present age.
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Effort To Map Human Brain Faces Complex Challenges
The wiring diagram of connections between neurons and the interscutularis muscle of a mouse ear. Credit: Lu et al., 2009 PLoS Biology: The Interscutularis ConnectomeFrom Live Science:
Mapping the connections among brain cells could someday prove as revolutionary as mapping the human genome. But tracing each synaptic connection between neurons — essentially a manual effort so far — has proven painstakingly slow. To approach a thorough mapping, researchers will have to develop a computer-automated process.
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