Google Moves Chinese Search To Hong Kong

From CNET News:

Google has made its decision on China: it's moving search to Hong Kong.

Google has shut down its Google.cn site and is redirecting users to Google.com.hk, where it will offer uncensored Chinese-language search services. The company will maintain a research and development organization in China as well as a sales office, it announced Monday.

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Monarch Butterflies Dwindle Due To Harsh Winter Weather

From ABC News:

Scientists Say to Plant Milkweed to Help Save the Butterflies.

Monarch butterflies normally find sanctuary in the mountains of Mexico, away from the cold winters of North America, but a harsh winter of torrential rain and mudslides has decimated the monarch butterfly population.

"We saw a number of things happen in Mexico this winter that shouldn't be happening but are probably due to climate change in some way," said Chip Taylor, director of Monarch Watch at the University of Kansas.

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How Dinos Ruled The World

This Triassic exhibit at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science helps to illustrate the battle between crocodiles and dinosaurs. Larry O'Hanlon

From Discovery News:

A massive volcanic eruption 200 million years ago tipped the scales in the battle between dinosaurs and crocodiles for global dominance.

Some 200 million years ago, Earth was on the verge of either an age of dinosaurs or an age of crocodiles. It took the largest volcanic eruption in the solar system -- and the loss of half of Earth's plant life -- to tip the scales in the dinos' favor, say researchers.

The idea is not new, but connecting the eruption to a 200-million-year-old mass extinction event has not been easy. Now that link is confirmed in an exhaustive new study published in the latest Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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Facebook Set to Challenge Google Ad Empire

From PC World:

Facebook recently surpassed Google as the top destination on the Web. Granted, the victory only represents one week, but with traffic on par with Google, and membership exceeding 400 million users, Facebook is primed to challenge the vast Google empire for online advertising dollars.

According to a blog post from Heather Dougherty, research director at Hitwise, "The market share of visits to Facebook.com increased 185 percent last week as compared to the same week in 2009, while visits to Google.com increased 9 percent during the same time frame."

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The Bitter Battle Over Bluefin Tuna

Glossy and greedy: Bluefin tuna is one of the world's most highly prized foodstuffs.

From The BBC:

"Welcome to the strange world of globalisation."

That is Roberto Mielgo's response to the fact that it is commercially viable to catch and keep live tuna in off-shore pens - or ranches - in the Spanish Mediterranean and feed them vast amounts of expensive caught fish (around 10kg of feed fish serve to make the tuna put on 1kg of body weight).

And to cull them by hand using divers, ship them to shore, package them in a purpose-built factory and fly them whole - on the same day - to market on the other side of the world.

Roberto Mielgo calls himself an independent fisheries consultant.

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Carbon Dating Reveals Vintage Fraud In Wines

Atomic bombs changed carbon content in grapes.
Credit: Wikimedia

From Cosmos:

WASHINGTON: Up to 5% of fine wines are not from the year the label indicates, according to Australian researchers who have carbon dated some top dollar wines.

The team of researchers think "vintage fraud" is widespread, and have come up with a test that uses radioactive carbon isotopes left in the atmosphere by atomic bomb tests last century and a method used to date prehistoric objects to determine what year a wine comes from - its vintage.

The test works by comparing the amount of carbon-12 and carbon-14 in grapes.

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Bully Galaxy Rules The Neighborhood

This image from the Advanced Camera for Surveys aboard the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope highlights the large and bright elliptical galaxy called ESO 306-17 in the southern sky. In this image, it appears that ESO 306-17 is surrounded by other galaxies but the bright galaxies at bottom left are thought to be in the foreground, not at the same distance in the sky. In reality, ESO 306-17 lies fairly abandoned in an enormous sea of dark matter and hot gas. (Credit: NASA, ESA and Michael West (ESO))

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Mar. 21, 2010) — Located half a billion light-years from Earth, ESO 306-17, is a large, bright elliptical galaxy in the southern sky of a type known as a fossil group. Astronomers use this term to emphasize the isolated nature of these galaxies. However, are they like fossils -- the last remnants of a once active community -- or is it more sinister than that? Did ESO 306-17 gobble up its next-door neighbors?

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Men Take More Risks When Pretty Women Are Around

From Live Science:

Being around a pretty woman can make men take more risks, a new study finds.

Researchers looked at the risk-taking behaviors of 96 young adult men, with an average age of nearly 22, by asking them to do both easy and difficult tricks on skateboards.

First, the young men performed the tricks in front of another man, then in front of a young, attractive female. (The attractiveness of the woman was independently assessed by 20 male raters.)

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Who Wants To Live For Ever?

From The Independent:

By tweaking our DNA, we could soon survive for hundreds of years – if we want to. Steve Connor reports on a breakthrough that has the science world divided.

A genetically engineered organism that lives 10 times longer than normal has been created by scientists in California. It is the greatest extension of longevity yet achieved by researchers investigating the scientific nature of ageing.

If this work could ever be translated into humans, it would mean that we might one day see people living for 800 years. But is this ever going to be a realistic possibility?

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Apple Puts Out Call For iPad Apps - But Developers Can't Say A Word

Steve Jobs demonstrates the movie function of the new iPad with a scene from Pixar's Up at the launch of the tablet computer in San Francisco Photograph: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

From The Guardian:

It might be a while before Britain gets to see the iPad, but it's just weeks away from launch in the United States - and Apple is beginning to crank up the gears.

The latest move? The company is now accepting submissions for iPad applications to be released on April 3, the date when the gadget starts shipping. If developers submit their wares in the next week (the deadline is actually Saturday 27th of March), they'll get told whether they pass Apple's approval process - with an eye to being available through iTunes to iPad owners on day one.

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Genetically Modified Mosquitos Could Be Used To Spread Vaccine For Malaria

From The Telegraph:

A genetically engineered mosquito that vaccinates as it bites has been developed by scientists.

Experts believe "flying vaccinators" could eventually be a radical new way of tackling malaria.

The new approach targets the salivary gland of the Anopheles mosquito.

Scientists in Japan have engineered an insect producing a natural vaccine protein in its saliva which is injected into the bloodstream when it bites.

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McLaren Takes On Ferrari With 'Affordable' £150,000 Supercar Dubbed 'F1 Car For The Road'

The company plans to sell the 12C in 19 countries, with North America expected to account for around 30 to 40 per cent of the market.

From The Daily Mail:

A gull-winged 200mph supercar dubbed 'an F1 car for the road' was launched yesterday by UK racing specialists McLaren.

The cars will be made in a new £40million factory designed by Sir Norman Foster and will create 300 jobs.

The £150,000 McLaren MP4-12C is Britain's answer to Italy's legendary Ferrari and is the long-held dream of boss Ron Dennis to produce an 'affordable' supercar with the greenest credentials.

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Spy In The Sky That Sees Round Corners

Nowhere to run to, nowhere to hide (Image: Zap Art/Getty)

From New Scientist:

WHY jump in a cab to "follow that car" when an airborne drone could do the job for you? The US Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is developing a radar system which sees around corners and down into "urban canyons". DARPA hopes to be able to track vehicles across an entire city using just a few uncrewed aircraft.

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My Comment: The technology and software behind such an enterprise .... if successful .... will certainly be impressive.

Drug Treatment Could Sharpen Adult Brains

Where's Pinky? NARF! Medical College of Georgia, via Physorg

From Popular Science:

Tests in mice show potential for reversing the slowdown in learning that comes with puberty.

Anyone who's tried to learn a second language knows that the earlier in life you start, the easier it is to learn. Now, a scientist at the State University of New York Downstate Medical Center (SUNY) has not only discovered why learning becomes much harder after puberty, but also how to fix it. The SUNY team found that learning difficulty resulted from the proliferation of special chemical receptors during adolescence, and that the stress steroid THP could reverse the problem.

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Beijing Turned Orange As Sandstorm Sweeps In

A Chinese policeman stands guard near Tiananmen Square
in Beijing during the sandstorm. (AFP/Liu Jin)

From Times Online:

Tons of sand turned Beijing's sky orange as the strongest sandstorm this year hit northern China, a gritty reminder that the country's expanding deserts have led to a sharp increase in the storms.

The sky glowed yesterday and a thin dusting of sand covered Beijing, causing workers and tourists to cover their faces with masks in the vast Tiananmen Square. The city's weather bureau gave air quality a rare hazardous ranking.

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Biology May Not Be So Complex After All, Physicist Finds

Image: Effects of parameter variation on escape time distribution for the gKPR process. (A) Mean completion time versus ¸ and Æ for L=8. (B) Coefficient of variation CV2gKPR versus ¸ and Æ for L=8. (C,D) the same for L=16. (Credit: Image courtesy of Emory University)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Mar. 19, 2010) — Centuries ago, scientists began reducing the physics of the universe into a few, key laws described by a handful of parameters. Such simple descriptions have remained elusive for complex biological systems -- until now.

Emory biophysicist Ilya Nemenman has identified parameters for several biochemical networks that distill the entire behavior of these systems into simple equivalent dynamics. The discovery may hold the potential to streamline the development of drugs and diagnostic tools, by simplifying the research models.

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Why Spring Starts Today

From Live Science:

Today is the first day of spring in the Northern Hemisphere. It is no guarantee of spring-like weather, but officially the season's start comes around at the same time each year nonetheless.

Well, sort of.

The first day of spring arrives on varying dates (from March 19-21) in different years for two reasons: Our year is not exactly an even number of days; and Earth's slightly noncircular orbit, plus the gravitational tug of the other planets, constantly changes our planet's orientation to the sun from year to year.

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Cloaking Device In The Near Future?

The invisibility cloak is the first to work in three dimensions, but has some way to go before it can make the USS Enterprise vanish. Photograph: Ronald Grant

Cloaking Device Makes Objects Invisible – To Infrared Light Anyway -- The Guardian

For now the device only makes objects invisible to infrared light, but it paves the way for a cloaking material that could hide vehicles, high-security facilities or unsightly buildings.

Scientists are a step closer to creating a Star Trek-style cloaking device after demonstrating a material that makes objects beneath it appear to vanish.

The material was used to hide a bump on a surface by interfering with the way light bounced off it, making it seem as though neither the cloak nor the bump was there.

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Large Hadron Collider Breaks Energy Record

From The Telegraph:

The Large Hadron Collider has broken its own record for high energy particle streams.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research, or Cern, said beams of protons circulated at 3.5 trillion electron volts in both directions around the 27-kilometre (17-mile) tunnel housing the LHC under the Swiss-French border at Geneva. That is three times more energy than it has ever achieved before.

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Say Hello To The Astute, The Best Submarine In The World

Astute sits on the shiplift outside the Devonshire Dock Hall in Barrow-in-Furness, ready to be lowered into the dock. The three starboard torpedo tubes are visible on the front of the submarine

Defender Of The Realm: Britain's £1.2bn Submarine - And Typically, We Can't Afford It... -- The Daily Mail

This is the best submarine in the world. It is virtually undetectable, has reinvented the periscope and sonar, and doubles as a floating GCHQ. It also happens to be British. Its only weakness? At £1.2bn, we can't actually afford it

She could prowl the depths of the oceans without stopping for her entire 25-year lifespan, her sleek curves undetected. She generates her own oxygen and fresh water from the surrounding sea, never has to refuel and never needs to break the surface. Indeed, the only reasons for her to come up after 90 days on patrol are to restock with food and to help preserve the sanity of her crew.

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My Comment: The Royal Navy ruled the oceans for a reason .... they developed and manufactured great ships and trained even better sailors. But in today's world money is more important than technology, well trained personnel, and having the best boat.