Which States Pay Highest Gas Prices

(Click Image To Enlarge)
Gas Prices as a percent of income varies by state. See how each state fares. Credit: Karl Tate/LiveScience

From Live Science:

Everyone grumbles when prices at the pump rise, but some drivers pay more depending on where they live. A new study shows how gas price spikes hurt the wallets of drivers in some states more than in others.

On average, Mississippi drivers spent more than 6 percent of their annual income on gas in 2009, compared to drivers in Connecticut and New York who spent just 2.5 percent of their income on gas. But a price spike similar to the one in July 2008 would have worsened the imbalance — Mississippi drivers would have seen driving costs shoot up to 11 percent as opposed to just 4.3 percent for Connecticut and New York. [See gas prices in your state.]

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Undersea Search Resumes For France Flight 447

From Discovery News:

On June 1, 2009, Air France Flight 447 disappeared in turbulent weather en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. For the remainder of the summer, two major efforts were launched by search and rescue crews to find the remains of the plane and the 228 people who had been on board, with great hopes of also finding the two data recorders. So far, 51 bodies and 1,000 pieces of wreckage have been found, but not the data recorders, which only emit signals for 30 days.

Finding the so-called black boxes is key to understanding what happened to the airplane.

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Can Common Herbs Extend Your Life?

From ABC News:

Cinnamon and Ginseng Stretch Life of a Worm; Will They Stretch Yours?

Most Americans have used herbal drugs during the past year, even though in nearly all cases there is no clear scientific evidence that they work. Now, an international team of scientists has found a way to collect that evidence, and even determine which components of very complex compounds are doing the work, and which aren't.

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Greenpeace Issues Warning About Data Centre Power

From The BBC:

Greenpeace is calling on technology giants like Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo and Facebook to power their data centres with renewable energy sources.

Their electricity often comes from utility companies which generate power from burning coal, says the group.

Greenpeace estimates that data centres will use 1,963 billion kilowatt hours of electricity by 2020.

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Mobile Nuclear Reactors Could Provide Power And Jet Fuel For Military, DARPA Says

Navy Aircraft Could nuclear-powered carriers use their reactors and seawater to provide jet fuel for their aircraft? U.S. Navy/Stephen Rowe

From Popular Science:

Making U.S. Navy carrier groups and Army bases more self-sufficient and energy-efficient could mean turning to mobile nuclear reactors. The Pentagon's DARPA scientists have put forth the modest proposal of deploying miniature reactors to convert hydrogen and carbon into military jet fuel, as well as providing power, The Register reports.

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Oceanology: Tethered Antenna Keeps Subs In Touch

There's a sub below (Image: Brooke Ocean Technology)

From New Scientist:

ROBOTIC submarines have always had trouble when it comes to picking up GPS signals and communicating with their operators. That's because radio signals do not travel far underwater. If the submarines do not surface regularly in order to check their position, they run the risk of drifting off-course.

This problem could now be solved, thanks to a wing-like antenna that piggybacks on small submarines. The antenna ascends to the surface on a tether as and when needed, enabling satellite communications, including GPS readings. It can even carry a camera to serve as a kind of periscope for the sub's controller.

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My Comment: The interesting line in this report is the last one ....

.... the US navy is interested in using autonomous submarines to watch for seaborne attacks ....

Nasa Astronaut Gets Ready For Blast-Off

From The Telegraph:

Technicians at a space centre in Kazakhstan have hoisted a rocket on to its launch pad ahead of Friday's blast-off.

A NASA astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts will be inside and will travel to the International Space Station.

NASA's Tracy Caldwell Dyson and Russians Alexander Skvortsov and Mikhail Kornienko are to blast off at 10.04am (0404 GMT) Friday for their six-month mission in the orbiting science lab.

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The Male Brain: More Complex Than You Think

Coneyl Jay / Corbis

From Time Magazine:

Despite all that old talk about Mars and Venus, men and women are much more biologically alike than not. But differences in the way our brains are built shed light on everything from the way we flirt to the way we fight to how we raise our boys, says neuropsychiatrist Dr. Louann Brizendine in her provocative new book, The Male Brain. The author talked to TIME about sex, the daddy brain and why some men may be built to cheat.

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Orca The Dolphin Killer

The six-ton hunter chased the female dolphin through the waves before slamming into her, flipping her 30 feet into the air

From The Daily Mail:

This is the shocking moment a killer whale leapt from the sea to kill an exhausted dolphin.

The six-ton hunter had chased the female dolphin through the waves before swimming up under her and slamming into her, flipping her 30 feet into the air and breaking her back.

The dolphin died almost instantly and the killer whale, or orca, and the rest of its pod then closed in to devour her and her helpless youngster, turning the sea red.

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Spammers Turn To Social Networks

Photo: Fake friends: This screenshot shows real users who befriended a bogus Facebook user created by George Petre and colleagues. Credit: BitDefender

From Technology Review:

They get results by exploiting a social network's trusting environment.

As users have flocked to social networks, so, inevitably, have spammers. And according to a recent experiment, users are much more receptive to spam sent via a social network than over e-mail.

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Scientists Reverse Alzheimer's-Like Memory Loss in Fruit Flies

In a new study, neuroscientists succeeded in preventing memory loss in fruit flies caused by brain plaques similar to those thought to cause Alzheimer's disease in humans (Credit: iStockphoto)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Mar. 30, 2010) — By blocking the cellular signaling activity of a protein, a team of neuroscientists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) has prevented memory loss in fruit flies caused by brain plaques similar to those thought to cause Alzheimer's disease in humans. The study also resolves a long-standing controversy about the role of this protein, PI3 kinase, which was previously thought to have a protective function against the disease.

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Bees See Color 3 Times Faster Than Humans

Bees have surprisingly fast color vision, about 3 to 4 times faster than that of humans depending on how it's measured, a new study finds. Credit: dreamstime

From Live Science:

Bees see color at about triple the speed that humans do, a new study finds.

The findings are the first to measure bumblebee color vision speed and show how it compares with that of monochromatic vision, or the "black-and-white" vision used to track motion.

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Jupiter's Red Spot Has Warm Core

Bottom: Infrared picture of the Red Spot taken by VLT in Chile on 18 May 2008. Top: Visible-light image, which was obtained by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope on 15 May 2008. These images show the interaction of three of Jupiter's largest storms — the Great Red Spot and two smaller storms nicknamed Oval BA and Little Red Spot. Credit: ESO/NASA/JPL/ESA/L. Fletcher

From Cosmos:

SYDNEY: Jupiter's Great Red Spot is "extremely complicated", with a core that is warmer and spins in the opposite direction, scientists have found.

The Great Red Spot (GRS) is a storm three times the size of Earth, which spins mostly counter clockwise. It has persisted since at least 1831, and is the most recognisable feature on the striped planet.

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10 Questions The LHC May Answer

From Discovery News:

It's been just over a year since the Large Hadron Collider, the world's most powerful particle accelerator, suffered a serious malfunction that shut it down only nine days after going online. But as of this weekend, the LHC is back up and running.

Scientists will use the collider to recreate conditions following the Big Bang, by accelerating beams of subatomic particles (protons and lead ions, called hadrons) around a massive underground racetrack.

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'Allergic' to Electronics: Man Sues Neighbor Over Gadget Use

From ABC:

Santa Fe Man Said He Has 'Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity'.

No TV. No computer. No cell phone. Electronically speaking, he said, his home is more 1980 than 2010.

The Santa Fe man, 59, said, intellectually, he has no problem with technology. It's just that, physically, he can barely tolerate it, he said.

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Climate Science Must Be More Open, Say MPs

Photo: Professor Phil Jones' scientific reputation is "intact"

From The BBC:

MPs investigating the climate change row at the UK's University of East Anglia (UEA) have demanded greater transparency from climate scientists.

The Commons Science and Technology Committee criticised UEA authorities for failing to respond to requests for data from climate change sceptics.

But it found no evidence Professor Phil Jones, whose e-mails were hacked and published online, had manipulated data.

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Picking Our Brains: Nine Neural Frontiers

From New Scientist:

The human brain is the most astoundingly complex structure in the known universe. Yet we are starting to unravel some of its mysteries, thanks to advances in brain imaging, genetics, stem cell research and more. We explore the latest findings from the hottest topics in neuroscience.

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Genetic Shock A Surprising Court Ruling In America May Loosen The Drug Industry’s Grip On Important Genes

From The Economist:

PERSONALISED medicine has proved an elusive dream. Since the decoding of the human genome, biotechnology companies have claimed that by matching a person’s genetic make-up with specialised treatments, they can tailor drugs to maximise benefits and minimise side effects. Alas, researchers have discovered that the link between a given person’s genetic make-up and specific diseases is much more complex than they had hoped. The tantalising vision remains out of reach.

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A Slow Mind May Nurture More Creative Ideas

White matter writ large (Image: UCLA Lab of Neuro Imaging)

From New Scientist:

AS FAR as the internet or phone networks go, bad connections are bad news. Not so in the brain, where slower connections may make people more creative.

Rex Jung at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque and his colleagues had found that creativity correlates with low levels of the chemical N-acetylaspartate, which is found in neurons and seems to promote neural health and metabolism.

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Threat Level Privacy, Crime and Security Online Isohunt Ordered to Remove Infringing Content

From Threat Level:

A U.S. judge is ordering Isohunt, one of the world’s leading BitTorrent search engines, to remove all infringing content. Isohunt’s operator said Tuesday that the decision would likely shutter the site, which has 30 million unique monthly visitors.

The injunction targeting Isohunt follows similar rulings against competing pirate sites like Mininova and The Pirate Bay, although the Bay has thus far eluded compliance.

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