Tracking Hurricane Ike

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Hurricane History: Texas A Top Target

The unnamed Category 4 hurricane that slammed into Galveston, Texas Sept. 8, 1900 remains the deadliest ever to hit the United States, having killed at least 8,000 people (estimates vary) and leveling virtually the entire town. Credit: NOAA

From Live Science:

Florida and Louisiana have had an unfair share of hurricane activity these past four years while Texas has generally taken less of a beating.

That could change this week as powerful Hurricane Ike takes aim at the Lone Star State.

In fact, Texas has been in the crosshairs many times before and is second only to Florida among U.S. states in the number of direct hits from hurricanes.

It seems ages ago now, but it was just seven weeks back that Dolly struck southern Texas, knocking down trees and power lines and causing extensive flooding of low-lying areas. Preliminary damage estimates were put at $1 billion or more. In some isolated areas, rainfall reached 16 inches. But Dolly was not a major hurricane. Its peak wind gusts were around 100 mph, and its eye made landfall, on July 23, in a largely uninhabited area.

The big storm that defines the hurricane threat to Texas was the disaster that struck Galveston more than a century ago.

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Minor Planet May Help Explain Comets

From The Globe And Mail:

WASHINGTON — A newly discovered "minor planet" with an elongated orbit around the Sun may help explain the origin of comets, researchers said Monday.

The object, known as 2006 SQ372, is starting the outward portion of a 22,500-year orbit that will take it 240 billion kilometres away from the Sun.

The icy lump of rock is just over three billion kilometres from Earth, a bit closer than the planet Neptune, researchers told a symposium on Monday. They will publish their findings in the Astrophysical Journal.

The orbit of 2006 SQ372 is an ellipse four times longer than it is wide, said University of Washington astronomer Andrew Becker, who led the research team. Sedna, a distant, Pluto-like dwarf planet discovered in 2003, is the only other object with a similar orbit, but not nearly as stretched out.

The new object is about 100 kilometres in diameter.

"It's basically a comet, but it never gets close enough to the Sun to develop a long, bright tail of evaporated gas and dust," Dr. Becker said in a statement.

University of Washington graduate student Nathan Kaib said it is unclear how the object formed.

"It could have formed, like Pluto," he said, "in the belt of icy debris beyond Neptune, then been kicked a large distance by a gravitational encounter with Neptune or Uranus."

More likely, he said, it came from the Oort Cloud, a distant reservoir of icy, asteroid-like bodies that orbit the Sun at distances of several trillion kilometres.

"One of our goals is to understand the origin of comets, which are among the most spectacular celestial events. But the deeper goal is to look back into the early history of our solar system and piece together what was happening when the planets formed," Mr. Kaib said.

The Possible Extinction Of North America's Freshwater Fish

Freshwater Fish In N. America In Peril, Study Says
-- Yahoo News/AP

WASHINGTON - About four out of 10 freshwater fish species in North America are in peril, according to a major study by U.S., Canadian and Mexican scientists.

And the number of subspecies of fish populations in trouble has nearly doubled since 1989, the new report says.

One biologist called it "silent extinctions" because few people notice the dramatic dwindling of certain populations deep in American lakes, rivers and streams. And while they are unaware, people are the chief cause of the problem by polluting and damming freshwater habitats, experts said.

In the first massive study of freshwater fish on the continent in 19 years, an international team of dozens of scientists looked not just at species, but at subspecies — physically distinct populations restricted to certain geographic areas. The decline is even more notable among these smaller groups.

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Large Hadron Collider To Reach Full Capacity By Yearend
-- RIA Novosti

GENEVA, September 10 (RIA Novosti) - Scientists are planning to run the world's largest particle collider at full capacity by the end of 2008, a Russian physicist told RIA Novosti on Wednesday.

During the first full tests conducted Wednesday, beams of sub-atomic particles were for the first time sent round the accelerator ring in opposite directions at almost the speed of light, but the powerful superconductor magnets in the collider operated at minimum capacity.

"The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is an extremely complex system," said Vladimir Karzhavin of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna. "That is why its initial launch is a very complicated and sensitive process."

The physicist, who heads of a team of Russian scientists from the institute who participate in the LHC project, said collisions initially would be rare and involve low-energy protons, but over time the frequency and energy output would gradually increase.

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The Future Of NASA's Shuttle Program

Enter the Dragon -- The Economist

The war in Georgia is prompting a rethink of America’s route into space.

IN TWO years’ time America’s space shuttle is supposed to retire. It is a complicated bit of technology—expensive and unreliable. And every launch raises fears of another accident. Something cheaper, simpler and safer, known as project Constellation, is planned to replace it, but this will take time to build, and probably will not be operational before 2015. That means five years during which NASA, the country’s space agency, will have no means of its own to ferry its astronauts between the ground and the space station that it spent so much money helping to build.

Until a few weeks ago, the plan was to buy tickets on Soyuz, Russia’s system of manned space vehicles. That was what happened when the shuttle was grounded after the Columbia accident in 2003. America spent hundreds of millions of dollars for flights on Soyuz.

Buying rides on Russian rockets requires approval from Congress. At the best of times, Congress takes some convincing, but now that America and Russia have fallen out over Russia’s war with Georgia, the chances of a multimillion dollar shopping spree to Moscow look less likely than ever. And although political moods may change, time is running out if NASA is to put an order in for the missions it will need from the end of 2011, when its contract with the Russians expires. Each vehicle takes about three years to build, so America needs to decide soon whether it wants to buy from Russia.

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The God Particle Will Be Found

An engineer leans on a magnet in the 27km-long tunnel that will house the Large Hadron Collider (Image: Cern/Maximilien Brice).

Higgs: Particle Will Be Found -- News 24

London - The British scientist who gave his name to the so-called "God Particle" said he believes it will be found by the world's biggest atom-smasher, which was finally fired up on Wednesday.

"I think it's pretty likely," said Professor Peter Higgs a few hours after the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was switched at the home of the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) below the Franco-Swiss border.

"The way I put it is that if there isn't anything there, then it means I and a lot of other people no longer understand all the things we understand about these weak and electromagnetic interactions," added the 79-year-old.

Physicists have long puzzled over how particles acquire mass. In 1964 Higgs, came up with this idea: there must exist a background field that would act rather like treacle.

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Galactic Blast From Dying Star Detected

From MSNBC:

Last March our planet looked straight down the barrel when one of the universe's most deadly kinds of stellar artillery fired — and we lived to tell about it.

The March 19 cosmic cannon was a jet of powerful gamma rays that shot out matter at speeds just a hair shy of the universal speed limit — that of light.

The explosion, which occurred not far from the handle of the Big Dipper, was even more remarkable because it was accompanied by enough visible light to be seen briefly with unaided human eyes. That's despite the fact that the dying mega-star that created the blast was in another galaxy, a whopping 7.5 billion light-years away.

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Why We Drink Ourselves Under The Table

Scientists say alcohol is addictive because it erases the worst memories of being drunk

Why Drinkers Do It All Again – They Only
Recall The Good Bits -- The Independent

Some people drink to forget, but scientists have found that anyone who binge drinks is more likely to forget only the worst experiences of being drunk – which is why alcohol is such an addictive drug.

Alcohol has been found to affect memory in a selective manner. Drinking makes it easier to remember the good things about a party but harder to recall the bad things that happen after having too much.

Studies into the memories of people engaged in heavy drinking have shown that it is the inability to remember the worst excesses of a night out – while remembering the happy things that led up to them – is one of the main causes of repeated binge drinking.

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The Large Hadron Collider -- Complete News Coverage From Nature News

From Nature News:

The Large Hadron Collider is the world's most powerful particle accelerator. As the first proton beams zip around the LHC's massive 27-kilometre ring on 10 September 2008, it marks a new era of physics that could pin down the identity of the dark matter that shapes galaxies; find the Higgs boson, believed to confer mass on the other particles of the quantum bestiary; and recreate conditions that existed a split-second after the Big Bang. In this online Special, Nature asks how it works, what it will find, and why we should be excited.

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Melting Ice Caps Could Suck Carbon From Atmosphere

From New Scientists:

It's not often that disappearing Arctic ice is presented as good news for the planet. Yet new research suggests that as the northern polar cap melts, it could lift the lid off a new carbon sink capable of soaking up carbon dioxide.

The findings, from two separate research groups, raise the possibility – albeit a remote one – of weakening the greenhouse effect. The researchers say the process of carbon sequestration is already underway. Even so, the new carbon sink is unlikely to make a significant dent in the huge amounts of CO2 pumped into the atmosphere by industrial activities.

Kevin Arrigo and colleagues at Stanford University studied satellite data collected between 1998 and 2007 to see how sea surface temperatures and the quantities of sea ice and phytoplankton had changed during that time.

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Music Therapy Improves Well-Being of Very Ill Patients

From Live Science:

(HealthDay News) -- Exposure to music therapy can dramatically improve the mental and physical condition of patients receiving palliative care, a new study suggests.

The research team says that this is the first large study to gauge -- and substantiate -- the potential of music therapy as a physical and psychological aid to patients coping with advanced illness.

"We've known for a while that music therapy can be used for a wide variety of things in a medical setting," said study author Lisa M. Gallagher, a music therapist with the Cleveland Music School Settlement and The Cleveland Clinic's Horvitz Center for Palliative Medicine. "But this particular study clearly shows that it helps improve mood while decreasing pain, anxiety, depression and even shortness of breath among seriously ill patients."

Gallagher was expected to present her findings Tuesday at the American Academy of Pain Management Meeting being held this week in Nashville, Tenn.

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Largest Particle Collider Conducts Successful Test -- Collection Of News Reports

Scientists cheer atom smasher success

From Myway/AP:

GENEVA (AP) - The world's largest particle collider successfully completed its first major test by firing a beam of protons all the way around a 17-mile (27-kilometer) tunnel Wednesday in what scientists hope is the next great step to understanding the makeup of the universe.

After a series of trial runs, two white dots flashed on a computer screen at 10:36 a.m. (0836 GMT) indicating that the protons had traveled the full length of the US$3.8 billion Large Hadron Collider.

"There it is," project leader Lyn Evans said when the beam completed its lap.

Champagne corks popped in labs as far away as Chicago, where contributing scientists watched the proceedings by satellite. Physicists around the world now have much greater power than ever before to smash the components of atoms together in attempts to see how they are made.

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More News On The First Large particle Collider Test

Large Hadron Collider: subatomic particles complete first circuit -- The Telegraph
Scientists cheer as protons complete first circuit of Big Bang machine -- Times Online
World's mightiest atom-smasher starts operations -- AFP
Largest particle collider conducts successful test -- Yahoo News/AP
Working LHC produces first images -- New Scientist
Beam Me Up: Big Bang Protons Away -- Sky News
Slideshow: Cern’s Large Hadron Collider goes live -- Financial Times
30 stunning images of the Large Hadron Collider -- Dvice
LHC Win: Beaming smiles all round -- ZDNet
Scientists cheer atom smasher success -- CNN
CERN experiment simplified -- NDTV
Today is not Hadron Collider Day -- Register Today
Large Hadron Collider: Why You Really Won't Die Today -- Gizmodo
TIMELINE: Major events for CERN and particle physics -- Reuters

5 Things You Need To Know About The Large Hadron Collider

A a large dipole magnet is lowered into the tunnel to complete the basic installation of the more than 1700 magnets that make up the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which measures 27 km in circumference. (Photograph by CERN/AFP/Getty Images)

From Popular Mechanics:

The largest particle accelerator in history will take another step on Wednesday toward living up to its own celebrity. In the ongoing autopsy of the subatomic functions of the universe, the Large Hadron Collider could be the best hope yet to transform theoretical reality, such as dark matter and extra dimensions, into observable fact. And we'll be on hand to watch the LHC turn on, so stay tuned.

But why, exactly, are people without advanced degrees in physics counting the minutes until the first proton beam travels the length of the LHC's 27-kilometer (about 17-mile) accelerator ring? Is it because the bad science of the machine's supposed doomsday potential traveled faster—and louder—than responsible dissections of quantum mechanics? Is it because the LHC, which sits underneath Switzerland and France, feels like a turning point in the loss of American scientific primacy? Or is it because, however complex the physics might be, there's simply never been a larger, more powerful proton-smashing mega-gadget like it?

The answer is probably the doomsday thing, but on the eve of the accelerator's first full beam (and despite the glut of existing coverage) there's still a lot to be learned from—and about—the LHC.

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Childbirth Was Already Difficult For Neanderthals

Neanderthals had a brain at birth of a similar size to that of modern-day babies. (Credit: Ch. Zollikofer, courtesy of University of Zurich)

From The Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 9, 2008) — Neanderthals had a brain at birth of a similar size to that of modern-day babies. However, after birth, their brain grew more quickly than it does for Homo sapiens and became larger too. Nevertheless, the individual lifespan ran just as slowly as it does for modern human beings.

These new insights into the history of human evolution are being presented in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, by researchers from the University of Zurich.

Dr. Marcia Ponce de León and Prof. Christoph Zollikofer from the Anthropological Institute of the University of Zurich examined the birth and the brain development of a newborn Neanderthal baby from the Mezmaiskaya Cave in the Crimea. That Neanderthal child, which died shortly after it was born, was evidently buried with such care that it was able to be recovered in good condition from the cave sediments of the Ice Age after resting for approximately 40,000 years.

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Windfarms On The Coast

Offshore Wind Farms May Line U.S. Coast -- CNN

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Visitors to Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, soon may be greeted by more than sand dunes, seagulls and beach umbrellas.

If offshore wind advocates have their way, scores of 140-foot blades will be spinning in the ocean breeze nearly a dozen miles away, barely visible to the sunbathers.

Offshore wind has taken a back seat to offshore drilling for oil and natural gas in the current energy debate. But those wind-driven turbines probably will be operating long before oil platforms appear off Atlantic Coast states.

Delaware hopes to be the first state to construct a wind farm off its coast. The project, scheduled to be completed in 2012, is one of several offshore wind proposals that have cleared significant hurdles in recent months.

Proponents say wind offers more long-term energy independence than offshore oil. Residents along the Eastern seaboard are embracing it as a stable-priced, environmentally friendly energy alternative.

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Stephen Hawking: Big Bang Experiment Could Finally Earn Me A Nobel Prize

From The Daily Mail:

Experts around the world are eagerly awaiting the switch on of the world's biggest scientific experiment, and none more so than Professor Stephen Hawking.

The £5billion Large Hadron Collider aims to recreate the conditions moments after the Big Bang that created the universe.

It could offer Professor Hawking his best chance so far of winning a Nobel prize if it confirms his theory that black holes give off radiation.

He told the BBC: 'If the LHC were to produce little black holes, I don't think there's any doubt I would get a Nobel prize, if they showed the properties I predict.

'However, I think the probability that the LHC has enough energy to create black holes, is less than 1 per cent, so I'm not holding my breath.'

The British physicist put forward his idea in the 1970s but it proved controversial because many scientists believed nothing could escape the gravitational pull of a black hole.

Although Hawking's theory has become accepted by the profession is remains unproven. Nobel prizes in physics are awarded only when there is experimental evidence for a new phenomenon.

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at Cern may produce microscopic black holes that could evaporate in a flash of Hawking radiation.

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A Continuation Of The Gender Wars

Men's Brains Are 'Better Connected' -- The Telegraph

Men have higher levels of nerve connections in parts of their brain than women, according to a study that will renew hostilities in the long running gender war.

Previous studies have revealed differences in the density of nerve cells and other brain features but none of these gender differences have been linked to behaviour or function in a very convincing way.

Now, Dr Lidia Alonso-Nanclares and Prof Javier De Filipe of the Instituto Cajal, Madrid, Spain; and colleagues there and at the Universidad Complutense of Madrid, used fresh brain tissue removed from epileptic patients during brain surgery to explore microscopic differences in the brain structure of men and women, revealing a consistent difference.

The authors of a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences used an electron microscope to study the brain tissue and discovered that in the temporal neocortex, a key part which is involved in both social and emotional processes, located near the ears, among other skills, that men had a one third higher density than women of synapses - the junction between two brain cells that enables precisely tuned cell-to-cell communication.

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Doomsday Scenarios

At Cern, the Large Hadron Collider could recreate conditions that last prevailed when the universe was less than a trillionth of a second old. Above is one of the collider's massive particle detectors, called the Compact Muon Solenoid

Totally Fictional Doomsday -- MSNBC

Have you heard the one about the physics experiment that created globe-gobbling black holes? Or killer neutrino beams? Or the voice of God? How about antimatter explosives and the boson bomb? There's even a supercollider that set off a crisis so huge that scientists had to be sent back in time to make sure the supercollider was never built in the first place.

All these subatomic nightmares, and more besides, are pure science fiction ... with a bit of science woven in.

The black-hole nightmare in particular has touched off a wave of worry about the Large Hadron Collider, complete with lawsuits, tearful protests and death threats.

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Rediscovering Hydro Power

U.S. Looks to Rediscover Hydropower as Untapped Energy Source
-- Popular Mechanics

From the pipes in water-treatment plants to long-forgotten river turbines, overlooked sources of energy throughout the U.S. are poised to be tapped.

From the front, the old brick mill in Middlebury, Vt., looks like any of the other quaint buildings lining the town’s main street. But inside, through yawning gaps in a patchwork floor of long, narrow planks, the gray-green waters of Otter Creek can be seen churning toward a 23-ft. waterfall. Anchored to a stone bridge above the river, the building once had a mill wheel that drove wool-processing equipment; later, a penstock carried water to a turbine, generating electricity for the town’s streetlights.

For the past 42 years, the power of the river has gone untapped—the turbine is long since dismantled—and Middlebury’s electricity now comes from the grid. The only sign of the penstock, the pipe that funneled water to the powerhouse, is a crumbling concrete frame, and the sluice gate that controlled the river diversion is missing its metal plate. Local resident Anders Holm plans to change that.

An ear, nose and throat specialist who grew up in town, Holm was born a few years after the hydropower system was retired. His father purchased the mill in the 1980s and rented it out as commercial space. But changing times—particularly the events of Sept. 11, 2001—convinced Holm to reduce his dependence on foreign oil. He covered his home with solar panels. Then he and his brother, Erik, decided to restore both the mill and the hydropower.

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CERN News Updates -- September 8, 2008

Proton-smashing will start at the 27-kilometer tunnel beneath Switzerland in a month. (Martial Trezzin/Keystone, via The Associated Press)

CERN Fires Up New Atom Smasher To Near Big Bang
-- Yahoo News/AP

GENEVA - It has been called an Alice in Wonderland investigation into the makeup of the universe — or dangerous tampering with nature that could spell doomsday.

Whatever the case, the most powerful atom-smasher ever built comes online Wednesday, eagerly anticipated by scientists worldwide who have awaited this moment for two decades.

The multibillion-dollar Large Hadron Collider will explore the tiniest particles and come ever closer to re-enacting the big bang, the theory that a colossal explosion created the universe.

The machine at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, promises scientists a closer look at the makeup of matter, filling in gaps in knowledge or possibly reshaping theories.

The first beams of protons will be fired around the 17-mile tunnel to test the controlling strength of the world's largest superconducting magnets. It will still be about a month before beams traveling in opposite directions are brought together in collisions that some skeptics fear could create micro "black holes" and endanger the planet.

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More News On CERN

Atom-smasher promises closer look at makeup of matter -- International Herald Tribune
Excitement and Fear Abound Over Super Collider -- Yahoo News/News Factor
CERN fires up new atom smasher to near Big Bang -- San Francisco Chronicle
Next Stop: The Fourth Dimension, With Large Hadron Collider Experiments -- Science Daily
Fingers Crossed, Physicists Are Ready for Collider to Roll -- New York Times Science
Multibillion-dollar experiment to probe nature's mysteries -- New York Sun
60,000 Computers Primed For Big Bang Probe -- CBS News
Global computer network ready for Big Bang probe -- USA Today
'The Grid' will see 80,000 computer network processing data from LHC -- The Telegraph
Super-smasher targets massive mystery -- MSNBC
Discovery or doom? Collider stirs debate -- MSNBC
Fear Looms Over Scientist's Experiment to Uncover Secrets of 'Big Bang' -- FOX News
The Large Hadron Collider: "the most extreme historical reenactment society ever" -- The Guardian
Five Particles; The Making of CERN -- Times Online
World's Biggest Physics Experiment Moves Closer to Completion -- Voice Of America
How the Large Hadron Collider Might Change the Web -- Scientific America
Scientists Get Death Threats Over Big Bang Experiment -- New York Sun
CERN's LHC 'First Beam' to be broadcast live on Wednesday -- Edgadget

Hubble Crew Faces Higher Risk Of Debris Hit: NASA

From Reuters:

HOUSTON (Reuters) - The shuttle crew being dispatched to work on the Hubble Space Telescope faces a higher-than-usual chance of disaster due to orbital debris, the shuttle program manager said on Monday.

NASA is preparing for a fifth and final servicing mission to the orbital observatory next month.

The environment where Hubble flies, about 350 miles (560 km) above the planet, is more littered with shards of exploded spacecraft and rockets than the area around the International Space Station, which orbits about 210 miles above Earth.

The odds of catastrophic damage from an orbital debris strike are 1 in 185 for the Hubble crew, compared with 1 in 300 for missions to the space station, John Shannon, the shuttle program manager, told reporters.

"It's our biggest risk," he said.

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More News On The Space Shuttle's Mission

NASA: Space Debris a Higher Risk for Hubble Shuttle Flight -- Space.com
NASA warns Hubble mission brings greater space debris risk -- AFP
Shuttle Atlantis Faces Debris Danger on Hubble Mission -- The Write Stuff
Hubble shuttle flight faces higher space junk risk -- International Herald Tribune
Atlantis is moved to launch pad -- L.A. Times
Shuttle Launch Dates for 2008 Rescheduled -- Geek Dad

Rosetta Probe Sends Asteroid Images To Earth

The Steins asteroid was slightly larger than first believed, at 3.1 miles in diameter, rather than 3 miles, European space officials say. (ESA / AP)

From San Francisco Chronicle:

(09-07) 04:00 PDT Darmstadt, Germany -- The European deep space probe Rosetta successfully completed a flyby of an asteroid millions of miles from Earth, but its high resolution camera stopped shortly before the closest pass, space officials said Saturday.

Rosetta caught up with the Steins asteroid, also known as Asteroid 2867, just after 8:45 p.m. Friday in the asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. The probe came within 500 miles of the asteroid - which turned out to be slightly larger than scientists expected.

Officials at the European Space Agency were not sure exactly what caused the camera to balk.

"The software switched off automatically," said Gerhard Schwehm, the ESA mission manager and head of solar systems science operations. "The camera has some software limits, and we'll analyze why this happened later."

Another wide angle camera was able to take pictures and send them to the space center, Schwehm said.

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Meet The Real Bionic Women

Claudia Mitchell feels sensations in the hand she is missing thanks to an innovative surgery.

Nerve Surgery Leaves Woman With Feeling in an Arm
That Isn't There -- ABC News

Claudia Mitchell may look like your average 20-something college student. She is anything but.

As a result of an experimental surgery, Mitchell has become the first real "Bionic Woman": part human, part computer.

Mitchell's bionic life began in 2004 with a ride on a friend's motorcycle. The bike suddenly spun out of control, and Mitchell's left arm was severed by a highway divider. After her doctor's attempts to reattach the arm proved unsuccessful, she was outfitted with a standard prosthetic arm.

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How to Navigate the Cold and Flu Aisle

When it comes to choosing the right medicine for your cold and flu symptoms,
a little knowledge can go a long way.

From ABC News:

Doctors Explain What Works, What's Hype, and How to Keep Tiny Tots Safe and Healthy

The moment when people want cold medicines the most, when their heads are stuffed, aching and dizzy, is exactly the worst time to try and decipher what to buy from the rows of cold medicine boxes with small print.

Instead of grabbing the first thing you remember from last night's commercial and ending up unsatisfied or with side effects, you can draw on recommendations from physicians and pediatricians on how to navigate the cold and flu aisle.

"I know this is a chore for patients, and it makes it much more complicated ... but whatever you're taking, make sure you put them all side-by-side and make sure that the ingredients don't overlap," said Dr. Vincenza Snow, director of clinical programs and quality of care at the American College of Physicians.

With lines of symptom-fighting drugs in combinations that could rival a fast-food restaurant menu, Snow said patients often get confused by what to choose. However, many of the over-the-counter cold medicines have the same active ingredients.

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U.K. Bandwidth Problems On The Horizon

'Tough Choices' For UK Broadband -- BBC News (Technology)

The cost of taking fibre-based broadband to every UK home could top £28.8bn, says a report.

Compiled by the government's broadband advisory group, the report details the cost of the different ways to wire the UK for next generation broadband.

Another option, to take the fibres to street-level boxes, would only cost £5.1bn, it said.

Big differences in the cost of updating urban and rural net access will pose difficult choices, says the report.

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Google Reigns As Most Powerful 10-Year-Old

Google Campus

From ABC News:

When Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded Google Inc. on Sept. 7, 1998, they had little more than their ingenuity, four computers and an investor's $100,000 bet on their belief that an Internet search engine could change the world.

It sounded preposterous 10 years ago, but look now: Google draws upon a gargantuan computer network, nearly 20,000 employees and a $150 billion market value to redefine media, marketing and technology.

Perhaps Google's biggest test in the next decade will be finding a way to pursue its seemingly boundless ambitions without triggering a backlash that derails the company.

"You can't do some of the things that they are trying to do without eventually facing some challenges from the government and your rivals," said Danny Sullivan, who has followed Google since its inception and is now editor-in-chief of SearchEngineLand.

Google's expanding control over the flow of Internet traffic and advertising already is raising monopoly concerns.

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Global Warming Trends

Scientists say permafrost blanketing the northern hemisphere contains more than twice the amount of carbon in the atmosphere, making it a potentially mammoth contributor to global climate change depending on how quickly it thaws. (Credit: iStockphoto/Oksana Perkins)

Bad Sign For Global Warming: Thawing Permafrost Holds
Vast Carbon Pool -- Science Daily

ScienceDaily (Sep. 7, 2008) — Permafrost blanketing the northern hemisphere contains more than twice the amount of carbon in the atmosphere, making it a potentially mammoth contributor to global climate change depending on how quickly it thaws.

So concludes a group of nearly two dozen scientists in a paper appearing this week in the journal Bioscience. The lead author is Ted Schuur, an associate professor of ecology at the University of Florida.

Previous studies by Schuur and his colleagues elsewhere have estimated the carbon contained in permafrost in northeast Siberia. The new research expands that estimate to the rest of the permafrost-covered northern latitudes of Russia, Europe, Greenland and North America. The estimated 1,672 billion metric tons of carbon locked up in the permafrost is more than double the 780 billion tons in the atmosphere today.

"It's bigger than we thought," Schuur said.

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Warmth Opens Arctic Routes, Scientists Say

From International Herald Tribune:

Leading ice specialists in Europe and the United States have agreed for the first time that a ring of navigable waters has opened all around the fringes of the cap of sea ice drifting on the warming Arctic Ocean.

By many accounts, this is the first time in at least half a century, if not longer, that the Northwest Passage over North America and the Northern Sea Route over Europe and Asia have been open simultaneously.

While currents and winds play a role, specialists say, the expanding open water in the far north provides the latest evidence that the Arctic Ocean, long a frozen region hostile to all but nuclear submariners and seal hunters, is transforming during the summers into more of an open ocean.

Global warming from the continuing buildup of human-generated greenhouse gases is almost certainly contributing to the ice retreats, many Arctic specialists now agree, although they hold a variety of views on how much of the recent big ice retreats is caused by human activity.

Last month, news reports said that satellites showed navigable waters through both fabled Arctic shipping routes.

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Deep Space Probe Completes Asteroid Flyby

From CBS News:

(AP) The Rosetta deep space probe successfully passed close to an asteroid 250 million miles from Earth, the European Space Agency said Friday night.

In a mission that may bring man closer to solving the mystery of the solar system's birth, the craft completed its flyby of the Steins asteroid, also known as Asteroid 2867 - now in the asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter - at around 3:15 p.m. EDT.

As planned, the spacecraft's signal was lost for about 90 minutes as engineers turned it away from the sun and because the craft was moving too fast for its antennas to transmit.

The resumption of the craft's signal transmission was greeted with cheers from ESA engineers and technicians.

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For Sale: Moon And Mars

If you lived here, you could sell real estate, according to one legal analysis. NASA’s Spirit rover, the current occupant and photographer here in Mars’ Gusev Crater, has not tried subdividing it. (NASA)

From The New York Times Science Blog:

Would you like to buy some real estate on Mars or the Moon?

No, this would not be the equivalent of buying the Brooklyn Bridge, at least according to a review of legal precedents and treaties published in the Journal of Air Law and Commerce (.pdf). The authors, Alan Wasser and Douglas Jobe of the Space Settlement Institute, conclude that the international Outer Space Treaty prohibits nations from claiming sovereignty over the Moon or Mars, it does not preclude private land claims, and they point to legal precedents establishing the necessary condition for anyone making a land claim: living there.

Now, this might seem like a mere academic exercise for lawyers, given the current shortage of people ready to settle down on the Moon or Mars. But Mr. Wasser and Mr. Jobes argue that a formal recognition of the right to claim Alaska-sized chunks of land is the fastest and most practical way to promote extraterrestrial colonies.

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Why The Early Earth Didn't Freeze Solid

From FOX News:

Early in Earth's history, our solar system was a much different place.

When the sun was very young, it was faint and provided little heat for the Earth. However, even in its chilly beginnings, the surface of the Earth was ice-free.

For years, scientists have proposed theories for this "faint young sun problem."

Most of these theories are based on the idea that the early Earth must have had extremely high amounts of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere in order to warm the planet.

According to a team of German scientists, geological evidence of atmospheric CO2 seems to indicate that levels were "far too low to keep the surface from freezing."

However, their new study may provide a new answer to the problem.

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Strange New Comet Explains Old Mystery

This chart shows the orbital paths (looking along the plane of the solar system) for the comet 2008 KV42 as well as other objects in the outer solar system.

Why Does Halley’s Comet Orbit Backwards? New Find Hints
At The Reason -- MSNBC

Halley's Comet, which lights up Earth's sky every 75 years with its glowing tail, is a bit of a scientific mystery.

So far, theories have been at a loss to explain how it acquired its extremely unusual backwards orbit — but the recent discovery of another odd comet orbiting farther out in the solar system may shed light on Halley's origins.

The newly discovered comet, 2008 KV42, circles the sun at a tilt of 104 degrees compared to the main plane in which most of the planets and asteroids travel. The newfound oddball also orbits in reverse compared to almost everything else. Scientists think it might represent an intermediate point between comets like Halley's and their progenitors in the far and totally uncharted reaches of the solar system.

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10 Species You Can Kiss Goodbye

Sumatran Rhinoceros

From Live Science:

Think the polar bear has it bad? Here are 10 critters who are even worse off than our favorite threatened Arctic resident. Listed on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's (IUCN) Red List as critically endangered, meaning they face an extremely high risk of extinction in the immediate future, these animals may not live to see the end of the next decade without the a similar effort of human intervention that brought them to the brink in the first place.

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Where Have Your Distant Relatives Lived In The World

Putting You On The Map: The Website That Pinpoints Where Your Name Is In The World -- The Independent

It Is a question that not even Google can answer: where in the world are all the other people with my name?

It sounds impossible, but it can now be answered thanks to a remarkable new website launched yesterday, which enables the names of most people in the English-speaking world, and a sizeable chunk of the rest of it, to be tracked to the places they live.

Set up by geographers at University College London (UCL), the site, www.publicprofiler.org/worldnames, will provide a remarkable tool for tracing family history and also a powerful aid for governments to keep track of intra-national and international migrations.

The database behind the site holds 300 million names of people in 26 countries, representing a population of about a billion, or nearly a sixth of the world.

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Update: The Official Site World Names is here.

Hanna-Ike-Josephine Storm Trio Isn't An Anomaly

Hurricanes form through an exchange of warm, humid air and cold,
unstable air between the upper and lower atmosphere.

From The L.A. Times

Global warming can't be blamed for the trifecta -- headed toward the Southeast U.S. -- meteorologists say. It's just 'peak season in an active hurricane cycle.'

Despite the prospect of three major tropical storms heading toward the Southeastern United States, meteorologists say that the conga-line assault is not particularly unusual in the stormy history of the region.

"We're in peak season in an active hurricane cycle, and this is one of the results of that," said Dennis Feltgen, a meteorologist and public affairs officer with the National Hurricane Center in Miami.

"We've had incidents where four or five storms have been stacked up."

The first of the storms, Hanna, was expected to reach the Carolina coast late Friday or early today with sustained winds of 65 mph, according to the National Weather Service.

Hurricane Ike was on a path to reach southern Florida early next week, and Tropical Storm Josephine was on deck between the western coast of Africa and the Caribbean.

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How Did Life on Earth Get Started?

From U.S. News And World Report:

On an arid outcropping of basalt in northwestern Australia, some of the oldest rocks on Earth lie exposed to the fierce sun. Formed at the bottom of an ancient ocean, this volcanic material shelters what one scientist calls the "oldest robust evidence" of life. At a scientific meeting at Rockefeller University in May, Roger Buick of the University of Washington said that the 3.5 billion-year-old rocks hold traces of carbon that once made up living organisms.

Even before Buick's discovery, ample evidence indicated that life on Earth began while our 4.5 billion-year-old planet was very young. Simple organisms certainly flourished between 2 billion and 3 billion years ago, and claims of older evidence of life have periodically surfaced. But none have been universally embraced, and Buick's claim is so new that other scientists haven't fully reviewed it.

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The Incredible Journey Taken By Our Genes

(Click To Enlarge)

From The Guardian:

Project maps humanity's voyage out of Africa to new continents and domination of the world

Sixty thousand years ago, a small group of African men and women took to the Red Sea in tiny boats and crossed the Mandab Strait to Asia. Their journey - of less than 20 miles - marked the moment Homo sapiens left its home continent.

The motive for our ancestors' African exodus is not known, though scientists suspect food shortages, triggered by climate change, were involved. However, its impact cannot be overestimated. Two thousand generations later, descendants of these African emigres have settled our entire planet, wiped out all other hominids including the Neanderthals and have reached a population of 6.5 billion.

Now scientists are completing a massive study of DNA samples from a quarter of a million volunteers in different continents in order to create the most precise map yet of mankind's great diaspora. Last week, in Tallinn, Estonia, they outlined their most recent results. 'As the ultimate ancestor begat son, who begat son and so on, they picked up mutations in their DNA that we can now pinpoint by gene analysis,' said project leader Dr Spencer Wells. 'When we look at these markers' distributions we can see how our ancestors moved about.'

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How Pollution In Asia Affects Everyone

Asia Pollution May Boost U.S. Temperatures -- CNN

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Smog, soot and other particles like the kind often seen hanging over Beijing add to global warming and may raise summer temperatures in the American heartland by three degrees in about 50 years, says a new federal science report released Thursday.

These overlooked, shorter-term pollutants -- mostly from burning wood and kerosene and from driving trucks and cars -- cause more localized warming than once thought, the authors of the report say.

They contend there should be a greater effort to attack this type of pollution for faster results.

For decades, scientists have concentrated on carbon dioxide, the most damaging greenhouse gas because it lingers in the atmosphere for decades. Past studies have barely paid attention to global warming pollution that stays in the air merely for days.

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Understanding Memory

For The Brain, Remembering Is Like Reliving -- New York Times

Scientists have for the first time recorded individual brain cells in the act of summoning a spontaneous memory, revealing not only where a remembered experience is registered but also, in part, how the brain is able to recreate it.

The recordings, taken from the brains of epilepsy patients being prepared for surgery, demonstrate that these spontaneous memories reside in some of the same neurons that fired most furiously when the recalled event had been experienced. Researchers had long theorized as much but until now had only indirect evidence.

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How Far North Can You Grow Vegetables?

Amanda Joynt waters her garden in an old hockey arena converted to a greenhouse for growing vegetables 124 miles north of the Arctic Circle in Inuvik, Northwest Territories. The half-pipe shaped facility is North America's northern-most commercial greenhouse, and a virtual necessity for anyone interested in eating a fresh vegetable in Inuvik that has not been shipped in from a warmer climate.

Raising Vegetables Above The Arctic Circle -- MSNBC

Greenhouse is a necessity for anyone interested in eating fresh vegetables

INUVIK, Northwest Territories - Amanda Joynt reached down and picked a fresh tomato from the vine. That's no small feat when you are living 120 miles above the Arctic Circle in Canada's Far North.

Joynt, a resident of Inuvik is a member of the town's community greenhouse, a former ice hockey arena that has been converted into an oasis of vegetables and flowers on the permafrost.

The building, shaped like a half-pipe, is North America's northernmost commercial greenhouse, and all but a necessity for anyone interested in eating a fresh vegetable in Inuvik that has not been shipped in from a warmer climate — at a startlingly high cost.

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New Fingerprint Method Could Unlock Cold Cases

A woman gives her fingerprints to join a petition in a file photo. (Alessandro Bianchi/Reuters)

From Yahoo News/Reuters

LONDON (Reuters) - It's a discovery that would make even Sherlock Holmes proud. British scientists have developed a new crime-fighting technique that allows police to lift fingerprints from bullets even if a criminal has wiped down a shell casing.

Authorities in Britain and the United States used the method to re-open three cold cases, including a U.S. double murder that police are now optimistic of solving, said John Bond, the physicist who developed the technique.

"In one case there was enough evidence that could lead to an identification of an offender," said Bond, a researcher at the University of Leicester and consultant at Northamptonshire Police in Britain.

The conventional method of taking fingerprints has been around for more than 100 years and involves creating a chemical reaction with the sweat left behind on an object to produce an image police can use.

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The Big Question: Is Our Understanding Of The Universe About To Be Transformed?

(Click to Enlarge)

From The Independent:

Why are we asking this now?

Next Wednesday the biggest machine and international scientific experiment ever built will be switched on. Called the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), it is a giant $10bn "atom smasher" that has been constructed at the European centre for nuclear research (Cern) in Geneva.

It consists of an underground circular tunnel 27 kilometres in circumference, which is about the size of the Circle Line on the London Underground. At various points along the tunnel, four massive instruments have been positioned to act as sub-atomic microscopes for analysing the extremely high-energy collisions that will occur between two opposing beams of protons, the atomic nuclei of hydrogen atoms. The aim of the experiment is to understand the fundamental forces of nature and the sub-atomic particles that compose all matter in the Universe.

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Farming In The Sky

From Popsci.com

Agriculture is broken. Traditional techniques use too much energy and produce too little food for our growing planet. One fix: skyscrapers filled with robotically tended hydroponic crops and lab-grown meat

By 2025, the world’s population will swell from 6.6 billion to 8 billion people. Climate simulations predict sustained drought for the American Midwest and giant swathes of farmland in Africa and Asia. Is mathematician Thomas Malthus’s 200-year-old prediction, that human growth will one day outpace agriculture, finally coming to pass? Advances in farming technology have kept us fed so far, but the planet’s resources are tapped.

The choice is clear—rethink how we grow food, or starve. Environmental scientist Dickson Despommier of Columbia University and other scientists propose a radical solution: Transplant farms into city skyscrapers. These towers would use soil-free hydroponic farming to slash demand for energy (they’ll be powered by a process that converts sewage into electricity) while producing more food. Farming skyward would also free up farmland for trees, which would help remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Even better, vertical farms would grow food near where it would be eaten, thus cutting not only the cost but the emissions of transportation. If you include emissions from the oil burned to cultivate and ship crops and livestock in addition to, yes, methane from farm-animal flatulence, agriculture churns out nearly 14 percent of the world’s greenhouse-gas emissions.

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Google Is Turning 10 This Sunday -- Summary Of News Articles

Whither Google As It Turns Ten? -- CBS Science News

It Grew Exponentially From Startup To Superstar And Part Of Our Culture, But What's Ahead?

(CBS) It wasn't long ago that we weren't able to "Google" people, places and things.

But, observes CBS News Science and Technology Correspondent Daniel Sieberg, in just ten years, Google has grown exponentially from garage startup to Web juggernaut -- and a verb as well as a noun!

As Google marks its tenth anniversary this weekend, it's become "part of culture, much like Xerox," points out John Battelle, who wrote a best-seller about the rise of Google called "The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture."

He notes that the verb "google" quickly became synonymous with speedy learning on virtually every subject.

"Nearly anything and everything to get smart on any topic exists on the Web," says Battelle, "and Google does a good job of organizing it."

"Good," remarks Sieberg, "may be an understatement." These days, more people use Google than all other search engines combined.

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More News On Google's 10th Birthday

Google at Age 10 -- New York Times
Ten tomorrow! Google celebrates birthday with plan to sink Microsoft -- Guardian
Google: 10 years from now -- The Guardian
Google reigns as world’s most powerful 10-year-old -- Boston Herald
Google Hits Double Digits -- Forbes
Google Turns 10 -- Slashdot
Search Party -- Search Party
Google turns 10: A look back -- Fortune
20 things you may not know about Google -- Daily News
Google reigns as world's most powerful 10-year-old -- AP
Google: Happy Tenth Anniversary--Now What? -- CNBC
At 10-Year Mark, Google's Glossy Facade Shows Cracks -- PC World
Google 10th birthday timeline -- Webuser
Google timeline: a 10 year anniversary -- The Guardian

Watching TV Shows And Videos On The Web -- A Doubling Of Traffic In Two Years

Viewers Stampede To Online TV -- Tech News World

Online viewing of video has doubled over the past two years, according to a study by The Conference Board and TNS. More network content has been making its way onto video-oriented sites, fueling the trend. Experts expect it to continue.

In the last two years, American households that use the Internet have doubled their online television viewing. Now, nearly 20 percent use the Internet to watch television broadcasts online, and no, it's not all on YouTube Latest News about YouTube.

Based on a survey of 10,000 households, The Conference Board and TNS report that 72 percent of online households have family members who log on for entertainment purposes on a daily basis -- but they're also logging on from multiple locations. Nearly 90 percent watch online broadcasts at home, 15 percent watch at work, and 6 percent watch from other locations.

"Most consumers are pressed for time and require flexibility in their daily schedules and TV viewing habits," noted Lynn Franco, director of The Conference Board Consumer Research Center.

"Being able to watch broadcasts on their own time and at their convenience are clearly reasons why we are seeing a greater number turning to the Internet," she said, "and it is the reason why we would expect to see this trend continue."

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More News On Online Viewing

Who Needs a TV? Web Video Viewing Doubles -- PC Magazine
Online TV Viewing Rising -- Information Week
US Internet-TV Viewing Doubles Since 2006 To Nearly 20% -- CNNMoney
Craving Convenience, Online TV Viewership Doubles -- Wired News

My Comment: I rarely watch TV now, and I am an old guy.

Study: People Without TVs Lean Toward Political Extremes

For FOX News:

For many Americans, the thought of life without TV is akin to forgoing food, shelter or, God forbid, the Internet.

But about 1 to 2 percent of Americans do abstain from the boob tube, and they might seem like strange bedfellows.

A recent study of those who live without found that about two-thirds fall into either the "crunchy granola set" or the "religious right, ultraconservative" camp, said researcher Marina Krcmar, a professor of communication at North Carolina's Wake Forest University.

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My Comment: My family did not get a TV until I was 17. Hmmmm ..... this news article now explains a lot about me.

Should Babies Be Put on a Sleep Schedule?

From Live Science:

We had only one house rule when my daughter was born — sleep when the baby sleeps.

After watching countless sleep-deprived new parents, we figured that the only way to manage the unpredictability of an infant's sleep pattern was to follow her lead. This meant we napped a lot during the day, and woke up several times a night, but in the end we all seemed to get enough sleep. And we managed to avoid the glazed over eyes of the sleep deprived most of the time. As one friend commented on our parenting style, "You just don’t look tired enough."

Our rather laissez-faire approach to infant sleep was, of course, radical compared to all the other new parents who were putting their babies on sleep schedules and cleaning the house rather than napping. Their approach, based on a belief that babies "should" be "trained" to sleep in long bouts, alone, and mostly at night, is the accepted Western norm.

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Carnival of Space - Universe from A to Z

Russian Space Station Mir

From Discovery News:

A is for Aliens and their apparent British invasion,

B is for Breakdown of political persuasion.

C is for Commercial, the new way to space,

D is for Dark Matter, an admittedly acquired taste.

E is for Energy that comes from deep within,

F is for Federation, an alliance of future space kin.

G is for Green, which apparently does exist in space,

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