Distant Stars Send Good Vibes

Illustration of a stellar global oscillation shaking the whole star interior and thus carrying information on it. Yellow refers to maximum temperature variations due to oscillations. Credit: Aarhus University/S. Frandsen

From Cosmos Magazine:

PARIS: French astronomers have measured vibrations from distant stars for the first time, a technical feat that could also help answer questions about climate change caused by solar activity here on Earth.

Using an orbital telescope called CoRoT, launched in December 2006 by the European Space Agency, the researchers analysed oscillations from three stars that result from nuclear fusion which shakes the stellar interior. They report the find today in the U.S. journal Science.

The stars measured are all between 1.2 and 1.4 times more massive than the Sun, and located between 100 and 200 light years away. The study revealed that all three are much hotter than the Sun and have vibrations around 50 per cent more fierce, though still far less than had been predicted.

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Goce Gravity Flight Slips To 2009

From The BBC:

Europe's gravity mission has been bumped to next year because of ongoing technical problems with its launcher.

The arrow-shaped Goce satellite will map tiny variations in the pull of gravity experienced across the world.

The information will give scientists a clearer insight into how the oceans move, and provide a universal reference to measure height anywhere on Earth.

But concerns about the reliability of its Russian rocket mean a lift-off is now unlikely before February.

It is a frustrating delay for the Gravity Field and Steady-State Ocean Circulation Explorer (Goce).

The satellite was already two years behind schedule when it was sent to the launch pad because engineers had to work through immense technical difficulties in building it.

The super-sleek spacecraft was due to go into orbit on a modified intercontinental ballistic missile, known at the Rockot, from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in north-west Russia in the spring.

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No Money, No Spacecraft, Russian Producer Warns

The Soyuz TMA-6 spacecraft leaves the international space station on Oct. 11, as seen through a station porthole. The craft consists of three modules: from left, the service module with solar arrays, the descent capsule and the spherical orbital module. (Photo from MSNBC)

From Space Daily:

Russia's spacecraft producer Energiya will not provide any more Soyuz vessels for trips to the International Space Station unless funds could urgently be found, Energiya's president and general constructor warned Friday.

"We have vessels and funding for them for the next two trips, but I do not know what will happen with expeditions after that," Vitaly Lopota told reporters as quoted by the RIA Novosti news agency.

"We have no funds to produce new Soyuz craft. Unless we are granted loans or advance payment in the next two or three weeks, we cannot be responsible for future Soyuz production," Lopota explained.

The Soyuz is Russia's workhorse spacecraft that has carried out more than 1,600 flights, despite glitches that have bedevilled recent landings of the Soyuz capsule.

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Science Of Speed: Building The Fastest Car In The World

Computer-generated image of the BLOODHOUND SSC (super sonic car). If the vehicle achieves its target of 1,000mph (Mach 1.4), it will mark the greatest incremental increase in the history of the World Land Speed Record. (Credit: BLOODHOUND SSC image by CURVENTA)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Oct. 24, 2008) — World class UK research is helping to build the fastest car in the world thanks to the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).

The BLOODHOUND SSC Project, led by Richard Noble OBE, is aiming to set a new world land speed record of a thousand miles per hour by 2011.

The challenge at the heart of the project is to create a car capable of 1,000mph – a car 30% faster than any car that has gone before.

An aerodynamics team at Swansea University – funded by EPSRC – is playing a vital role. Using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), the team has spent the last year creating the predictive airflow data that has shaped the car.

In time, the research could lead to better vehicle or aircraft design, improved fuel efficiencies, and even new medical techniques.

"From the nose to the tail, anything that has any kind of aerodynamic influence we are modelling," says researcher Dr. Ben Evans – who as a school boy watched the Thrust SSC record on TV.

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Searching For Intelligence In Our Genes

Photo from Scientific American

From Scientific American:

IQ is easy to measure and reflects something real. But scientists hunting among our genes for the factors that shape intelligence are discovering they are more elusive than expected.

* Researchers have powerful new technologies to probe genes and the brain, looking for the basis of intelligence differences among individuals.
* Their work is providing a new understanding of what intelligence is, while also revealing unanticipated complexity in the interplay between genes and environment.
* The more scientists learn about the role of genes in intelligence, the more mysterious it becomes, but the quest is still worth pursuing.

In Robert Plomin’s line of work, patience is essential. Plomin, a behavioral geneticist at the Institute of Psychiatry in London, wants to understand the nature of intelligence. As part of his research, he has been watching thousands of children grow up. Plomin asks the children questions such as “What do water and milk have in common?” and “In what direction does the sun set?” At first he and his colleagues quizzed the children in person or over the telephone. Today many of those children are in their early teens, and they take their tests on the Internet.

In one sense, the research has been a rousing success. The children who take the tests are all twins, and throughout the study identical twins have tended to get scores closer to each other than those of nonidentical twins, who in turn have closer scores than unrelated children. These results—along with similar ones from other studies—make clear to the scientists that genes have an important influence on how children score on intelligence tests.

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The Biological Clock's Incredible Influence Revealed

James Griffith, coordinator of Jonathan Arnold's lab, goes over data from the clock project. Credit: Andrew Tucker, University of Georgia

From Live Science:

This Behind the Scenes article was provided to LiveScience in partnership with the National Science Foundation.

It’s a sunny Thursday morning and two accomplished scientists are seated on either side of a non-descript table in a University of Georgia conference room talking about bread mold.

Bread mold? Nobody uses that term around here, though. In the lab, it’s Neurospora crassa. (Because of its long striations, the growing mold looks like a nerve system, so Neurospora literally means “nerve spore.”) Jonathan Arnold, a geneticist and Heinz-Bernd Schuttler, a computational physicist, are not explaining something as plebian as bread mold, though. They’re talking about biological clocks, those internal tickers that, among other things, tell all living things when to rest and when to awaken.

For years, researchers thought that the function of these clocks was relatively straightforward. Now, a new NSF-supported research thrust by the two scientists and their colleagues is showing that the number of genes in Neurospora under the control of the biological clock is dramatically higher than anyone ever suspected.

“We’re just now beginning to see why the clock is so far-reaching in effects on the organism,” says Arnold, whose excitement when discussing his latest work is palpable. The clock’s off-on abilities don’t just intrigue geneticists, either.

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Roots Of Voodoo: Why Sarkozy Is Getting Skewered

(Image from Live Science)

From Live Science:

A controversial voodoo doll is proving to be quite the pain in the side of French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

The doll, which features Sarkozy's likeness and is being sold in some French stores, comes with a set of pins and an instruction manual on how to inflict voodoo curses on him.

Sarzoky is now suing the producer of the doll, which he says is an affront to his reputation and a misuse of his personal image.

It is unlikely that the publisher or Sarkozy have thought much about voodoo's ancient roots during the doll fiasco, but the practice is in fact just one insignificant part of a complex belief system that makes up the mysterious religion, which is still practiced in many parts of Africa, Haiti, Jamaica and Louisiana, among others.

Vodoun, as the official religion is called by most of its practitioners, has little to do with the black magic, as its detractors suggest.

It does, however, have a lot to do with zombies.

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Top 10 Amazing Chemistry Videos

Wired Science has the videos. The link is HERE.

What It's Like To Work At Microsoft

Photo from The Seattle Times (GREG GILBERT / THE SEATTLE TIMES)

From Qbrundage:

Background

As a long-time Apple and UNIX user/programmer, I never aspired to work at Microsoft. (And I'm still a little surprised to be here.) I've never despised Microsoft like so many people seem to do — it's just that Microsoft products weren't a part of my world.

Then my wife got a job at Microsoft, so I needed to leave Caltech/JPL to work in Seattle. I didn't actually apply to Microsoft — a friend of ours who worked there circulated my résumé and Microsoft responded rapidly and set up a last-minute interview. Although I had five other offers, Microsoft made the best impression.

And so, here I am. I've been working at Microsoft since October, 1999 as a full-time Software Design Engineer. In that time, I've worked for three teams in two divisions, and had six or seven different managers. Four products I've worked on have shipped, two more are in beta, and I've also "consulted" for many other teams across the company, thereby influencing directly and indirectly a large number of Microsoft's products.

Between my experience and my wife's, I think I've gotten a pretty solid feel for what it's like to work in a product group at Microsoft.

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What It's Like To Work At Google

Google Campus in Mountain View (Photo from Panoramio)

10 Insights From 11 Months Of Working At Google
-- Occam's Razor

It will soon be a year of working at Google and milestones are always a good time for introspection.

I have a lot on my mind but there was one thing in particular that I wanted to share with you all:

What it is has been like working at Google.

Interesting, fun, surprising, insightful, inspiring, impactful, and more such words. This post shares that experience.

I went into Google with my own filters and expectations on what the experience would be like and what I would end up doing.

Looking back the reality has been different in so many ways, even for a jaded Silicon Valley veteran of layoffs and cool companies like myself.

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The Lightbulb Of The Future?

Cool video from ZDNet: The link is HERE.

Researchers Play Tune Recorded Before Edison

The audio historian David Giovannoni with a recently discovered phonautogram that is among the earliest sound recordings. (Image from The New York Times)

From The New York Times:

For more than a century, since he captured the spoken words “Mary had a little lamb” on a sheet of tinfoil, Thomas Edison has been considered the father of recorded sound. But researchers say they have unearthed a recording of the human voice, made by a little-known Frenchman, that predates Edison’s invention of the phonograph by nearly two decades.

The 10-second recording of a singer crooning the folk song “Au Clair de la Lune” was discovered earlier this month in an archive in Paris by a group of American audio historians. It was made, the researchers say, on April 9, 1860, on a phonautograph, a machine designed to record sounds visually, not to play them back. But the phonautograph recording, or phonautogram, was made playable — converted from squiggles on paper to sound — by scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif.

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Animals Are Smarter Than You Think.

(Photo from National Geographic)

Minds Of Their Own -- National Geographic

In 1977 Irene Pepperberg, a recent graduate of Harvard University, did something very bold. At a time when animals still were considered automatons, she set out to find what was on another creature's mind by talking to it. She brought a one-year-old African gray parrot she named Alex into her lab to teach him to reproduce the sounds of the English language. "I thought if he learned to communicate, I could ask him questions about how he sees the world."

When Pepperberg began her dialogue with Alex, who died last September at the age of 31, many scientists believed animals were incapable of any thought. They were simply machines, robots programmed to react to stimuli but lacking the ability to think or feel. Any pet owner would disagree. We see the love in our dogs' eyes and know that, of course, Spot has thoughts and emotions. But such claims remain highly controversial. Gut instinct is not science, and it is all too easy to project human thoughts and feelings onto another creature. How, then, does a scientist prove that an animal is capable of thinking—that it is able to acquire information about the world and act on it?

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Scientists Take Drugs To Boost Brain Power: Study

(Photo from Pet-Comfort)

From Breitbart/AFP:

Twenty percent of scientists admit to using performance-enhancing prescription drugs for non-medical reasons, according to a survey released Wednesday by Nature, Britain's top science journal.

The overwhelming majority of these med-taking brainiacs said they indulged in order to "improve concentration," and 60 percent said they did so on a daily or weekly basis.

The 1,427 respondents -- most of them in the United States -- completed an informal, online survey posted on the "Nature Network" Web forum, a discussion site for scientists operated by the Nature Publishing Group.

More than a third said that they would feel pressure to give their children such drugs if they knew other kids at school were also taking them.

"These are academics working in scientific institutions," Ruth Francis, who handles press relations for the group, told AFP.

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Depressed Astronauts Might Get Computerized Solace

Dartmouth psychologist Dr. Mark Hegel poses in his office with his laptop in Lebanon, N.H., Friday, Oct. 17, 2008. Hegel is working on a computer program, "The Virtual Space Station," that will guide astronauts through treatment for depression and other problems while in space. (AP Photo/Jim Cole)

From Myway:

BOSTON (AP) - Your work is dangerous and your co-workers rely on you to stay alive. But you can never get far from those colleagues. You can't see your family for months, even years. The food isn't great. And forget stepping out for some fresh air.

No wonder the adventure of space flight can also be stressful, isolating and depressing. So scientists are working on giving a computer the ability to offer some of the understanding guidance - if not all the warmth - of a human therapist, before psychological problems or interpersonal conflicts compromise a mission.

Clinical tests on the four-year, $1.74 million project for NASA, called the Virtual Space Station, are expected to begin in the Boston area by next month.

The new program is nothing like science fiction's infamous HAL, the onboard artificial intelligence that goes awry in "2001: A Space Odyssey." The Virtual Space Station's interaction between astronaut and computer is far less sophisticated and far more benevolent.

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Study: Humans Almost Became Extinct 70,000 Years Ago -- FOX News

From FOX News:

WASHINGTON — Human beings may have had a brush with extinction about 70,000 years ago, an extensive genetic study suggests.

The human population at that time had been gradually reduced to small isolated groups across eastern and southern Africa, apparently because of massive droughts lasting tens of thousands of years, according to an analysis released Thursday.

The report notes that a separate study by researchers at Stanford University estimated the number of early humans may have shrunk as low as 2,000 before numbers began to rapidly expand again in the period known as the Late Stone Age.

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Cure For The Common Cold?

Colds are caused by a virus and can occur year-round. The common cold generally involves a runny nose, nasal congestion, and sneezing. Other symptoms include sore throat, cough, and headache. A cold usually lasts about 7 days, with perhaps a few lingering symptoms such as a cough for another week. (Photo from Medline Plus)

Hope For Common Cold Treatment -- The Telegraph

Hopes for a treatment for common cold have been raised after scientists discovered how it causes symptoms such as sneezing and a runny nose.

The characteristic effects of a cold are not brought about directly by the virus but by its ability to turn the body's own defences against itself, scientists have found.

Up to half of common colds are caused by various strains of the human rhinovirus and new research has shown the bug triggers a domino effect where the body's own defences over-react causing the familiar symptoms.

The findings could result in treatments for common colds caused by rhinovirus which strike hundreds of thousands of people each year in the UK.

Current treatments only work on allievating the symptoms rather than tackling the cause of the cold.

A team at the University of Calgary, in Canada, took samples from the noses of 35 volunteers, 17 of whom had been infected with a rhinovirus.

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NASA unveils new lunar rover built for endurance

A photographer stands next to a new lunar rover vehicle that U.S. space agency NASA is testing in Black Point, Arizona, October 24, 2008. The Small Pressurized Rover Concept vehicle is designed to carry two astronauts without space suits, sitting in a pressurized compartment, when NASA returns to lunar exploration by 2020. The vehicle is being tested in a remote corner of Arizona with similar surface conditions to those found on the moon. It has a range of up to 625 miles (1,000 km). REUTERS/Tim Gaynor (UNITED STATES)

From Reuters:

BLACK POINT, Arizona (Reuters) - NASA unveiled a new lunar rover on Friday which aims to transform space exploration by allowing astronauts to roam large distances without cumbersome spacesuits when they return to the moon by 2020.

A team of scientists is testing the Small Pressurized Rover Concept vehicle -- which resembles a small, futuristic recreational vehicle mounted on six sets of wheels -- 12 in all -- in trials in a rocky, barren corner of northern Arizona, selected for its similarities to the surface of the moon.

"This is the next generation of lunar exploration," said Doug Craig, NASA program's manager, as an astronaut took the vehicle for a spin over a broad lava field framed by craggy mountains.

The battery powered rover travels at speeds of up to 6 mph. It is part of a range of systems and equipment being developed by the space agency for its planned return to the moon over the next decade.

NASA hopes to build a permanent manned base on the moon's surface as a prelude to subsequent exploration missions to Mars.

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The Physics of Whipped Cream

From NASA:

Let's do a little science experiment. If you have a can of whipped cream in the fridge, go get it out. Spray a generous dollop into a spoon and watch carefully.

Notice anything interesting? The whipped cream just did something rather puzzling. First it flowed smoothly out of the nozzle like a liquid would, and then, a moment later, it perched rigidly in the spoon as if it were solid. What made it change?

(While you're pondering this question, insert spoon into mouth, in the name of science.)

Whipped cream performs this rapid changing act because of a phenomenon called "shear thinning." When part of the foam is forced to slide or "shear" past the rest of the foam, the foam "thins." It becomes less like honey and more like water, allowing it to flow easily until the shearing stops.

Shear thinning occurs in many substances--e.g., ketchup, blood, motor oil, paint, liquid polymers such as molten plastic--and it is often crucial to how a substance is used. For instance, excessive shear thinning of motor oil is unwanted because it reduces the oil's ability to protect engines from wear, while shear thinning of paint allows it to flow smoothly from the brush but stay put on the wall. It also allows ketchup to flow from the bottle but not drip off your french fries.

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Internet Mysteries: How Much File Sharing Traffic Travels the Net? -- Update

Internet traffic an ordinary day visualised with Arc Map, a 3D software developed by Stephen G. Eick at Bell Laboratories-Lucent technologies.

From Wired:

How much of the traffic on the internet is peer-to-peer file trading?

Everyone seems to agree it represents a lot of the traffic, but the truth is no one knows (with the possible exception of the ISPs and backbone providers in the middle, and they aren't telling or sharing raw data).

One of the most recent reports on P2P traffic came from a traffic optimization firm called Ellacoya in June 2007. Their report said that http-based web traffic had overtaken peer-to-peer traffic on the net, thanks to streaming media sites like YouTube.

Ellacoya, since acquired by Arbor Networks for its traffic-shaping technology, pegged http traffic at 46 percent of the net's volume, with P2P traffic close by at 37 percent.The company says the data was based on about 1 million North American broadband subscribers.

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