Flying On A Wing And ... Paper

New York artist Klara Hobza and the Public Art Fund bring the New Millennium Paper Airplane Contest to Queens on November 1. (Photo from The Scientific American)

From Scientific American:

Paper airplane contest awards the flimsy fliers that are a cut above the rest

The centerpiece of classroom mischief will come into its own this weekend when amateur aviation engineers test the mettle of their paper planes at the non-for-profit Public Art Fund's New Millennium Paper Airplane Contest in New York City.

As many as 200 participants are expected to battle it out for such titles as the paper creation that flies the farthest, is the most beautiful—and even the one that puts in a performance deemed the most "spectacular failure." The rules are simple: paper must be 8.5 by 11 inches (21.6 by 28 centimeters) or smaller; cutting and gluing is okay, but stapling is not. Tiny planes folded from gum wrappers make the cut, as do graceful bird-inspired crafts, angular jets, and tiny mothlike fliers.

Competitors will be arranged in heats at the event, which is being held Saturday from 1 P.M. to 5 P.M. in the New York Hall of Science in Queens. Wannabe contenders who can't make it to NYC are invited to send their paper planes for designated proxies to fly. And, yes, the winners will get trophies.

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More Methane A Mystery

Methane Molecule (Image from Wikimedia)

From News 24:

Washington - Levels of climate-warming methane - a greenhouse gas 25 times as potent as carbon dioxide - rose abruptly in the earth's atmosphere last year, and scientists who reported the change don't know why it occurred.

Methane, the primary component of natural gas, has more than doubled in the atmosphere since pre-industrial times, but stayed largely stable over the last decade or so before rising in 2007, researchers said on Wednesday.

This stability led scientists to believe that the emissions of methane, from natural sources like cows, sheep and wetlands, as well as from human activities like coal and gas production, were balanced by the destruction of methane in the atmosphere.

But that balance was upset starting early last year, releasing millions of metric tonnes more methane into the air, the scientists wrote in the Geophysical Research Letters.

"The thing that's really surprising is that it's coming after this period of very level emissions," said Matthew Rigby of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

"The worry is that we just don't understand the methane cycle very well."

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Science Advice For The Next President

From The New York Times:

Nearly 180 organizations representing the interdependent arenas of science, academia and business are urging the next president to appoint a White House science adviser by Inauguration Day and give the position cabinet-level rank. In letters sent Thursday to Senator John McCain and Senator Barack Obama, the organizations said scientific and technical advice was needed now more than ever given the importance of the entwined issues of energy security and climate change, mounting issues and opportunities in medicine, and problems in science education and American innovation and competitiveness. The letters reflect broadening concern that the White House has not been sufficiently stressing science.

It is “essential that you be prepared to quickly appoint a science adviser who is a nationally respected leader with the appropriate scientific, management and policy skills necessary for this critically important role,” the letters said.

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Nielsen Finds Strong TV-Internet Usage Overlap

From MSNBC/Reuters:

Study is good news for companies who fear Net is siphoning viewers

LOS ANGELES - Nearly a third of all U.S. household Internet activity takes place while the user watches television, suggesting new and old media often share rather than compete for attention, the Nielsen Company said in a report on Friday.

In fact, the study found that heavy Internet users are among the most dedicated of TV viewers, spending more than 250 minutes a day in front of the tube, compared with the 220 minutes of television watched by people who never go online.

The findings would appear to be good news for broadcasters who worry the Internet is siphoning away viewers, and with them advertising dollars. It also helps explain the apparent paradox between rising TV viewership overall and the growing popularity of new media.

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Blame The Human Brain For Bad Calls In Tennis

A ball landing on the baseline is captured by the "CBS Mac-Cam" named in honor of John McEnroe, who complained about official calls. Photo from CBS

From The L.A. Times:

Researchers studying Wimbledon games find humans are hard-wired to misjudge balls when hit close to the line.

UC Davis scientists have confirmed what tennis great John McEnroe so colorfully alleged on the court: Wimbledon referees make bad calls when judging balls hit close to the line.

It's not a matter of incompetence, as McEnroe frequently asserted. Rather, the human brain is hard-wired to misread the true position of fast-moving objects, including tennis balls whizzing by at more than 100 mph.

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Earliest Known Human Had Neanderthal Qualities

This map shows the Kibish Formation site, where the fossils of the earliest modern human were found. The site is located in southwest Ethiopia. (From Discovery)

From Discovery:

Aug. 22, 2008 -- The world's first known modern human was a tall, thin individual -- probably male -- who lived around 200,000 years ago and resembled present-day Ethiopians, save for one important difference: He retained a few primitive characteristics associated with Neanderthals, according to a series of forthcoming studies conducted by multiple international research teams.

The extraordinary findings, which will soon be outlined in a special issue of the Journal of Human Evolution devoted to the first known Homo sapiens, also reveal information about the material culture of the first known people, their surroundings, possible lifestyle and, perhaps most startling, their probable neighbors -- Homo erectus.

"Omo I," as the researchers refer to the find, would probably have been considered healthy-looking and handsome by today's standards, despite the touch of Neanderthal.

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Anti-Cancer Beer Under Development

From Cosmos:

NEW YORK: American students have designed a genetically modified yeast that can ferment beer and produces the chemical resveratrol, known to offer some protection against developing cancer.

Resveratrol is a chemical found in high concentrations in grapes, berries, peanuts and pistachio nuts. It has received increasing attention since 1992, when researchers suggested that red wine containing large amounts of resveratrol might have cardiovascular health benefits.

Antioxidant effects

Mouse studies have shown that resveratrol has anti-inflammatory and antioxidant effects, and that it may stop several different stages of cancer cell development. While the benefits of resveratrol in humans remain unclear, it has become a popular health supplement.

The yeast which has been genetically modified to produce the chemical, currently contains unpalatable chemical markers, however, and is yet to be brewed into beer.

It is being developed for a student genetic engineering competition to be judged in Massachusetts, next week. Previous entries in the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition have included both bananas and bacterial cultures engineered to smell of mint.

The idea for the healthier beer, dubbed 'Biobeer', started out as a joke. "You could say that the inspiration for the project came from a student who really enjoys his beer," said Thomas Segall-Shapiro, a member of the team behind the project.

The team are mostly undergraduate students, based at Rice University in Houston, Texas, some of whom aren't yet old enough to legally drink alcohol in the U.S., where the limit is set at 21.

Segall-Shapiro, said that one problem with health supplements containing resveratrol is that many contain an oxidised form of the molecule, which is unlikely to be fully activated, and therefore effective, when consumed.

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My Comment: I will drink to that.

Mud Eruption 'Caused By Drilling'

Lusi has been erupting for two years, leaving 30,000 people homeless
(Photo from BBC News)

From The BBC News:

The eruption of the Lusi mud volcano in Indonesia was caused by drilling for oil and gas, a meeting of 74 leading geologists has concluded.

Lusi erupted in May 2006 and continues to spew out boiling mud, displacing around 30,000 people in East Java.

Drilling firm Lapindo Brantas denies a nearby well was the trigger, blaming an earthquake 280km (174 miles) away.

Around 10,000 families who have lost their homes are awaiting compensation, which could run as high as $70m (£43m).

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Some Math Stories

Big Primes, Small Numbers, Sarah Palin and the Financial Crisis -- ABC News

Mathematics Figures in Recent News Stories

This month's "Who's Counting" will be an assortment drawn from mathematically flavored stories in the news.

A 13-Million-Digit Prime Number

The first concerns a number that easily swamps even the billions and trillions cited in recent financial stories. We know a lot about the existence of millions of subprime mortgages, but little media attention has been devoted to the existence of a just-discovered 13-million digit prime number. (A prime number, recall, is one divisible only by itself and 1. The numbers 3, 19 and 37 are prime, whereas 6, 33 and 49 are not.)

Mathematicians at UCLA won the $100,000 prize offered by the Electronic Frontier Foundation for discovering this humongously large prime number. It is a Mersenne prime number, a prime number of the form 2^P-1, where P is also prime. In this case P = 43,112,609, and the 13-million digit number is 2^43,112,609 - 1.

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Amid Economic Crisis, Wind Power Spins More Slowly

In this file photo, a wind turbine is assembled at Energy Northwest's Nine Canyon Wind Project near Finley, Wash. (Jackie Johnston/AP Photo)

From ABC News Science:

Amid Economic Crisis, Wind Power Spins More Slowly.

On Michigan's "thumb," a broad peninsula whose gusts make it one of the best places in the U.S. to site a wind farm, Noble Environmental Power has erected 30 huge wind turbines -- 16 more will finish the job.

But the project was hit by a financial gale last month when key underwriter Lehman Brothers went bankrupt. With Lehman out, Noble was forced to sell in a hurry. Three more Lehman-financed wind-power projects in New York are also in doubt, according to published reports.

America's credit crisis is shaking up not only smaller alternative energy sectors like solar and geothermal, but also the largest renewable electricity sector -- wind power.

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The Good News and Bad News About MS

Multiple sclerosis attacks the myelin sheath that protects the nerve fiber.
(From How Stuff Works)

From Slate:

A miracle drug carries some serious risks.

Problem: Multiple sclerosis is a quite common and often terrible disease that most frequently attacks young adults—especially young women. There are two phases to MS—an early one and a late one. The early phase, in which the disease waxes and wanes, is caused when the body becomes allergic to its own tissues—specifically, white matter located in the brain and spinal cord. The inflammation caused by this allergy (which attacks the cells that form a protective layer surrounding the long, cablelike structures in nerve cells responsible for carrying electrical signals) causes the early symptoms (like visual disturbances or unsteadiness in walking) and primes the body for the second phase, in which irreversible damage is done to nerve cells, causing marked weakness, fatigue, loss of balance and coordination, bladder and bowel problems, and even changes in thinking and depression. There is a lot of evidence that if the early phase is managed in ways that decrease symptoms, the late phase, during which most of the irreversible damage happens, can be delayed and perhaps even prevented.

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Biologists Discover Motor Protein That Rewinds DNA

The enzyme HARP "rewinds" sections of the double-stranded DNA molecule that become unwound, like the tangled ribbons from a cassette tape in DNA "bubbles" that prevent critical genes from being expressed. (Credit: James Kadonaga, UCSD)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Nov. 2, 2008) — Two biologists at the University of California, San Diego have discovered the first of a new class of cellular motor proteins that “rewind” sections of the double-stranded DNA molecule that become unwound, like the tangled ribbons from a cassette tape, in “bubbles” that prevent critical genes from being expressed.

“When your DNA gets stuck in the unwound position, your cells are in big trouble, and in humans, that ultimately leads to death” said Jim Kadonaga, a professor of biology at UCSD who headed the study. “What we discovered is the enzyme that fixes this problem.”

The discovery represents the first time scientists have identified a motor protein specifically designed to prevent the accumulation of bubbles of unwound DNA, which occurs when DNA strands become improperly unwound in certain locations along the molecule.

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Magnetic Portals Connect Sun And Earth

An artist's concept of Earth's magnetic field connecting to the sun's -- a.k.a. a "flux transfer event" -- with a spacecraft on hand to measure particles and fields. (Credit: Image courtesy of Science@NASA)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Nov. 2, 2008) — During the time it takes you to read this article, something will happen high overhead that until recently many scientists didn't believe in. A magnetic portal will open, linking Earth to the sun 93 million miles away. Tons of high-energy particles may flow through the opening before it closes again, around the time you reach the end of the page.

"It's called a flux transfer event or 'FTE,'" says space physicist David Sibeck of the Goddard Space Flight Center. "Ten years ago I was pretty sure they didn't exist, but now the evidence is incontrovertible."

Indeed, today Sibeck is telling an international assembly of space physicists at the 2008 Plasma Workshop in Huntsville, Alabama, that FTEs are not just common, but possibly twice as common as anyone had ever imagined.

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India's Lunar Probe Sends Its First Pictures From Space

From World News/RIA Novosti:

NEW DELHI, November 1 (RIA Novosti) - NEW DELHI, November 1 (RIA Novosti) - India has received the first space photographs from its unmanned spacecraft on a mission to the Moon, the Indian Space Research Organization said on Saturday.

Chandrayaan-1 was launched into space by the Indian-built PSLV-C11 rocket on October 22, and is set to enter the Moon's orbit on November 8. Chandrayaan means "Moon Craft" in ancient Sanskrit.

On-board cameras took pictures of the Earth from distances of 9,000 km (5,594 miles) and 70,000 km (43,505 miles).

India's first lunar mission signifies the country's breakthrough into the club of space powers, making it the third Asian country after Japan and China to carry out a lunar flight.

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Men 'Better Than Women At Detecting Infidelity'

From The Independent:

Men are better at detecting infidelity than women but tend to suspect their female partners even when they are faithful, a study has found.

Scientists interviewed 203 heterosexual couples about their infidelities in confidential questionnaires and found that although men were more likely to have cheated on their wives or girlfriends, with 29 per cent admitting to at least one affair compared to 18.5 per cent of the women, they were also more likely to detect infidelity.

Women made correct inferences about their partner's infidelity about 80 per cent of the time but men scored significantly better – they were right about 94 per cent of the time, according to Paul Andrews of Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond.

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Neil Armstrong Donating His Papers To Purdue

From AP:

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – Former astronaut Neil Armstrong has agreed to donate personal papers dating from the start of his flight career to his alma mater, Purdue University.

Armstrong's papers, boxes of which have already begun arriving at Purdue, will be an inspiration for students and invaluable for researchers, said Sammie Morris, assistant professor of library science and head of Purdue Libraries' Archives and Special Collections.

"For researchers, it's going to be a boon. No one has been able to research these papers or study them," Morris said.

Purdue President France A. Cordova, who became NASA's first female chief scientist, plans to announce Armstrong's donation Saturday before the Purdue-Michigan football game.

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Hubble Back In Business: Pair Of Gravitationally Interacting Galaxies In Full View

Perfect "10" due to the chance alignment of two galaxies. The left-most galaxy, or the "one" in this image, is relatively undisturbed, apart from a smooth ring of starlight. It appears nearly edge-on to our line of sight. The right-most galaxy, the "zero" of the pair, exhibits a clumpy, blue ring of intense star formation. (Credit: NASA, ESA, and M. Livio (STScI))

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Nov. 1, 2008) — The Hubble Space Telescope is back in business with a snapshot of the fascinating galaxy pair Arp 147.

Just a couple of days after the orbiting observatory was brought back online, Hubble aimed its prime working camera, the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2), at a particularly intriguing target, a pair of gravitationally interacting galaxies called Arp 147.

The image demonstrated that the camera is working exactly as it was before going offline, thereby scoring a "perfect 10" both for performance and beauty.

And literally "10" for appearance too, due to the chance alignment of the two galaxies. The left-most galaxy, or the "one" in this image, is relatively undisturbed, apart from a smooth ring of starlight. It appears nearly edge-on to our line of sight. The right-most galaxy, the "zero" of the pair, exhibits a clumpy, blue ring of intense star formation.

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Dogs Can Read Emotion In Human Faces

From The Telegraph:

Dogs are the only animals that can read emotion in faces much like humans, cementing their position as man's best friend, claim scientists.

Research findings suggest that, like an understanding best friend, they can see at a glance if we are happy, sad, pleased or angry.

When humans look at a new face their eyes tend to wander left, falling on the right hand side of the person's face first.

This "left gaze bias" only occurs when we encounter faces and does not apply any other time, such as when inspecting animals or inanimate objects.

A possible reason for the tendency is that the right side of the human face is better at expressing emotional state.

Researchers at the University of Lincoln have now shown that pet dogs also exhibit "left gaze bias", but only when looking at human faces. No other animal has been known to display this behaviour before.

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Enceladus South Pole

From Science News:

The Cassini spacecraft has been surveying Saturn and its moons since 2004. On October 31, Cassini obtained high-resolution images of the southern hemisphere of Enceladus when it flew within 171 kilometers of the moon.

Enceladus is famous for the icy plumes it spews from “tiger stripes” — linear fractures at its south polar region. Two of the new images that NASA released on November 1 are close-ups of some of those fractures, while the third, shown here, is a portrait of the moon’s southern hemisphere.

Cassini passed much closer, within 25 km, of Enceladus on October 9, but during that encounter, the craft’s cameras weren’t taking pictures at closest approach. More details on the October 31 flyby will be available the week of November 3. — Ron Cowen
Credit: Space Science Institute, JPL/NASA

Once Improbable James Bond Villains Now Close To Real Thing, Spy Researcher Says

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Oct. 31, 2008) — Professor Richard J. Aldrich, Professor of International Security at University of Warwick, who has just been awarded a £447,000 grant from UK's Art and Humanities Research Council to examine 'Landscapes of Secrecy' says that the once improbable seeming villains in the Bond movies have become close to the real threats face faced by modern security services.

He says: "Throughout the Cold War, Bond's villains looked improbable, but now life imitates art. Indeed, in the early 1990s as the Cold War came to a sudden end, real MI6 officers worried about redundancy. Their boss, the real "M", Sir Colin McColl reassured them that the end of the Cold War would be followed by a Hot Peace. He was quite right. Within a few years they had joined with special forces to battle drug barons in South America and to track down war criminals in the former Yugoslavia."

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