Four Years Later, New Orleans' Green Makeover

A house under construction in the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans in the "Make It Right" program is designed to be extremely eco-friendly. Charlie Varley / Sipa

From Time Magazine:

After Hurricane Katrina flattened New Orleans exactly four years ago, on Aug. 29, 2005, the city emerged as an inadvertent symbol of global warming, the first American victim of climate change. Over 200,000 homes were destroyed during the Category 5 hurricane. But in the years since, the Crescent City has quietly embraced a new and unexpected role as a laboratory for green building. Sustainable development groups that range from the international nonprofit Global Green to earth-friendly celebrities like Brad Pitt descended on New Orleans, determined not just to build the city back, but to build it back green. "It's going to come back," says Matt Petersen, the president of Global Green USA. "But we want to build it better than it was before."

Read more ....

US Scientists Set To Reveal The True Colour Of Dinosaurs

From Independent:

A new technique that identifies the hue of ancient birds may help a Yale team with bigger beasts.

It is a question that has baffled the greatest scientific minds – and those of the average seven-year-old: what colour were dinosaurs?

Now a dramatic breakthrough in fossil examination has sparked a race to discover an answer that may satisfy the scientific community as well as anxious crayon-wielders. A research team at Yale University believes it has established a technique that can identify the colour of fossilised feathers and fur. Preliminary results suggest that the true colours of dinosaurs may soon be revealed.

Read more ....

In Vino Veritas

Photo: Insectaries are natural habitats for beneficial insects that control pests. The Benziger Family Winery’s main insectary is planted with more than 50 kinds of plants and flowers. Credit: Benziger Family Winery

From Technology Review:

Winemakers disappointed by organic methods have turned to biodynamics as the purest route to wine that's true to soil, grape, and climate.

For years the question in winemaking was how technology could make wine better. This was especially true if the wine was Californian. When California cabernet sauvignon bested the best of Bordeaux--in a legendary blind tasting, the "Judgment of Paris," convened by the English wine merchant Steven ­Spurrier--it was a moment of great national pride at the time of America's Bicentennial, and it was achieved in part because California winemakers had used technology in ways tradition-bound French winemakers would not. As California wine became respectable, Silicon Valley millionaires bought vineyards in Napa and Sonoma counties. California wine and tech soon enjoyed a happy marriage.

Read more ....

Tumors Feel The Deadly Sting Of Nanobees

Bee on a finger. Researchers have recently harnessed the toxin in bee venom to kill tumor cells. (Credit: iStockphoto/Tatiana Buzuleac)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Aug. 31, 2009) — When bees sting, they pump poison into their victims. Now the toxin in bee venom has been harnessed to kill tumor cells by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The researchers attached the major component of bee venom to nano-sized spheres that they call nanobees.

In mice, nanobees delivered the bee toxin melittin to tumors while protecting other tissues from the toxin's destructive power. The mice's tumors stopped growing or shrank. The nanobees' effectiveness against cancer in the mice is reported in advance online publication Aug. 10 in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.

Read more ....

What Makes A Psychopath? Answers Remain Elusive

Psychopathic behavior can take many forms, not all of it violent. But some common themes underlie the condition, with pieces of a brain's emotional machinery missing. Psychopaths often lack empathy, guilt, conscience or the ability to show remorse. Image credit: stockxpert

From Live Science:

As exaggerated as many popular depictions of psychopaths often are, many nevertheless do pose a genuine danger to others. So what makes psychopaths the way they are?

Scientists are now working toward uncovering the roots of this disorder in the brain. Their research could lead to ways to intervene against the disorder and hopefully prevent it from manifesting.

Read more ....

Banana Diseases Hit African Crops

From The BBC:

Food supplies in several African countries are under threat because two diseases are attacking bananas, food scientists have told the BBC.

Crops are being damaged from Angola through to Uganda - including many areas where bananas are a staple food.

Experts are urging farmers to use pesticides or change to a resistant variety of banana where possible.

Scientists have been meeting in Tanzania to decide how to tackle the diseases, which are spread by insects.

Read more ....

Find Out How You'll Die, In 4 Easy Online Steps

What Will Finally Do You In?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/44165698@N00/ / CC BY 2.0

From Popular Science:

A new website lets you figure out how you might die, by sorting death data by cause of death, sex, and age. For American males ages 20-29, the most common cause of death is accidents (40.2 percent of deaths), followed by homicide (17.5 percent), and suicide (11.7 percent). Urinary tract infections? 0.3 percent.

The Death Risk Rankings site was compiled by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, and seems to have about a zillion ways to organize the data. It's quite cumbersome to use, so I'm going to save you the effort.

Read more ....

Laser Tests Could Silence The Dentist's Drill

From New Scientist:

THE dentist's dreaded drill could become a medical relic thanks to laser tests which spot weaknesses in dental enamel in time to repair the surface before more drastic intervention is needed.

Dentists currently check for cavities with X-rays and metal probes, but these cannot detect weaknesses in the enamel while there is still a chance to repair it. David Wang, a graduate student at the University of Sydney in Australia, instead studied whether the propagation of sound waves through the enamel could provide an early warning (Optics Express, vol 17, p 15592).

Read more ....

Wikipedia To Color Code Untrustworthy Text

From Wired Science:

Starting this fall, you’ll have a new reason to trust the information you find on Wikipedia: An optional feature called “WikiTrust” will color code every word of the encyclopedia based on the reliability of its author and the length of time it has persisted on the page.

More than 60 million people visit the free, open-access encyclopedia each month, searching for knowledge on 12 million pages in 260 languages. But despite its popularity, Wikipedia has long suffered criticism from those who say it’s not reliable. Because anyone with an internet connection can contribute, the site is subject to vandalism, bias and misinformation. And edits are anonymous, so there’s no easy way to separate credible information from fake content created by vandals.

Read more ....

Space shuttle reaches space station for 9-day stay

The shuttle Discovery, docked to the International Space Station.
(Credit: NASA TV)

From Reuters:

*Three spacewalks planned during shuttle's visit

*Discovery astronaut Nicole Stott to join station crew

*Shuttle delivering more than 7 tons of gear for outpost

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., Aug 30 (Reuters) - U.S. space shuttle Discovery arrived at the International Space Station on Sunday with food, equipment and new lab gear for the orbital outpost.

After nearly two days of traveling following its launch late Friday night, Discovery reached the Space Station at 8:54 p.m. EDT (0054 GMT Monday) as it sailed 225 miles (362 km) over the Atlantic.

"The entire rendezvous and docking was smooth as silk," said NASA mission commentator Rob Navias.

Read more ....

Energy Saving Light Bulbs Offer Dim Future

Light Bulb Test Photo: JULIAN SIMMONDS

From The Telegraph:

Energy saving light bulbs are not as bright as their traditional counterparts and claims about the amount of light they produce are "exaggerated", the European Union has admitted.

Soon they will be the only kind of light bulb allowed, but now officials in Brussels have admitted that energy-saving bulbs are not as bright as the old-fashioned kind they are replacing.

From tomorrow a Europe-wide ban on traditional incandescent bulbs will begin to be rolled out, with a ban on 100W bulbs and old-style frosted or pearled bulbs.

Read more ....

Three Months From a Climate Summit, Agreement Far Off

Ice sculptures, made from glacial melt water, placed by Greenpeace at the Temple of Earth in Beijing, mark the start of the 100-day countdown to the United Nations Copenhagen Climate Summit and the launch of the Tck Tck Tck campaign. LU GUANG / GREENPEACE INTERNATIONAL / EPA

From Time Magazine:

If you happened on Friday morning to walk into the Temple of Earth in Beijing — the nearly 500-year-old monument where Chinese emperors once prayed for good harvests — you would have noticed a steady drip. The environmental group Greenpeace placed ice sculptures of 100 children — made of the glacial meltwater that feeds China's great rivers — inside the temple, to symbolize the risk that climate change and disappearing ice poses to the more than 1 billion people in Asia threatened by water shortages.

Read more ....

iPhones For The Blind

Blind Man with Touch Interface: courtesy of Sungkyunkwan University in South Korea

From Popular Science:

Quick, get out your iPhone. Unlock it and slide over to that game you've been playing when your boss isn't looking. Now mute it, put the phone to sleep, close your eyes, and try to do that again. Can you do it? Didn't think so.

There's not a simple way to use touchscreens when you can't see what you're doing, which means 10 million blind and low-vision Americans can't use this ubiquitous technology. But what if you could feel it? What if the "slide to unlock" key was an actual slide? Even better, what if you could have a Braille iPhone?

Read more ....

Aspirin Does More Harm Than Good In Healthy People: Research

Aspirin: The drug does more harm than good in healthy people,
British researchers have said Photo: GETTY

From The Telegraph:

Healthy people who take aspirin to prevent a heart attack are doing themselves more harm than good, researchers have said.

Millions of people - including a substantial number of the "worried well" - take a daily dose of the drug in the belief it will keep them healthy.

But at a conference for leading doctors, British scientists said they have found that for healthy people taking aspirin does not significantly reduce the risk of a heart attack.

Read more ....

White Europeans 'Only Evolved 5,500 Years Ago After Food Habits Changed'

Photo: People with pale skin like model Lily Cole may be descended from Europeans who dramatically changed their diets

From The Daily Mail:

People in England may have only developed pale skin within the last 5,500 years, according to new research.

Scientists believe that a sudden change in the diet around that time from hunter-gathering to farming may have led to a dramatic change in skin tone to make up for a lack of vitamin D.

Farmed food is lacking in vitamin D and while humans can produce it when exposed to the ultraviolet light in sunlight darker skin is far less efficient at it.

Read more ....

Social Media As A Paradigm Shift

Photosynthetic Viruses Keep World's Oxygen Levels Up

From New Scientist:

NEXT time you take in a lungful of oxygen, consider this: it was made possible in part by ocean viruses.

The viruses, which infect single-celled algae called cyanobacteria, are hyperefficient photosynthesisers thanks to a unique set of genes.

Previous work had shown that cyanophage viruses have some photosynthesis genes, apparently used to keep the host cyanobacteria on life support during the infection, which otherwise knocks out the cells' basic functions.

Read more ....

India Loses Moon Satellite Links

From The BBC:

All communication links with the only Indian satellite orbiting the Moon have been lost, India's space agency says.

Radio contact with the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft was lost abruptly early on Saturday, said India's Bangalore-based Space Research Organization (Isro).

The unmanned craft was launched last October in what was billed as a two-year mission of exploration.

The launch was regarded as a major step for India as it seeks to keep pace with other space-faring nations in Asia.

Following its launch from the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, it was hoped the robotic probe would orbit the Moon, compile a 3-D atlas of the lunar surface and map the distribution of elements and minerals.

Read more ....

Ancient Skeletons Could Help Solve Mystery Of Rare Disease

Ballyhanna graveyard site at Ballyshannon. Photo from Ask About Ireland

From Independent (Ireland):

TWO ancient skeletons with a rare genetic bone disease unearthed from a medieval Irish graveyard may hold key insights for medical experts.

An archaeologist believes the discovery of the remains -- afflicted by massive bone growths -- could help modern-day clinicians glean more information about that unusual debilitating condition.

There have only been 16 cases of the hereditary bone growth disorder, now known as multiple osteochondromas, identified in ancient remains worldwide. Four of these have been located in Ireland.

Read more ....

Star-Birth Myth 'Busted'

False-colour images of two galaxies, NGC 1566 (left) and NGC 6902 (right), showing their different proportions of very massive stars. Regions with massive O stars show up as white or pink, while less massive B stars appear in blue. NGC 1566 is much richer in O stars than is NGC 6902. The images combine observations of UV emission by NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer spacecraft and H-alpha observations made with the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) telescope in Chile. NGC 1566 is 68 million light years away in the southern constellation of Dorado. NGC 6902 is about 33 million light years away in the constellation Sagittarius. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/JHU)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Aug. 30, 2009) — An international team of researchers has debunked one of astronomy's long held beliefs about how stars are formed, using a set of galaxies found with CSIRO’s Parkes radio telescope.

When a cloud of interstellar gas collapses to form stars, the stars range from massive to minute.

Since the 1950s astronomers have thought that in a family of new-born stars the ratio of massive stars to lighter ones was always pretty much the same — for instance, that for every star 20 times more massive than the Sun or larger, you’d get 500 stars the mass of the Sun or less.

Read more ....