Robotic Exoskeletons: Suited For Superhuman Power

Photo: Software engineer Rex Jameson demonstrates the XOS suit designed to give Army soldiers a significant boost in strength and endurance. Raytheon Co.

From Christian Science Monitor:

Exoskeletons – or wearable robots – strengthen soldiers and mobilize the disabled.

The high-tech suits of “Iron Man” and “RoboCop” don’t seem so far off to Yoshiyuki Sankai. Since the third grade, this Japanese professor and inventor has been enchanted by Isaac Asimov’s story “I, Robot” and the idea that robots – or, in Mr. Sankai’s case, robotic suits – could help humans with everyday life.

In 2005, he unveiled several working prototypes of a mechanical, mind-controlled “exoskeleton” that could allow the disabled to walk. The suit – recently refined and now available for rent in Japan – resembles white soccer shinguards attached to each segment of the arms and legs and a fanny pack-like battery hooked around the waist.

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New Way of Detecting Exomoons Broadens Search For Extraterrestrial Life

The Forest Moon Of Endor via The Force.net

From Popular Science:

So far, the search for extraterrestrial life beyond our solar system has focused on finding Earth-like planets. And sure, planets are great, since we know at least one of them harbors life. But David Kipping of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics thinks that search might be a tad too narrow. In a new paper, Kipping described how current technology can be re-tasked to search for another life-bearing body: moons.

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Google Allows Publishers To Limit Free Content

From The Globe And Mail:

Google Inc. is allowing publishers of paid content to limit the number of free news articles accessed by people using its Internet search engine, a concession to an increasingly disgruntled media industry.

There has been mounting criticism of Google's practices from media publishers – most notably News Corp. chairman and chief executive Rupert Murdoch – that argue the company is profiting from online news pages.

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How Did Flowering Plants Evolve To Dominate Earth?

Colorful tulips and other spring flowers in the Keukenhof Gardens, the Netherlands. How did flowering plants come to dominate plant life on earth? (Credit: iStockphoto/Monika Lewandowska)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Dec. 1, 2009) — To Charles Darwin it was an 'abominable mystery' and it is a question which has continued to vex evolutionists to this day: when did flowering plants evolve and how did they come to dominate plant life on earth? A new study in Ecology Letters reveals the evolutionary trigger which led to early flowering plants gaining a major competitive advantage over rival species, leading to their subsequent boom and abundance.

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Big Freeze: Earth Could Plunge Into Sudden Ice Age

Topographic map of the Nordic Seas and Subpolar Basins, with schematic circulation of surface currents (solid curves) and deep currents (dashed curves) that form a portion of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (MOC). The color of the curves depicts their approximate temperatures. Map inset shows the boundaries of the Nordic Seas and Subpolar Basins used in the analysis of water volume. Credit: Jack Cook, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

From Live Science:

In the film, "The Day After Tomorrow," the world gets gripped in ice within the span of just a few weeks. Now research now suggests an eerily similar event might indeed have occurred in the past.

Looking ahead to the future, there is no reason why such a freeze shouldn't happen again — and in ironic fashion it could be precipitated if ongoing changes in climate force the Greenland ice sheet to suddenly melt, scientists say.

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Do Black Holes Build Their Own Galaxies?

From RedOrbit:

Which comes first, the supermassive black holes that frantically devour matter or the enormous galaxies where they reside? A brand new scenario has emerged from a recent set of outstanding observations of a black hole without a home: black holes may be “building” their own host galaxy. This could be the long-sought missing link to understanding why the masses of black holes are larger in galaxies that contain more stars.

The ‘chicken and egg’ question of whether a galaxy or its black hole comes first is one of the most debated subjects in astrophysics today,” says lead author David Elbaz. “Our study suggests that supermassive black holes can trigger the formation of stars, thus ‘building’ their own host galaxies. This link could also explain why galaxies hosting larger black holes have more stars.”

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The Claim: Exercise More During the Day, and You Will Sleep Better at Night

From The New York Times:

THE FACTS It has long been said that regular physical activity and better sleep go hand in hand. Burn more energy during the day, the thinking goes, and you will be more tired at night.

But only recently have scientists sought to find out precisely to what extent. One extensive study published this year looked for answers by having healthy children wear actigraphs — devices that measure movement — and then seeing whether more movement and activity during the day meant improved sleep at night. The results should be particularly enlightening to parents.

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What East Anglia's E-mails Really Tell Us About Climate Change

From Popular Mechanics:

PM guest analyst Peter Kelemen, a professor of geochemistry at Columbia University's Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, explains what stolen e-mails from climate scientists corresponding with East Anglia University tell us about global warming—and what they don't.

In the past two weeks, scientists like myself have been gripped by news of the theft and online release of more than a decade of e-mails from one of the world's leading centers for climate-change research, the Hadley Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at Britain's University of East Anglia. During these same weeks, world political leaders have been preparing for a climate summit in Copenhagen and a new study has indicated that a major ice sheet in eastern Antarctica, previously thought to be stable, is in fact losing mass. But those developments have been overshadowed by the stolen e-mails and what they may imply about how research into human-induced global warming is carried out.

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Seas Could Rise 1.4m, Warns Antarctic Climate Review

From New Scientist:

A review of climate change in Antarctica forecasts that by 2100 the world's seas will have risen to levels previously considered too extreme to be realistic.

The review, Antarctic Climate Change and the Environment (PDF), was compiled by 100 scientists associated with the international Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research. Using 20 of the most up-to-date models that take into account the complex behaviour of the ozone hole over Antarctica, as well as the most recent observations of ice loss, the review predicts that the area of sea ice around Antarctica could shrink by 33 per cent – 2.6 million square kilometres – by 2100, leading to a sea-level rise of 1.4 metres.

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Skunk (Marijuana) Linked To Huge Increase In Risk Of Psychotic Disease

Skunk worse than ordinary hash Photo: Getty

From The Telegraph:

People who smoke the highly potent form of cannabis known as skunk are almost seven times more likely to develop a psychotic illness than those who use the traditional strength drug, a new study shows for the first time.

The results are considered particularly worrying as skunk now accounts for around 80 per cent of the street market in cannabis in the United Kingdom.

Scientists at the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London made the discovery after studying admissions to hospital for psychotic illnesses such as schizophrenia, paranoia and serious depression.

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Tweet Victory For Twitter... The Most Used English Word

Twitter, which has celebrity fans such as Stephen Fry, has become
the most used word in the English-speaking world

From The Daily Mail:

It has become many celebrities' favourite way to share their thoughts, however mundane, with the world.

But now internet phenomenon Twitter has become the most popular word in the English language, according to researchers.

The microblogging website - which allows its 20million users including Stephen Fry and Demi Moore to transmit 140 character messages across the globe instantly - beat Barack Obama into second place in a survey of the most-used phrases this year.

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Google Wants To Stream TV, For A Fee

From FOX News:

YouTube, which is already trying out the movie rental business, wants to get into TV too.

Google's video site has been trying to convince the TV industry to let it stream individual shows for a fee, multiple sources tell me.

YouTube already lets users watch a smattering of TV shows for free, with advertising. Now it envisions something similar to what Apple and Amazon already offer: First-run shows, without commercials, for $1.99 an episode, available the day after they air on broadcast or cable.

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The Royal Society Puts Historic Papers Online

From BBC News:

One of the world's oldest scientific institutions is marking the start of its 350th year by putting 60 of its most memorable research papers online.

The Royal Society, founded in London in 1660, is making public manuscripts by figures like Sir Isaac Newton.

Benjamin Franklin's account of his risky kite-flying experiment is also available on the Trailblazing website.

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Birth Control Pill for Men? Scientists Find a Hormonal on-and-Off Switch For Male Fertility

Artist's rendering of swimming spermatozoa. (Credit: iStockphoto/David Marchal)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Nov. 30, 2009) — A new research report published in the December 2009 print issue of The FASEB Journal could one day give men similar type of control over their fertility that women have had since the 1960s. That's because scientists have found how and where androgenic hormones work in the testis to control normal sperm production and male fertility. This opens a promising avenue for the development of "the pill" for men.

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Bendable Antennas Could Reshape Electronics

The bendable antenna consists of liquid metal injected into tiny channels within the silicon elastomer. The antenna can be deformed and snap back to its original shape. Credit: Ju-Hee So, North Carolina State University

From Live Science:

Tiny antennas that can bend, twist and stretch, before snapping back to their original shapes, could some day find themselves in flexible electronics and equipment that needs to be rolled up before deployment.

The shape-shifting antennas are still in the lab and the researchers from North Carolina State University are not sure when the invention would hit the market.

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The Scientific Tragedy of Climategate

From Reason.com:

Can climate change science recover from the damage done by leaked emails?

Climategate. What a hot mess. Researchers at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia and their colleagues around the globe may have fiddled with historical climate data and possibly the peer review process to ensure that publicized temperature trends fit the narrative of man-made global warming—then they emailed each other about it. Now those emails and other documents have been splashed all over the Web. Revelations contained in the leaked emails are roiling the scientific community and the researchers may be in pretty serious trouble. But the real tragedy of the Climategate scandal is that a lack of confidence in climate data will seriously impair mankind's ability to assess and react properly to a potentially huge problem.

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Microsoft Windows 7 Problem 'Could Affect Millions'

Security experts have warned that millions of computer users could be affected by a software problem that causes Windows operating systems to crash Photo: EPA

From The Telegraph:

Microsoft said it is looking in to reports that some computers running Windows 7 crash as soon as the user logs on.

Users have been complaining on internet forums about the "black screen of death", which causes the screen of their Windows 7 machine to turn black and the computer to crash when a user logs on.

Microsoft confirmed that it was investigating the possibility that a security update, released on Thursday, could be the root of the problem.

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The Loneliness Of Three Degrees Of Separation

From New Scientist:

John Cacappio of the University of Chicago and his colleagues reckon that loneliness can spread through society like an infection.

Their study, published in this month's issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, draws on a large group of people living in a town in Massachusetts that had already been assigned as part of a heart health study.

This group of around 5,000 were given questionnaires to assess their loneliness every four years or so, enabling the researcher to track any "spread" in this gloomy emotion.

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Genetics Rather Than Stress To Blame For Grey Hair

From The Telegraph:

Women who find themselves going grey should blame their parents rather than their stressful lifestyles, research has found.

Scientists studied more than 200 identical and non-identical twins between the ages of 59 and 81. They found that there was little difference between the greyness of identical twin sisters, implying that their varying lifestyles or upbringing had little impact.

Among non-identical siblings that did have differing levels of grey hair, 90 per cent of cases could be attributed to differing genetic factors, researchers from Unilever, who conducted the research published it in US journal PLoS ONE, found.

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Windows 7 Users Facing 'Black Screens Of Death'

The Sugababes are fronting an advertising campaign for Microsoft's Windows 7. The operating system has been hit by a 'black screen of death'

From The Daily Mail:

Frustrated Windows 7 users are facing 'black screens of death' after logging on to their computers, Microsoft have confirmed.

The software giant said they were investigating a disabling glitch that seems to particularly affect its latest operating system.

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