Fifty Years Of Earth-Observation Satellites

Views such as this one are made possible by satellites orbiting the planet, a feat they have been performing for the past half-century. Although such satellites were initially put in place for military uses, most current ones are used to observe the Earth, and they have provided a wealth of information about the world. This image of an aurora was compiled from data collected in July 2000 by NASA’s Polar satellite, which ceased operation earlier in 2008. The data were recorded in ultraviolet light, as the event occurred during daylight hours. False color from blue to red corresponds to increasing magnetic activity.

From American Scientist:

Views from space have led to countless advances on the ground in both scientific knowledge and daily life

A half a century ago, the launch of Sputnik-1 saw the start of an era where we began to launch artificial satellites into orbit to tell us what we look like from above. Hundreds of Earth-observing satellites have followed, and this extensive remote sensing has provided both iconic views and unprecedented insights into our planet. Tatem, Goetz and Hay review the development of these satellites over the past 50 years, as well as the data they have produced, which has lead to a greater understanding of Earth's terrestrial, aquatic and atmospheric processes. They examine current trends and speculate on what the next 50 years of satellite remote sensing may bring.

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The Microchip's 50th Birthday Party

The first integrated circuit invented by Jack Kilby. Kilby won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2000 for his work.

Happy 50th Birthday: Microchip Celebrates Five
Decade Milestone -- Daily Mail

When Jack Kilby demonstrated the first working integrated circuit in Texas in 1958, he could have had no idea how his invention would change the world.

Now 50 years later, microchips are integral to modern-day life in devices as wide-ranging as computers to credit cards, cameras to cookers.

Kilby's design used a strip of germanium, rather than silicon, with one transister and other components glued on to a glass slide.

In July, the electrical engineer had not been allowed to go on holiday because he had only recently joined the company Texas Instruments. Kilby used the time to create his ground-breaking design, which tackled the problem of connecting large numbers of electronic components in circuits in a cost-effective way.

Jim Tully, vice president at the technology analyst Gartner said the microchip slashed the cost in producing electronics, which allowed the technology to spread rapidly through all areas of society.

'Integrated circuits are so woven into our lives that it would be hard to imagine a world without them,' Tully said.

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Eight Organisms That Make You Go 'Eww'

From MSNBC:

Skunk. The mere mention of the black and white mammal is enough to make people plug their noses. That's because these creatures are legendary for deterring predators with an oily, foul-smelling spray emitted from glands on either side of their anus. Eww. Some species can shoot the fetid substance more than ten feet and whatever it hits may forever carry the stench. As a defense mechanism, scientists say the stinky spray is quite effective: Most would-be skunk predators stay away unless they have nothing else to eat. Even humans are well trained to keep their distance.

When the skunk in this photo got its head stuck in a jar of salad dressing, a police officer cracked it off with a pellet gun fired from 40 feet away.

Click here for the other nine.

U.N. Agency Eyes Curbs On Internet Anonymity

From CNET News:

A United Nations agency is quietly drafting technical standards, proposed by the Chinese government, to define methods of tracing the original source of Internet communications and potentially curbing the ability of users to remain anonymous.

The U.S. National Security Agency is also participating in the "IP Traceback" drafting group, named Q6/17, which is meeting next week in Geneva to work on the traceback proposal. Members of Q6/17 have declined to release key documents, and meetings are closed to the public.

The potential for eroding Internet users' right to remain anonymous, which is protected by law in the United States and recognized in international law by groups such as the Council of Europe, has alarmed some technologists and privacy advocates. Also affected may be services such as the Tor anonymizing network.

"What's distressing is that it doesn't appear that there's been any real consideration of how this type of capability could be misused," said Marc Rotenberg, director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, D.C. "That's really a human rights concern."

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U.S. Makes 1st Antarctic Night Landing

From CBS News:

(AP) A U.S. Air Force pilot has landed a plane in Antarctica in the dark for the first time using night-vision goggles, a feat that could lead to more supply flights to scientific bases in the frozen continent during its dark winter months, officials said Friday.

The C-17 Globemaster cargo airplane landed in a driving snowstorm on the six-mile ice runway at the U.S. Antarctic research center at McMurdo Station, after months of practice runs by pilots using the goggles.

The Air Force plane took off from Christchurch, New Zealand, and flew nearly six hours before landing Thursday night. It returned to Christchurch early Friday.

Air Force Lt. Col. Jim McGann said the airplane's own lights - reflecting off of traffic cones - allowed it to land without electrical runway lights that are too hard to maintain in the frozen environment.

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Meat: Making Global Warming Worse

From Time Magazine:

Need another reason to feel guilty about feeding your children that Happy Meal — aside from the fat, the calories and that voice in your head asking why you can't be bothered to actually cook a well-balanced meal now and then? Rajendra Pachauri would like to offer you one. The head of the U.N.'s Nobel Prize–winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Pachauri on Monday urged people around the world to cut back on meat in order to combat climate change. "Give up meat for one day [per week] at least initially, and decrease it from there," Pachauri told Britain's Observer newspaper. "In terms of immediacy of action and the feasibility of bringing about reductions in a short period of time, it clearly is the most attractive opportunity." So, that addiction to pork and beef isn't just clogging your arteries; it's flame-broiling the earth, too.

By the numbers, Pachauri is absolutely right. In a 2006 report, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) concluded that worldwide livestock farming generates 18% of the planet's greenhouse gas emissions — by comparison, all the world's cars, trains, planes and boats account for a combined 13% of greenhouse gas emissions. Much of livestock's contribution to global warming come from deforestation, as the growing demand for meat results in trees being cut down to make space for pasture or farmland to grow animal feed. Livestock takes up a lot of space — nearly one-third of the earth's entire landmass. In Latin America, the FAO estimates that some 70% of former forest cover has been converted for grazing. Lost forest cover heats the planet, because trees absorb CO2 while they're alive — and when they're burned or cut down, the greenhouse gas is released back into the atmosphere.

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Russia May Build Own Particle-Colliding Machine

From RIA-Novosti:

MOSCOW, September 11 (RIA Novosti) - A day after the Large Hadron Collider was successfully switched on in Switzerland, a Russian scientist said Russia could build its own collider.

Viktor Matveev said that scientists around the world are currently considering a proposal by their Russian colleagues to build a new collider.

The idea was put forward by scientists from the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, who suggested that a new device be built in the Moscow Region.

He said that a delegation of international scientists had visited the proposed site and concluded that, "It is one of the best places in the world for construction of that kind."

Matveev also said that the idea for the collider "came from Russia," and that the world's first collider had been built by scientists in the West Siberian city of Novosibirsk.

He went on to say that the collider, which could be even more powerful than the European version, would boost Russian scientific progress and allow young researchers to take part in the projects to follow.

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Websites Shed Light On How Humans Value Fresh Ideas

From New Scientist:

Analysing the rise and fall of websites is the perfect way to shed light on the old debate over whether talent or experience matters most, say mathematicians.

The question crops up everywhere, from job interviews to presidential races, says Vwani Roychowdhury, but it's hard to examine the problem using hard figures.

However, the same way of thinking can be applied to websites, which also succeed or fail based on many millions of human decisions. In fact, the web may be one of the few places it is possible to quantify the balance between the two, say the researchers.

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With Hurricane Ike, Size Matters For Killer Storm Surge

From My Way/AP:

Hurricane Ike's gargantuan size - not its strength - will likely push an extra large storm surge inland in a region already prone to it, experts said Thursday.

Ike's giant girth means more water piling up on Texas and Louisiana coastal areas for a longer time, topped with bigger waves. So storm surge - the prime killer in hurricanes - will be far worse than a typical storm of Ike's strength, the National Hurricane Center said.

And because coastal waters in Texas and Louisiana are so shallow, storm surge is usually larger there than in other regions, according to storm experts. A 1900 hurricane following a similar track to Ike inundated Galveston Island, killing at least 8,000 people - America's deadliest storm.

"It's a good recipe for surge," said Benton McGee, supervisory hydrologist at the U.S. Geological Survey's storm surge center in Ruston, La. "We're already seeing water being piled up in the Gulf. On top of that you're going to have water forced into the bays along the coast."

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Sleek Probe To Map Earth’s Gravity

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 10, 2008) — The European Space Agency is launching a new satellite to map variations in the Earth’s gravity field with unprecedented accuracy. The satellite will give UK scientists vital information about ocean circulation and sea level change needed to improve climate forecast models.

The Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE) is the first of three Earth Explorer core missions in ESA’s Earth Observation Envelope Programme. Data from GOCE will allow scientists to create a detailed model of the Earth's gravity field, or geoid.

“GOCE will yield details of the Earth's gravity field to an accuracy and resolution that is simply unobtainable by existing terrestrial and space techniques,” says Professor Philip Moore from Newcastle University, who specialises in gravity research.

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Why Female Spiders Eat Their Mates

From MSNBC:

Small males are easier to catch and are more likely to be prey

In many spider species, females eat the males after sex. Studies have suggested various complex evolutionary reasons involving costs and benefits to the species, sperm competition and esoteric sexual selection schemes.

Turns out the motivation for this creepy cannibalism is much simpler.

It's all about size. If males are small, they're easier to catch and therefore more likely to be prey, say Shawn Wilder and Ann Rypstra from Miami University in Ohio. Big females eat their puny mates simply because a) they're hungry and b) they can.

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Converting Fibre Into Fuel Without Using Enzymes

From Fibre To Fuel In A Flash -- Nature

Chemists convert cellulose to potential biofuel without enzymes.
A genuine revolution in biofuels is currently hindered by the difficulty of converting the most recalcitrant parts of plants, primarily the cellulose of their fibres, into useful fuel. Two chemists in California now claim that it might be remarkably easy to do just that with little more than a strong acid to break down the cellulose.

Mark Mascal and Edward Nikitin of the University of California, Davis say their new process is the most efficient way yet described for converting cellulose into small, energy-rich organic molecules, using no more than basic textbook chemistry.

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1843 Stellar Eruption May Be New Type Of Star Explosion

An artist's conception of the fast blast wave from Eta Carinae's 1843 eruption, which today has caught up with a slow-moving shell ejected in a previous outburst about 1,000 years ago, producing a bright fireworks display that heats the older shell and makes it emit X-rays (orange). The well-known two-lobed "Homunculus" nebula, a slow-moving shell of gas and dust also produced in the 1843 eruption, is shown closer to the star, which is a hot blue supergiant. (Credit: Gemini Observatory artwork by Lynette Cook)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 11, 2008) — Eta Carinae, the galaxy's biggest, brightest and perhaps most studied star after the sun, has been keeping a secret: Its giant outbursts appear to be driven by an entirely new type of stellar explosion that is fainter than a typical supernova and does not destroy the star.

Reporting in the Sept. 11 issue of Nature, University of California, Berkeley, astronomer Nathan Smith proposes that Eta Carinae's historic 1843 outburst was, in fact, an explosion that produced a fast blast wave similar to, but less energetic than, a real supernova. This well-documented event in our own Milky Way Galaxy is probably related to a class of faint stellar explosions in other galaxies recognized in recent years by telescopes searching for extragalactic supernovae.

"There is a class of stellar explosions going off in other galaxies for which we still don't know the cause, but Eta Carinae is the prototype," said Smith, a UC Berkeley postdoctoral fellow.

Read more ....

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.

Read more ....

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.

Read more ....

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.

Read more ....

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.