Clump Of Dark Matter May Loom Near Solar System

This handout picture shows scientists launching a balloon from Williams Field in Antarctica in December 2005 that is carrying a scientific instrument that detected possible evidence of so-called dark matter in space. It spotted an unexpected amount of very high energy cosmic ray electrons coming from an unknown source within about 3,000 light years of the solar system -- relatively close in astronomical terms. One explanation is that the electrons may have been spawned as dark matter particles collided with one another, triggering their mutual annihilation. Scientists think perhaps 25 percent of the universe is made up of dark matter, which is invisible and poorly understood. (T. Gregory Guzik/Handout/Reuters)

From Reuters:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A balloon-borne instrument soaring high over Antarctica has found evidence of a possible large clump of mysterious so-called dark matter relatively close to our solar system, scientists said on Wednesday.

It detected an unexpected amount of very high energy cosmic ray electrons coming from an unknown source within about 3,000 light years of the solar system. A light-year is 6 trillion miles (10 trillion km), the distance light travels in a year.

Read more ....

'Oh Great': Astronaut Loses Tool Bag During Spacewalk

In this image from NASA TV, a tool kit bag, center, as seen through the helmet camera of astronaut Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper, floats away from the International Space Station after she lost hold of it during a procedure during a 6 1/2-hour scheduled space walk outside the space station, Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2008. (AP Photo/NASA TV)

From FOX News:

HOUSTON — A spacewalking astronaut accidentally let go of her tool bag Tuesday after a grease gun inside it exploded, and helplessly watched as the tote and everything inside floated away.

It was one of the largest items ever to be lost by a spacewalker, and occurred during an unprecedented attempt to clean and lube a gummed-up joint on a solar panel.

Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper was just starting to work on the joint when the mishap occurred.

She said her grease gun exploded, getting the dark gray stuff all over a camera and her gloves. While wiping off herself, the white, backpack-size bag slipped out of her grip, and she lost all her other tools.

"Oh, great," she mumbled.

Read more ....

More News On Space Shuttle Endeavor

Endeavour astronaut loses tools in space -- AFP
Lost tool bag forces changes to planned spacewalks -- AP
Astronaut loses tools during spacewalk -- The Guardian
When It's Lost in Space, It's Really Lost -- ABC News
Endeavor astronaut loses tools in space -- Space Daily
Lost tool bag forces changes to planned spacewalks -- My Way News

Indian Space Agency Isro To Roll Out A Rival To Google Earth

Bhuvan will use a network of satellites to create a high-resolution, bird's-eye view of India ? and later, possibly, the rest of the world
(NASA/GSFC/NOAA/USGS Reuters)

From Times Online:

Emboldened by its first mission to the Moon, India is to take on a target closer to Earth: Google.

The Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro), which is based in Bangalore, the Silicon Valley of the sub-continent, will roll-out a rival to Google Earth, the hugely popular online satellite imagery service, by the end of the month.

The project, dubbed Bhuvan (Sanskrit for Earth), will allow users to zoom into areas as small as 10 metres wide, compared to the 200 metre wide zoom limit on Google Earth.

Read more .....

Hi-Tech Weaponry Battles Piracy On The High Seas

This Saudi Arabian oil tanker, the Sirius Star, was captured by pirates on 16 November 2008, off the coast of Somalia (Image: Caters News / Rex Features)

From New Scientist:

SVEN ERIK PEDERSEN accelerated his 9900-tonne ship to full speed and swung the helm hard over - not the usual way to treat a luxury cruise liner, but then the captain was in an unusual situation. His vessel, the Seabourn Spirit, had just been hit by a rocket-propelled grenade. One of his crew had been wounded by shrapnel, 151 passengers were in danger, and heavily armed pirates in two fast motor boats were attempting to board his ship...

If you imagined that maritime piracy died out with Captain Kidd and the other seafaring scoundrels of the 18th century, the recent attack on the Seabourn Spirit should put you straight. And forget silly notions of wooden legs, treasure maps and grog. Modern-day pirates come equipped with supercharged speedboats, large-calibre weaponry and all the radio intercept technology they need to identify and locate valuable ocean-going booty.

Read more ....

British Doctors Help Perform World's First Transplant Of A Whole Organ Grown In Lab

Claudia Castillo underwent an operation to replace her windpipe with a bioengineered replacement after tuberculosis had left her with a collapsed lung (Photo from The Independent)

From The Telegraph:

British doctors have helped to perform the world's first transplant of a whole organ grown from stem cells, signalling a significant medical breakthrough.

Surgeons replaced the damaged windpipe of Claudia Castillo, a 30-year-old mother of two, with one created from stem cells grown in a laboratory at Bristol University.

Because the new windpipe was made from cells taken from Ms Castillo's own body, using a process called "tissue engineering", she has not needed powerful drugs to prevent her body rejecting the organ.

Read more ....

Update #1: The medical miracle -- The Independent

Update #2: Claudia Castillo gets windpipe tailor-made from her own stem cells -- Times Online

Seven (More) Gadgets Killed by the Cellphone

Image from Wired News

From Wired:

Calling a cellphone a mere phone seems a little silly these days. The little pocket wonders now do so much they are really handheld computers. With extras. The process of mashing one or more gadgets together in the same box used to be called convergence, but that approach quietly died as the mobile phone ate up any and every rival device.

So successful has this been that whole product categories have had the life choked out of their twitching bodies by the phone. The following list is an obituary to five of them, plus a look at the cellphone's next victim.

Read more ....

Update: Seven (More) Gadgets Killed by the Cellphone

New Evidence Surfaces Of David's Kingdom

From San Francisco Chronicle:

Khirbet Qeiyafa, Israel -- For 3,000 years, the 12-foot high walls of an ancient city have been clearly visible on a hill towering above the Valley of Elah where the Bible says David slew Goliath.

But no one has ever linked the ruins to the city mentioned in the First Book of Samuel's famous account of the legendary duel and the victory of the Israelites - until now. On Tuesday, Hebrew University archaeology Professor Yosef Garfinkel will present compelling evidence to scholars at Harvard University that he has found the 10th century biblical city of Sha'arayim, Hebrew for "Two Gates." Garfinkel, who made his startling discovery at the beginning of this month, will also discuss his findings at the American Schools of Oriental Research conference hosted by Boston University on Thursday.

Read more .....

Scientists Find Facial Scars Increase Attractiveness

From E! Science News:

Men with facial scars are more attractive to women seeking short-term relationships, scientists at the University of Liverpool have found. It was previously assumed that in Western cultures scarring was an unattractive facial feature and in non-Western cultures they were perceived as a sign of maturity and strength. Scientists at Liverpool and Stirling University, however, have found that Western women find scarring on men attractive and may associate it with health and bravery.

Researchers investigated how scarring might impact on mate choice for men and women seeking both long-term and short-term relationships. They found that women preferred men with facial scars for short-term relationships and equally preferred scarred and un-scarred faces for long-term relationships. Men, however, regarded women with and without facial scars as equally attractive for both types of relationship.

Read more ....

Prehistoric Family Values

Together in death. Genetic analysis suggests that a mother, a father, and their two boys were buried in the same grave. Credit: Photo courtesy of the National Academy of Sciences

From Science Magazine:

When Barack Obama moves into the White House in January, he'll bring his wife and children with him. The nuclear family is not only as American as apple pie but also the cultural norm in most societies across the world. New genetic and chemical analyses of 4600-year-old burials in Germany suggests that family togetherness has deep roots, going back at least as far the beginnings of agriculture in Europe.

Before humans settled down and began to farm, they lived as nomadic hunters and gatherers. Many anthropologists have assumed, based on observations of sometimes polygamous modern-day hunter-gatherers, that the basic social unit of early humans was the band or tribe rather than the family. Figuring out when the nuclear family became central to human social organization has been difficult. Archaeologists have dug up thousands of skeletons at early farming sites across the Near East and Europe, and many of them are buried together in ways that might suggest family ties.

Read more ....

Future Of The U.S. Space Program In Obama's Hands

UP IN THE AIR? Ares rockets, components of the Constellation program, are shown in this artist's conception. Given budgetary and manpower constraints, the future of Constellation, currently scheduled to begin service in 2015, may depend on the future of the space shuttle, which could be retired in 2010. NASA/MSFC

From Scientific American:

A decision must be made by the next chief executive soon on the space shuttle's fate, for starters

As the moments tick away before tonight's scheduled launch of the space shuttle Endeavour to the International Space Station (ISS), another countdown is underway: Only a handful of launches remain before the shuttle program's scheduled retirement in 2010. When President-elect Barack Obama takes office two months from now, he and his aides will need to decide quickly whether or not to hold to that date, a determination that will have major implications for the future of U.S. space exploration.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), Congress's investigative arm, has identified the shuttle's future as one of the most urgent issues facing the incoming Obama administration. "NASA has already begun the process of shutting down production and transitioning people, equipment and resources to new endeavors," GAO director of acquisition and sourcing management Cristina Chaplain says. She adds that the longer the decision is delayed, the more difficult it will be to keep operating the shuttle safely and cost-effectively. "Moreover, putting off a decision may hamper the transition itself and keep NASA from pursuing new space transportation development," Chaplain wrote in an e-mail.

Read more ....

Cheating The Angels

Whiskey barrels in the Jack Daniels destillery, Lynchburg, Tennessee.
(Photo from Wikimedia)

From Popsci:

A new plan is raising eyebrows in the conservative whisky industry

At the New York WhiskyFest this week, nobody wanted to talk much about technological innovations in the industry. Most of the whisky professionals I asked assured me that there was no such thing as innovation at their tradition-steeped distillery -- they were doing everything the same way it had been done for generations, thank you very much. Some distillers seemed put out that their companies had recently embraced such cutting-edge twentieth-century technology as labelling barrels with bar codes. The marketing side of the business is innovating to beat the band -- look for a new Irish whiskey called Feckin and a new rye called (rī)1 coming soon to bars near you -- but the production side remains defiantly old-fangled.

Read more ....

It's Unpacking Day For Astronauts At Space Station

The International Space Station's robot arm and an external antenna are seen in the foreground as the Space Shuttle Endeavour closes in on the orbital outpost for docking in this image from NASA TV November 16, 2008. (NASA TV/Reuters)

From International Herald Tribune:

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida: Astronauts hitched a giant shipping crate full of home improvement "goodies" to the international space station on Monday, a critical step for boosting the population in orbit.

It was the first major job for the crews of the linked space station and space shuttle Endeavour, and highlighted their first full day together.

"We're here to work," the space station's skipper, Mike Fincke, called down. "This is the can-do crew."

More than 14,000 pounds (6,350 kilograms)of gear was stuffed into the 21-foot (6 1/2 meter) container that flew up on Endeavour and was hoisted onto the space station. It held an extra toilet, refrigerator and kitchenette, exercise machine and sleeping compartments, and a new recycling system for converting urine into drinking water.

Read more ....

Gulf War Research Panel Finds 1 In 4 Veterans Suffers From Illness Caused By Toxic Exposure

From E! Science News:

At least one in four of the 697,000 U.S. veterans of the 1991 Gulf War suffer from Gulf War illness, a condition caused by exposure to toxic chemicals, including pesticides and a drug administered to protect troops against nerve gas, and no effective treatments have yet been found, a federal panel of scientific experts and veterans concludes in a landmark report released Monday. The Congressionally-mandated Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses presented the report today to Secretary of Veterans Affairs James Peake at VA headquarters in Washington.

Scientific staff support to the Committee is provided by the Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH). The full report is posted at: http://sph.bu.edu/insider/racreport

Read more ....

The Energy Debates: Wind Farms

Analysts estimate it would take at least 260,000 turbines, each 300 feet tall, to meet the United States' electricity needs. These turbines are in King City, Mo.
Credit: MU Cooperative Media Group, Steve Morse photo

From Live Science:

Editor's Note: "The Energy Debates" is a LiveScience series about the pros, cons, policy debates, myths and facts related to various alternative energy ideas. We invite you to join the debate by commenting directly on each article.

The Facts

Wind farms harness the wind's energy to generate electricity. Wind energy actually comes mainly from the sun. When solar energy heats up the atmosphere, hot air rises while cooler air swirls down to replace it. This movement results in wind.

Wind turbines possess massive rotors typically 160 to 300 feet (48 to 91 meters) in diameter. A wind turbine inland can generate 1.5 to 2.5 megawatts, while one located offshore amid mighty coastal winds could reach 5 megawatts, although constructing turbines in the water and keeping them up in the face of ocean waves and corrosive seawater presents challenges. Altogether, banks of turbines on a wind farm can produce anywhere from 100 to 800 megawatts.

Read more ....

How Eating Red Meat Can Spur Cancer Progression: New Mechanism Identified

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Nov. 14, 2008) — Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, led by Ajit Varki, M.D., have shown a new mechanism for how human consumption of red meat and milk products could contribute to the increased risk of cancerous tumors.

Their findings, which suggest that inflammation resulting from a molecule introduced through consumption of these foods could promote tumor growth, are published online this week in advance of print publication in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Read more ....

Once Greeted Warmly, Google Wears Out Welcome

Google's Street View mapping service is available in France, Italy and Spain, but privacy laws threaten its expansion elsewhere in Europe. Image From International Herald Tribune

From International Herald Tribune:

BERLIN: When Google began hiring in Zurich for its new engineering center in 2004, local officials welcomed the U.S. company with open arms. Google's arrival is still bearing fruit for Zurich: 450 employees, about 300 of them engineers, work in Google's seven-story complex in a converted brewery on the outskirts of the placid mountain metropolis.

But almost five years into its expansion into Europe - where it has a headquarters in Dublin, large facilities in Zurich and London and smaller centers in Denmark, Russia and Poland, among other countries - Google is beginning to bump up against a web of privacy laws that threaten its growth and the positive image it has cultivated as a company dedicated to doing good - its unofficial motto.

Read more ....

Dirty Brown Clouds Impact Glaciers, Agriculture And The Monsoon

Pollution in Bangkok. The cities of Bangkok, Beijing, Cairo, Dhaka, Karachi, Kolkata, Lagos, Mumbai, New Delhi, Seoul, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Tehran were found to have very high soot levels. (Credit: iStockphoto)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Nov. 16, 2008) — Cities from Beijing to New Delhi are getting darker, glaciers in ranges like the Himalayas are melting faster and weather systems becoming more extreme, in part, due to the combined effects of man-made Atmospheric Brown Clouds (ABCs) and greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

These are among the conclusions of scientists studying a more than three km-thick layer of soot and other manmade particles that stretches from the Arabian Peninsula to China and the western Pacific Ocean.

Read more ....

The Movies -- The Best Fictional Doomsday Devices

The Death Star (Star Wars)

From Wired News:

America's love affair with the doomsday device is a turbulent one. First popularized in comic books and James Bond movies, then lampooned by Austin Powers, we love them because their ridiculousness makes us feel safe — like the exhilarating false danger of a roller coaster.

Now heightened audience cynicism has forced world-ending devices into the realm of camp, and except for a new breed of superhero movies, they've largely been replaced by natural disasters or apocalyptic sci-fi scenarios in Hollywood films.

Read more ....

Variable Electric Generator Improves Wind Power Efficiency

(Photo form Talking Tourism)

From Future Pundit:

An interesting article in MIT's Technology Review reports on a generator for wind turbines that can harvest electric power over a wider range of wind speeds.

ExRo Technologies, a startup based in Vancouver, BC, has developed a new kind of generator that's well suited to harvesting energy from wind. It could lower the cost of wind turbines while increasing their power output by 50 percent.

The new generator runs efficiently over a wider range of conditions than conventional generators do. When the shaft running through an ordinary generator is turning at the optimal rate, more than 90 percent of its energy can be converted into electricity. But if it speeds up or slows down, the generator's efficiency drops dramatically.

Read more ....

Young Innovators Learn To Pitch Big Ideas

Selling it: At the PopTech conference in Camden, Maine, Manoj Sinha discusses how discarded rice husks can be used to generate electricity. (Courtesy of Kris Krug/PopTech)

From The Christian Science Monitor:

‘Boot camp’ in Maine teaches them how to get their message across in five minutes.

You’ve got a world-changing idea. And a passion to make it happen.

That’s good. But you need a third element: The ability to “pitch” your idea to venture capitalists and others who can help turn your dream into reality.

Budding business tycoons or Hollywood script writers know the importance of marketing themselves and their projects. But those in the nonprofit world, whose goal is altruistic, may never have thought about how to put a dazzling sheen on their quick “elevator pitch.”

Learning what goes into a perfect pitch was just one of the practical skills taught to a group of up-and-coming “social innovators” last month at the 12th annual PopTech conference in Camden, Maine.

Read more ....

The World Has Never Seen Such Freezing Heat

A sudden cold snap brought snow to London in October. Photo from The Telegraph

From the Telegraph:

A surreal scientific blunder last week raised a huge question mark about the temperature records that underpin the worldwide alarm over global warming. On Monday, Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which is run by Al Gore's chief scientific ally, Dr James Hansen, and is one of four bodies responsible for monitoring global temperatures, announced that last month was the hottest October on record.

Read more ....

Astronauts Inspect Spaceship For Any Damage

The U.S. space shuttle fleet, including the Endeavour, seen here as it approaches the international space station in 2001, is set to return to flight by the middle of 2005, more than two years after the Columbia tragedy. NASA file

From MSNBC:

At least two pieces of debris were spotted Friday night in launch photos

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Space shuttle Endeavour's astronauts unfurled a 100-foot, laser-tipped pole and surveyed their ship for any launch damage Saturday while drawing ever closer to their destination, the international space station.

At least two pieces of debris were spotted Friday night in launch photos, Mission Control reported, and engineers were poring over the images to determine whether anything hit Endeavour. Mission Control told the astronauts there were no obvious signs of damage.

Read more ....

Marine Dead Zones Set To Expand Rapidly

Oxygen content of the world's oceans. Regions with low oxygen are shown in red. IFM-GEOMAR

From Nature:

Rising levels of carbon dioxide could increase the volume of oxygen-depleted 'dead zones' in tropical oceans by as much as 50% before the end of the century — with dire consequences for the health of ecosystems in some of the world's most productive fishing grounds.

At depths between several tens and hundreds of metres, large parts of the tropical oceans are poorly supplied with dissolved oxygen, and are therefore hostile to most marine life. Scientists suspect that these zones are sensitive to climate change, but previous studies have arrived at conflicting conclusions regarding exactly how and why a more CO2-rich world affects oceanic oxygen content.

Read more ....

EBay Seller Gets Millionth Positive Feedback

Fox News:

NEW YORK — If you've ever sold something on eBay, you may have been pleased to receive positive feedback from the buyer. Multiply that by a million, and you can imagine how Jack Sheng feels.

Sheng, 33, owns Los Angeles-based Eforcity Corp., which has been selling electronics accessories on the online auction site since he started his business in 2000 with two childhood friends.

In the past two months, four separate eBay user IDs belonging to Sheng and his company each surpassed more than 1 million feedback points. No one else on eBay has come close.

Read more ....

World's Fastest Scientific Supercomputer

From Knoxnews:

OAK RIDGE - Oak Ridge National Laboratory had promised a breakthrough performance from its newly arrived Cray XT5 supercomputer, but Monday's announcement was still a stunner.

The "Jaguar" system is now the world's fastest computer for science research, capable of 1.64 petaflops - or 1.64 quadrillion mathematical calculations per second. A quadrillion is equivalent to 1,000 trillion.

"It's going to be really exciting times in terms of the kind of science that's being done," Thomas Zacharia, ORNL's computational science leader, said Monday.

Read more .....

Telcos: Don't Mess Up The Internet With Regulation

From CNET News:

WASHINGTON--Representatives from industry, government, and advocacy groups agreed on Thursday that the Internet needs to be open and widely available throughout the United States. The question is how to get there.

A newly emboldened Democratic Congress is sure to have a long wish list, including new Internet regulations that corporations believe are unwise or unnecessary. Net neutrality regulations are one possibility, as is broadband and spectrum legislation. But it's unclear where the money to pay for sweeping new projects will come from--neither tax increases nor deficit spending on tech seem that likely when a Wall Street and Detroit bailout are center stage--so today's laws and regulations may end up being extended by default.

Read more ....

Stone Age Temple May Be Birthplace of Civilization

One of the T-shaped monoliths in Gobekli Tepe, this one bearing a relief of a fox.
Wikimedia Commons

From FOX News:

It's more than twice as old as the Pyramids, or even the written word. When it was built, saber-toothed tigers and woolly mammoths still roamed, and the Ice Age had just ended.

The elaborate temple at Gobelki Tepe in southeastern Turkey, near the Syrian border, is staggeringly ancient: 11,500 years old, from a time just before humans learned to farm grains and domesticate animals.

According to the German archaeologist in charge of excavations at the site, it might be the birthplace of agriculture, of organized religion — of civilization itself.

"This is the first human-built holy place," Klaus Schmidt of the German Archaeological Institute says in the November issue of Smithsonian magazine.

Read more ....

Unhappy People Watch TV, Happy People Read/Socialize, Says Study

From E! Science News:

A new study by sociologists at the University of Maryland concludes that unhappy people watch more TV, while people who describe themselves as very happy spend more time reading and socializing. The study appears in the December issue of the journal Social Indicators Research. Analyzing 30-years worth of national data from time-use studies and a continuing series of social attitude surveys, the Maryland researchers report that spending time watching television may contribute to viewers' happiness in the moment, with less positive effects in the long run.

Read more ....

Artificial Diamonds - Now Available in Extra Large

From The New Scientist:

Diamonds are a girl's best friend, they say - and soon they could be every girl's best friend.

A team in the US has brought the world one step closer to cheap, mass-produced, perfect diamonds. The improvement also means there is no theoretical limit on the size of diamonds that can be grown in the lab.

A team led by Russell Hemley, of the Carnegie Institute of Washington, makes diamonds by chemical vapour deposition (CVD), where carbon atoms in a gas are deposited on a surface to produce diamond crystals.

The CVD process produces rapid diamond growth, but impurities from the gas are absorbed and the diamonds take on a brownish tint.

These defects can be purged by a costly high-pressure, high-temperature treatment called annealing. However, only relatively small diamonds can be produced this way: the largest so far being a 34-carat yellow diamond about 1 centimetre wide.

Read more ....

CO2 May Prevent Next Ice Age: Study

The researchers warn their finding is not an argument in favour of global warming (Source: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio)

From ABC News (Australia):

Scheduled shifts in the earth's orbit should plunge the planet into a deep freeze thousands of years from now, but current changes to our atmosphere may stop it from occurring, say scientists.

Professor Thomas Crowley of the University of Edinburgh, and Dr William Hyde of the University of Toronto report in the journal Nature that the current level of carbon dioxide (CO2) in our atmosphere could negate the onset of the next Ice Age, which could occur 10,000 years from now.

Read more ....

Mysterious Microbe May Play Important Role In Ocean Ecology

These unidentified cyanobacteria were collected in the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii. (Credit: Photo by Rachel Foster)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Nov. 15, 2008) — An unusual microorganism discovered in the open ocean may force scientists to rethink their understanding of how carbon and nitrogen cycle through ocean ecosystems. A research team led by Jonathan Zehr, professor of ocean sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz, characterized the new microbe by analyzing its genetic material, even though researchers have not been able to grow it in the laboratory.

Zehr said the newly described organism seems to be an atypical member of the cyanobacteria, a group of photosynthetic bacteria formerly known as blue-green algae. Unlike all other known free-living cyanobacteria, this one lacks some of the genes needed to carry out photosynthesis, the process by which plants use light energy to make sugars out of carbon dioxide and water.

Read more ....

Grandma Is Better Babysitter Than Mom

From Live Science:

Common wisdom might suggest that because of their age, grandmothers are inappropriate caretakers for infants and children.

Sure, they might have years and years of parenting experience from bringing up their own children (and they must be OK parents because their children obviously lived long enough to have children) but people over 50 simply can't run as fast or react as quickly as young parents. And they presumably tire more quickly and must want to take a load off even more often than the most exhausted parent.

Read more .....

Space Shuttle Endeavour Blasts Into Night Sky

From Yahoo News/AP:

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – Space shuttle Endeavour and a crew of seven blasted into the night sky Friday, bound for the international space station and the most extreme home makeover project ever attempted by astronauts.

The shuttle rose off its launch pad at 7:55 p.m. EST, right on time, in a brilliant flash of light visible for miles around.

"It's our turn to take home improvement to a new level after 10 years of international space station construction," commander Christopher Ferguson radioed before liftoff.

Read more ....

The Consequence Of A Failed Electricity Policy

(Photo from Van Ness Feldman)

Get Ready For Rolling Brownouts And Huge Hikes
In Electricity Prices -- Q and O

Forbes warns us:

If you think runaway oil prices are upsetting, just wait for what's in store for electricity. Similar forces are in play. Demand is rising fast; supply is not. The cost to get coal and natural gas out of the ground is going up, and to that expense must be added the cost of the carbon permits that Congress and the presidential candidates are contemplating. Environmentalists are getting power plants scotched. China is sucking up energy. Leave such dynamics in play long enough, and price spikes in electricity follow. But that's just the beginning. We may be facing brownouts (voltage reductions) and even rolling blackouts.

Price shocks are already a part of the system says the article:

Price shocks are already occurring. In May, long before peak summer demand, the wholesale price of juice jumped twofold in Texas, to $4 per kilowatt-hour, 25 times the average retail rate in the country. Prices exceeded the allowed rate of $2 for seven days and threatened the viability of power resellers who contracted to deliver cheap rates to consumers. New Yorkers may suffer a summer of price discontent if regulators are right about peak wholesale prices jumping by up to 90%.

Read more ....

A New Ice Age?

In Greenland, a caribou skeleton lies before the snout of a glacier. Can humans prevent the ice sheets from advancing? (Credit: Andrew C. Revkin/ The New York Times)

More On Whether A Big Chill Is Nigh
-- New York Times/Earth Dot

[UPDATE, 12:30 p.m.: Thomas Crowley responds to critiques below.] I was on the road yesterday and had no time to collate earth scientists’ reactions to the Nature paper positing that the world, after 450,000 years of climatic turmoil (the ice ages and warm spells) is poised to enter a quasi-permanent big chill (unless we avert it, after dealing with near-term warming, with a subsequent buildup of greenhouse gases).

Read more ....

Mystery Solved: How Bleach Kills Germs

Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology Associate Professor Ursula Jakob (L) and Jeannette Winter, Ph.D. in an undated photo courtesy of the University of Michigan. Bleach has been killing germs for more than 200 years but U.S. scientists have just figured out how the cleaner does its dirty work. (Handout/Reuters)

From Yahoo News/Reuters:

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Bleach has been killing germs for more than 200 years but U.S. scientists have just figured out how the cleaner does its dirty work.

It seems that hypochlorous acid, the active ingredient in bleach, attacks proteins in bacteria, causing them to clump up much like an egg that has been boiled, a team at the University of Michigan reported in the journal Cell on Thursday.

The discovery, which may better explain how humans fight off infections, came quite by accident.

"As so often happens in science, we did not set out to address this question," Ursula Jakob, who led the team, said in a statement.

Read more ....

Chandrayaan-I Impact Probe Lands On Moon

Chandrayaan-I Impact Probe lands on the moon surface (Times Now)

From Times Of India:

BANGALORE: India marked its presence on Moon on Friday night to be only the fourth nation to scale this historic milestone after a Moon Impact Probe with the national tri-colour painted successfully landed on the lunar surface after being detached from unmanned spacecraft Chandrayaan-1

Joining the US, the erstwhile Soviet Union and the European Union, the 35-kg Moon Impact Probe (MIP) hit the moon exactly at 8.31 PM, about 25 minutes after the probe instrument descended from the satellite in what ISRO described as a "perfect operation".

Miniature Indian flags painted on four sides of the MIP signalled the country's symbolic entry into moon to coincide with the birth anniversary of the country's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, observed as Children's Day.

Read more ....

140 Years Of UFO Sightings - Part I

From The Telegraph:

One of the earliest photographs of an unidentified flying object, this picture was taken somewhere in the United States during the 1920s.

Read more ....

Which Came First? Eggs Before Chickens, Scientists Now Say

Frrm Live Science:

A rare fossilized dinosaur nest helps answer the conundrum of which came first, the chicken or the egg, two paleontologists say.

The small carnivorous dinosaur sat over her nest of eggs some 77 million years ago, along a sandy river beach. When water levels rose, Mom seems to have fled, leaving the unhatched offspring.

Researchers have now studied the fossil nest and at least five partial eggs. The nest is a mound of sand that extends about 1.6 feet (half a meter) across and weighs as much as a small person, or about 110 pounds (50 kg).

Read more ....

Indonesia's New Tsunami Warning System

The December 2004 Indonesian earthquake caused a massive tsunami to wash over 10 countries in South Asia and East Africa. This pair of images from NASA's Terra satellite shows the Aceh province of northern Sumatra, Indonesia, on December 17, 2004, before the earthquake (top), and on December 29 (bottom), three days after. The earthquake also changed Earth's shape slightly. (Photo: NASA)

From Popsci:

Nearly four years after a series of disastrous tsunami waves struck coastlines bordering the Indian Ocean, a new Tsunami Early Warning System is up and running in Indonesia. Using a series of buoys linked to detectors that sit on the ocean floor, the new high-tech warning system will be able to detect an undersea earthquake and predict within minutes whether it will cause a tsunami.

Catastrophic tsunamis result from undersea earthquakes or landslides, and when earthquake-generated tsunamis occur off the coast of Indonesia, the waves can reach the coast in as little as twenty minutes -- leaving little to no warning time for residents in high-risk areas. The 2004 tsunami reached the province of Banda Aceh just a quarter of an hour after a magnitude-9.1 earthquake struck, resulting in 140,000 deaths in that region alone.

Read more ....

Can a Bone-Marrow Transplant Halt HIV?

Bone-marrow cell
MedicalRF.com / Getty

From Time Magazine:

The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is a pathogen so wily and protean that researchers rarely talk about curing infected patients, focusing instead on treatment and prevention. But in an announcement that caused a flutter of excitement and a wave of prudent skepticism, Berlin-based hematologist Gero Huetter claimed on Thursday that he has cured an HIV infection in a 42-year-old man through a bone-marrow transplant.

Read more ....

The Big Question: What Is Nanotechnology, And Do We Put The World At Risk By Adopting It?

From The Independent:

Why are we asking this question now?

The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution has just published a report on novel materials and has looked at the case of nanotechnology, which describes the science of the very small. Nanotechnology covers those man-made materials or objects that are about a thousand times smaller than the microtechnology we use routinely, such as the silicon chips of computers.

Read more ....

Tech Puts JFK Conspiracy Theories to Rest

The Motorcade
President John F. Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, riding in a motorcade with Texas Governor John Connally and wife Nellie, shortly before Kennedy's assassination. Victor Hugo King/Getty Images

From Discovery:

Nov. 13, 2008 -- A team of experts assembled by the Discovery Channel has recreated the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Using modern blood spatter analysis, new artificial human body surrogates, and 3-D computer simulations, the team determined that the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository was the most likely origin of the shot that killed the 35th president of the United States.

Read more ....

How Studying DNA From Ancient Animals Helps Humans

From Christian Science Monitor:

While on the campaign trail this fall, Senator John McCain would laugh at government-funded research on the DNA of bears. What would he think of the research on DNA from extinct cave bears that now has elucidated the bear family tree? It’s the latest example of how scientists are using the increasingly sharp cutting-edge of DNA research to clarify the divergence of animal species, including humans.

New techniques to rapidly analyze DNA accelerate such studies. An increasing ability to garner useful data from tiny samples of DNA enable scientists to make the most of what little DNA they extract from such ancient remains as cave-bear bones.

Read more ....

Unlicensed News Stories Rampant On Web

Unauthorized copies of Web news stories draw far more viewers than the official versions. Publishers are seeking ways to draw advertising revenue from the pirated versions. (iStockphoto)

From CBS:
Software Could Help Publishers Recover Thousands In Ad Revenue, Study Finds
(AP) Here's another reason for ailing newspaper and magazine publishers to wince: On average, the audience perusing unauthorized online copies of their articles is nearly 1.5 times larger than the readership on their own Web sites, according to a study released Thursday.

However, the problem, flagged by copyright cop Attributor Corp., could turn into a golden opportunity if media companies figure out a way to mine advertising revenue from the traffic flocking to their pirated stories posted on blogs and other sites.

Read more ...

UN: Clouds Of Pollution Threaten Glaciers, Health

From Myway/AP:

BEIJING (AP) - A dirty brown haze sometimes more than a mile thick is darkening skies not only over vast areas of Asia, but also in the Middle East, southern Africa and the Amazon Basin, changing weather patterns around the world and threatening health and food supplies, the U.N. reported Thursday.

The huge smog-like plumes, caused mainly by the burning of fossil fuels and firewood, are known as "atmospheric brown clouds."

When mixed with emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases blamed for warming the earth's atmosphere like a greenhouse, they are the newest threat to the global environment, according to a report commissioned by the U.N. Environment Program.

"All of this points to an even greater and urgent need to look at emissions across the planet," said Achim Steiner, head of Kenya-based UNEP, which funded the report with backing from Italy, Sweden and the United States.

Read more ....

Hubble Directly Observes A Planet Orbiting Another Star

This image, taken with the Advanced Camera for Surveys aboard NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, shows the newly discovered planet, Fomalhaut b, orbiting its parent star, Fomalhaut. (Credit: NASA, ESA, P. Kalas, J. Graham, E. Chiang, E. Kite (University of California, Berkeley), M. Clampin (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center), M. Fitzgerald (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory), and K. Stapelfeldt and J. Krist (NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory))

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Nov. 13, 2008) — NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has taken the first visible-light snapshot of a planet circling another star.

Estimated to be no more than three times Jupiter's mass, the planet, called Fomalhaut b, orbits the bright southern star Fomalhaut, located 25 light-years away in the constellation Piscis Australis (the Southern Fish).

Fomalhaut has been a candidate for planet hunting ever since an excess of dust was discovered around the star in the early 1980s by NASA's Infrared Astronomy Satellite (IRAS).

Read more ....

Why Do We Panic?

From Scientific American:

A better understanding of the path from stress to anxiety to full-blown panic disorder offers soothing news for sufferers

“I was driving home after work,” David reported. “Things had been very stressful there lately. I was tense but looking forward to getting home and relaxing. And then, all of a sudden—boom! My heart started racing, and I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I was sweating and shaking. My thoughts were racing, and I was afraid that I was going crazy or having a heart attack. I pulled over and called my wife to take me to the emergency room.”

David’s fears turned out to be unjustified. An emergency room doctor told David, a composite of several therapy patients seen by one of us (Arkowitz), that he was suffering from a panic attack.

Read more ....

First Direct Images Of Planets Around Other Stars

Left: Infrared image of one planet orbiting HR 8799. Right: Isolated dots are planets; multicolored ball is residual light from HR 8799. Left: Infrared image of one planet orbiting HR 8799. Right: Isolated dots are planets; multicolored ball is residual light from HR 8799. National Research Council Canada

From FOX News/Space.com:

Astronomers have taken what they say are the first-ever direct images of planets outside of our solar system, including a visible-light snapshot of a single-planet system and an infrared picture of a multiple-planet system.

Earth-like worlds might also exist in the three-planet system, but if so they are too dim to photograph.

The other newfound planet orbits a star called Fomalhaut, which is visible without the aid of a telescope. It is the 18th brightest star in the sky.

The massive worlds, each much heftier than Jupiter (at least for the three-planet system), could change how astronomers define the term "planet," one planet-hunter said.

Read more ....

Simulation Shows What Would Happen If Magnitude 7.8 Earthquake Hit California

(Click To Enlarge)
Still image from a movie showing a view of southern California with the seismic waves radiating outward from the fault as the rupture propagates towards the northwest along the San Andreas fault. (Credit: Image courtesy of USGS)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Nov. 13, 2008) — What would happen in California was hit by the Big One? New 3-D animations of a magnitude 7.8 earthquake scenario are now available to the public.

Fourteen animations can be downloaded from the site in high definition format. The 3-D animations show, from the perspective of a several different Southern California locations, how intensely the ground would shake and shift during a very strong 7.8 earthquake with an epicenter on the southern end of the San Andreas Fault.

The science-based earthquake scenario, developed by USGS scientists and partners, is used for both the Great Southern California ShakeOut drill on November 13 and the statewide Golden Guardian 2008 emergency response exercise from November 13 - 18.

Read more ....

Mysterious Glowing Aurora Over Saturn Confounds Scientists

The northern polar region of Saturn shows both the aurora and underlying atmosphere, as captured by NASA's Cassini spacecraft

From The Daily Mail:

A stunning light display over Saturn has stumped scientists who say it behaves unlike any other planetary aurora known in our solar system.

The blueish-green glow was found over the ringed planet's north polar region just like Earth's northern lights.

It was discovered by the infrared instruments on NASA's Cassini spacecraft.

'We've never seen an aurora like this elsewhere,' said Tom Stallard, a scientist working with Cassini data at the University of Leicester.

'This aurora covers an enormous area across the pole. Our current ideas on what forms Saturn's aurora predict that this region should be empty, so finding such a bright aurora here is a fantastic surprise.'

Read more ....

Obama Preparing Comprehensive Technology Policy

Obama's vision of having "YouTube-like videos of government meetings online" and "Google-like database of grants and contracts" may become reality during his first term. (John Gress/Reuters)

From The International Herald Tribune:

Barack Obama's Internet-fueled campaign has transformed the way Americans choose a president. Now, the president-elect's administration plans to change the way Americans - and government - use technology.

If Obama gets his way, all Americans would have broadband Internet access, whether they live in big cities or remote villages. Online life would be safer, with better defenses against cybercriminals. And there would be greater access to government, with online services to let anyone question members of the president's cabinet or track every dime of the U.S. budget.

"I think it's not going to happen in the first 100 days, but I think a lot of this can happen in the first term," said Ben Scott, policy director of Free Press, a media reform organization based in Washington.

Read more ....