Life On Mars? Methane 'Plumes' Raise Tantalising Prospect Of Organisms On Red Planet

NASA's latest findings have been heralded as the strongest indicator yet of life on Mars

From The Daily Mail:

The prospect of finding life on Mars came a step closer yesterday after Nasa revealed it had discovered 'plumes' of methane gas seeping from the planet.

When methane was first found in the Martian atmosphere in 2003, some scientists claimed it could have been dumped on the planet by comets.

But the latest discovery is proof that it is actually produced on the Red Planet.

The pinpointing of the location of the plumes of gas also offers scientists likely places to dig for life.

Nasa's announcement yesterday is highly significant because most of the methane on Earth is produced by living organisms - raising the possibility that some form of life, even if just microbes, are alive deep within the soil.

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Inside the Savant Mind: Tips for Thinking from an Extraordinary Thinker

Daniel Tammet. Photo by Jerome Tabet

From Scientific American:

Daniel Tammet is the author of two books, Born on a Blue Day and Embracing the Wide Sky, which comes out this month. He’s also a linguist and holds the European record for reciting the first 22,514 decimal points of the mathematical constant Pi. Mind Matters editor Jonah Lehrer chats with Tammet about how his memory works, why the IQ test is overrated, and a possible explanation for extraordinary feats of creativity.

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High Caffeine Intake Linked To Hallucination Proneness

People with a higher caffeine intake, from sources such as coffee, tea and caffeinated energy drinks, are more likely to report hallucinatory experiences such as hearing voices and seeing things that are not there. (Credit: iStockphoto/Ong Kok Keat)

From Science Daily:

High caffeine consumption could be linked to a greater tendency to hallucinate, a new research study suggests.

People with a higher caffeine intake, from sources such as coffee, tea and caffeinated energy drinks, are more likely to report hallucinatory experiences such as hearing voices and seeing things that are not there, according to the Durham University study.

‘High caffeine users’ – those who consumed more than the equivalent of seven cups of instant coffee a day - were three times more likely to have heard a person’s voice when there was no one there compared with ‘low caffeine users’ who consumed less than the equivalent of one cup of instant coffee a day. With ninety per cent of North Americans consuming some of form caffeine every day, it is the world's most widely used drug.

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My Comment: OK .... I Confess. I need at least 2 cups of coffee a day .... minimum.

History Corrected By 400-Year-Old Moon Map

(Click The Image To Enlarge)

Thomas Harriot's map of the whole Moon, made after looking through an early telescope. This image accurately depicts many lunar features including the principal Maria (lunar 'seas' - actually lava-filled basins) and craters. Labelled features include Mare Crisium ('18') on the right hand side and the craters Copernicus ('b') and Kepler ('c') in the upper left of the disk. Credit: © Lord Egremont

From Live Science:

Galileo Galilei is often credited with being the first person to look through a telescope and make drawings of the celestial objects he observed. While the Italian indeed was a pioneer in this realm, he was not the first.

Englishman Thomas Harriot made the first drawing of the moon after looking through a telescope several months before Galileo, in July 1609.

Historian Allan Chapman of the University of Oxford details that 400-year-old breakthrough in astronomy in the February 2009 edition of Astronomy and Geophysics, a journal of the Royal Astronomical Society.

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Revealed: Why Beautiful Women Are More Likely To Be Unfaithful... It's The Marilyn Hormone

Marilyn Monroe's hourglass figure was caused by the same hormone
that triggered her affairs according to scientists

From The Daily Mail:

With her drop-dead curves, Marilyn Monroe's voluptuous hourglass figure has long been regarded as the absolute essence of what it means to be a sexy woman.

But the female hormone that made the film star so desirable was the key behind her inability to hold down a steady relationship, according to scientists.

Those with the most oestradiol, a form of oestrogen, are usually more physically attractive and find it easier to snare a man.

But they are also less satisfied with their current lovers - and therefore more likely to cheat, according to the findings published in the Royal Society's journal Biology Letters.

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Misuse Of Vicks VapoRub May Harm Infants And Toddlers

From E! Science News:

Vicks® VapoRub®, the popular salve used to relieve symptoms of cough and congestion, may be harmful for infants and toddlers. New research appearing in the January issue of CHEST, the peer-reviewed journal of the American College of Chest Physicians (ACCP), shows that Vicks® VapoRub® (VVR) may stimulate mucus production and airway inflammation, which can have severe effects on breathing in an infant or toddler. Research findings are consistent with current VVR labeling which indicates the product should not be used on children under 2 years of age. "The ingredients in Vicks can be irritants, causing the body to produce more mucus to protect the airway," said Bruce K. Rubin, MD, FCCP, the study's lead author from the Department of Pediatrics at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, Winston Salem, NC. "Infants and young children have airways that are much narrower than those of adults, so any increase in mucus or inflammation can narrow them more severely."

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Is A 'Katrina-Like' Space Storm Brewing?

In this file photo, the sun-orbiting SOHO spacecraft has imaged many erupting filaments lifting off the active solar surface and blasting enormous bubbles of magnetic plasma into space. U.S. scientists worry we aren't ready for a solar space storm which could knock out our electricity, cell phones, even our water supply. Collapse. (Courtesy NASA/JPL )

From ABC News:

Scientists Worry We Aren't Prepared for Event That Could Zap Government, Cost Trillions.

U.S. scientists worry we aren't ready for a solar space storm that could knock out our electricity, our cell phones, even our water supply.

The chances of that happening are small, but it is a possibility as we move into an active period of solar storms.

How do they know? Well, it's happened before. Back in 1859, a solar eruption resulted in telegraph wires burning up.

Of course, the world is now covered in wires and wireless devices that could be vulnerable.

The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) gathered experts from around the country to look at the economic and social costs from these space storms. While they didn't make any recommendations, the scientists hope their report is a wake-up call.

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Chew On This: We'll Soon Be Able To Grow Replacement Teeth

A liquid-nitrogen tank is used to preserve tooth pulp. The first whole tooth may be grown in a human within five to 10 years. The Washington Post

From The Seattle Times:

It turns out wisdom teeth are prolific sources of adult stem cells needed to grow new teeth for you. From scratch. In your adult life, as you need them. In the near future. According to the National Institutes of Health.

WASHINGTON — As long as there are hockey players, there will be niche markets for false teeth. But the real news about the future of dentures is that there isn't much of one.

Toothlessness has declined 60 percent in the United States since 1960. Baby boomers will be the first generation in human history typically to go to their graves with most of their teeth.

And now comes tooth regeneration: growing teeth in adults, on demand, to replace missing ones. Soon.

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Hazards Of Severe Space Weather Revealed

A solar storm, aurora from space, and aurora on Earth.
(Credit: Solar & Heliospheric Observatory)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Jan. 12, 2009) — A NASA-funded study describes how extreme solar eruptions could have severe consequences for communications, power grids and other technology on Earth.

The National Academy of Sciences in Washington conducted the study. The resulting report provides some of the first clear economic data that effectively quantifies today's risk of extreme conditions in space driven by magnetic activity on the sun and disturbances in the near-Earth environment. Instances of extreme space weather are rare and are categorized with other natural hazards that have a low frequency but high consequences.

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Building A 777 Jet In 4 Minutes

Hat Tip Tigerhawk.

Super-Predators: Humans Force Rapid Evolution of Animals

Bighorn sheep are one of many species now documented as getting smaller, on average, due to trophy hunting that targets larger specimens and leaves smaller members of a population, and their genes, to reproduce. Image credit: Paul Paquet

From Live Science:

Acting as super-predators, humans are forcing changes to body size and reproductive abilities in some species 300 percent faster than would occur naturally, a new study finds.

Hunting and fishing by individual sportsmen as well as large-scale commercial fishing are also outpacing other human influences, such as pollution, in effects on the animal kingdom. The changes are dramatic and may put the survival of some species in question.

In a review of 34 studies that tracked 29 species across 40 different geographic systems, harvested and hunted populations are on average 20 percent smaller in body size than previous generations, and the age at which they first reproduce is on average 25 percent earlier.

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Bad Weather in 2008, At A Glance

(Click The Above Image To Enlarge)

The National Climatic Data Center has a huge graphic that summarizes the big weather moments on the planet last year.

Saturday Night Special: Biggest Full Moon of 2009

From Yahoo News/Space:

If skies are clear Saturday, go out at sunset and look for the giant moon rising in the east. It will be the biggest and brightest one of 2009, sure to wow even seasoned observers.

Earth, the moon and the sun are all bound together by gravity, which keeps us going around the sun and keeps the moon going around us as it goes through phases. The moon makes a trip around Earth every 29.5 days.

But the orbit is not a perfect circle. One portion is about 31,000 miles (50,000 km) closer to our planet than the farthest part, so the moon's apparent size in the sky changes. Saturday night (Jan. 10) the moon will be at perigee, the closest point to us on this orbit.

It will appear about 14 percent bigger in our sky and 30 percent brighter than some other full moons during 2009, according to NASA. (A similar setup occurred in December, making that month's full moon the largest of 2008.)

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NASA: Continued Shuttle Use Would Be Risky

NASA's Space Shuttle STS-1 Columbia launch on April 12, 1981. Photo from NASA

From The CBS:

(AP) The cost of continuing the life of the U.S. space shuttle past next year's planned retirement is $3 billion a year plus extending the risk of a deadly accident, NASA's chief said Thursday.

NASA Administrator Michael Griffin told an industry group that NASA has looked into what it would take to keep flying the aging shuttle past 2010. Otherwise, it will mean five years of relying on Russia to get astronauts to the international space station.

After the 2003 Columbia tragedy, President George W. Bush declared that the U.S. should head back to the moon in a new spaceship and to pay for that, the space shuttle would have to be retired.

President-elect Barack Obama has proposed delaying the shuttle's retirement. He and others have expressed concern about the gap between the shuttle's retirement and the new ship's maiden launch.

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Report: Powerful Solar Storm Could Shut Down U.S. for Months

Photo: A big solar flare in December 2006. NASA

From FOX News:

A new study from the National Academy of Sciences outlines grim possibilities on Earth for a worst-case scenario solar storm.

Damage to power grids and other communications systems could be catastrophic, the scientists conclude, with effects leading to a potential loss of governmental control of the situation.

The prediction is based in part on major solar storm in 1859 caused telegraph wires to short out in the United States and Europe, igniting widespread fires.

It was perhaps the worst in the past 200 years, according to the new study, and with the advent of modern power grids and satellites, much more is at risk.

"A contemporary repetition of the [1859] event would cause significantly more extensive (and possibly catastrophic) social and economic disruptions," the researchers conclude.

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Astronauts Threatened By Cosmic Rays As Sun Becomes Less Active

European Space Agency astronaut Christer Fuglesang works during his second spacewalk in 2006. The Sun's ability to shield the solar system from harmful radiation could falter in the early 2020s, increasing the risk of such spacewalks

From The Daily Mail:

Astronauts returning to the moon could be threatened by cosmic rays as a result of the sun becoming less active, scientists have said.

The sun's ability to shield the solar system from harmful radiation could falter in the early 2020s, research from the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology claimed.

At about the same time, the American space agency Nasa plans to send astronauts back to the moon.

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U.S. Scientists Learn How To Levitate Tiny Objects

Photo: An artist's rendition shows how the repulsive Casimir-Lifshitz force between suitable materials in a fluid can be used to quantum mechanically levitate a small object of density greater than the liquid. (Courtesy of the lab of Federico Capasso, Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences/Handout/Reuters)

From Yahoo News/Reuters:

CHICAGO (Reuters) – U.S. scientists have found a way to levitate the very smallest objects using the strange forces of quantum mechanics, and said on Wednesday they might use it to help make tiny nanotechnology machines.

They said they had detected and measured a force that comes into play at the molecular level using certain combinations of molecules that repel one another.

The repulsion can be used to hold molecules aloft, in essence levitating them, creating virtually friction-free parts for tiny devices, the researchers said.

Federico Capasso, an applied physicist at Harvard University in Massachusetts, whose study appears in the journal Nature, said he believed that detection of this force opened the possibility of a whole new class of tiny gadgets.

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What Science Says About Enlightened Sex By Sally Law, Special to LiveScience

Women who practiced the Eastern techniques of mindfulness and yoga reported improvements in levels of arousal and desire, as well as better orgasms. Image credit: Dreamstime

From Live Science:

Another year, another batch of resolutions: eat right, exercise more, pay bills on time etc. All good in theory, but potentially dull in practice.

In 2009, then, resolve to have better sex. According to a recent review article in the Dec. 3 issue of The Journal of Sexual Medicine, sexually unsatisfied women who practiced the Eastern techniques of mindfulness and yoga reported improvements in levels of arousal and desire, as well as better orgasms. In addition, yoga has been found to effectively treat premature ejaculation in men.

Eastern practices have been touted as sexually beneficial for years — as the article states, the techniques have "their origin in the Kama Sutra of the fourth to sixth centuries."

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Breakthroughs That Will Change Everything

From Live Science:

Will humans go extinct? Or will we instead evolve into divergent species? Can we stop killing each other? Perhaps old-fashioned wisdom will return and save the day.

These are just some of the compelling thoughts generated when the forward-thinking Edge Foundation recently asked scientists, authors, futurists, journalists and other offbeat thinkers the question: "What will change everything?" To refine the question, Edge further asked: "What game-changing scientific ideas and developments do you expect to live to see?"

Among the dozens of responses, from such diverse sources as Alan Alda (actor and now TV science personality) to Ian Wilmut (cloned Dolly the sheep), LiveScience picked out five, each notable for its ingenuity and ability to provoke thought.

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Is Anybody In Charge Of Keeping Satellites From Colliding?

From The Straight Dope:

Dear Cecil:

As I stare into the beautiful dark sky above my home in Hawaii and see all the stars and satellites, I ponder the possibility of "space accidents." With all those satellites up there, are there any collisions? I don't suppose anybody is handing out OUIs (for orbiting under the influence), but how do they decide what satellite should go where? Who oversees all those orbits? Is it just a stellar free-for-all?

— Roy Orbits Son

Cecil replies:

No, but it's not iron discipline either. To date we've been content to let just about anybody heave stuff into orbit, requiring only minimal reporting for most launches. But with increasing commercialization of space, things are starting to get crowded up there — the Union of Concerned Scientists lists 898 active satellites, operated by everybody from the U.S. to Luxembourg. Given the vastness of space, even in earth's immediate vicinity, it's not like we're talking bumper-to-bumper traffic.

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73.4 Percent of All Wikipedia Edits Are Made By Roughly 1,400 People

From College On The Record:

Most college professors discourage students from using Wikipedia as a reliable source of information, and if you’ve ever wondered why, here is the reason:

There are millions of people who browse Wikipedia in any given month, but only 2 percent of them (roughly 1,400) are responsible for editing nearly 75 percent of the information on the entire website.

In other words, Wikipedia, while editable by anyone, is fueled almost entirely by the knowledge of a small, select group of individuals.

Consider them the Illuminati of Wikipedia; they control the flow of information that often finds its way into our college essays, despite our professors’ best attempts to dissuade us from citing it.

The source of this startling revelation? The face of Wikipedia, Jimbo Wales.

But, [Wales] insisted, the truth was rather different: Wikipedia was actually written by "a community ... a dedicated group of a few hundred volunteers" where "I know all of them and they all know each other". Really, "it's much like any traditional organization."

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Diamonds Offer 'Final Proof' That A Comet Wiped Out The Mammoth

From Times Online:

Sure, 2008 was bad. But for Americans it was nowhere near as bad as 11,000BC – according to research published in Science magazine yesterday.

At about that time, say scientists, a massive comet struck the atmosphere somewhere above North America, broke into pieces and rained down fire and death – wiping out the early Palaeo-Americans, also known as Clovis people, and making creatures such as the woolly mammoth, mastodon, short-faced bear, sabre-toothed cat, ground sloth and giant armadillo extinct. Not to forget the American camel and the American lion.

Although this theory first emerged a year ago and has been hotly debated ever since, the authors of the Science article present compelling evidence to support it – in the form of nanodiamonds.

These, which are so small they are barely visible even under the most advanced microscopes, have been found embedded in 13,000-year-old sediment in North America and Europe. The only plausible explanation for this, say the authors, is a planetary catastrophe of the sort that bade farewell to the dinosaurs about 65 million years earlier.

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LIFE Photo Archive Hosted By Google

From Google:

Search millions of photographs from the LIFE photo archive, stretching from the 1750s to today. Most were never published and are now available for the first time through the joint work of LIFE and Google.

My Comment: An incredible collection of Life photos that can be easily searched and/or browsed through.

The link is HERE.

Top 5 Incredible Science Discoveries of 2008

From Live Science:

Science is mostly an incremental process, a slow peeling of the onion to offer small glimpses of understanding. But over time, scientists remove enough layers to expose stunning truths about nature.

This year offered some intriguing revelations along these lines. Below are the top 5.

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The Top 10 Green-Tech Breakthroughs Of 2008

From Wired News:

Green technology was hot in 2008. Barack Obama won the presidential election promising green jobs to Rust Belt workers. Investors poured $5 billion into the sector just through the first nine months of the year. And even Texas oilmen like T. Boone Pickens started pushing alternative energy as a replacement for fossil fuels like petroleum, coal and natural gas.

But there's trouble on the horizon. The economy is hovering somewhere between catatonic and hebephrenic, and funding for the big plans that green tech companies laid in 2008 might be a lot harder to come by in 2009. Recessions haven't always been the best times for environmentally friendly technologies as consumers and corporations cut discretionary spending on ethical premiums.

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If Climate Didn't Doom Neanderthals, Did Humans?

A map of Europe and part of the Middle East depicts the approximate range of the Neanderthals as provided by Richard Klein. The illustration below demonstrates some of the differences in the skulls between Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons. Illustration copyright Richard Klein (Image from National Geographic)

From Wired News:

Neanderthals could handle the weather, but they couldn't handle us, concludes a new analysis of late-Pleistocene hominid habitation.

Soon after modern humans arrived in Western Europe, plenty of temperate, food-rich habitat existed for our evolutionary near-brothers — but their settlements dwindled, and modern human settlements spread.

These patterns suggest that one of modern anthropological history's great mysteries had a harsh ending: a competition in which Neanderthals, for reasons still unknown, were doomed.

"Neanderthals didn't end up being the champion lineage that emerged from the end of the Pleistocene," said study co-author A. Townsend Peterson, a Kansas University evolutionary biologist. "Wouldn't it be fascinating to understand that weird point in human history, when there were two lineages of Homo, in the same region?"

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One World, Many Minds: Intelligence In The Animal Kingdom

Jupiterimages

From Scientific American:

We are used to thinking of humans as occupying the sole pinnacle of evolutionary intelligence. That's where we're wrong

* Despite cartoons you may have seen showing a straight line of fish emerging on land to become primates and then humans, evolution is not so linear. The brains of other animals are not merely previous stages that led directly to human intelligence.
* Instead—as is the case with many traits—complex brains and sophisticated cognition have arisen multiple times in independent lineages of animals during the earth’s evolutionary history.
* With this new understanding comes a new appreciation for intelligence in its many forms. So-called lower animals, such as fish, reptiles and birds, display a startling array of cognitive capabilities. Goldfish, for instance, have shown they can negotiate watery mazes similar to the way rats do in intelligence tests in the lab.

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Most Extreme News Stories Of 2008

From New Scientist:

It's been a year of extremes for science and technology. From camera footage of the deepest living fish, swimming some 5 miles beneath the surface of the Pacific ocean, to the creation of the smoothest ever surface - a lead and silicon film.

Here are eight more extremes that New Scientist brought you in 2008.

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Researchers Unlock Secrets Of 1918 Flu Pandemic

Policemen in Seattle wearing masks made by the Red Cross, during the influenza epidemic in a National Archives photo dated December 1918. (National Archives/Handout/Reuters)

From Yahoo News/Reuters:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Researchers have found out what made the 1918 flu pandemic so deadly -- a group of three genes that lets the virus invade the lungs and cause pneumonia.

They mixed samples of the 1918 influenza strain with modern seasonal flu viruses to find the three genes and said their study might help in the development of new flu drugs.

The discovery, published in Tuesday's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could also point to mutations that might turn ordinary flu into a dangerous pandemic strain.

Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin and colleagues at the Universities of Kobe and Tokyo in Japan used ferrets, which develop flu in ways very similar to humans.

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Christmas Star Mystery Continues

The fabled Star of Bethlehem (shown above in a conceptual photo) may have been a series of events with great meaning for ancient skywatchers or a single planetary conjunction, astronomers suggest. Photograph by Thomas Nebbia/NGS

From National Geographic:

In the Bible, a celestial beacon now known as the Star of Bethlehem led the Magi, or wise men, to Jesus's manger.

Astronomers have been debating for centuries whether the star existed and, if so, what it might have been. Comets, meteor showers, and supernovae have all been proposed, but in recent years two main theories have come to dominate the discussion.

The first relates to a singular planetary gathering, or conjunction, of the bright planets Venus and Jupiter. A particularly striking conjunction occurred in June 17, 2 B.C.

It makes for a probable Christmas star, some astronomers say, because the two bright planets appeared so close in the evening sky that they would have seemed to merge.

"There is no doubt that for skywatchers at the time it looked like a massive, single starlike object in the western evening sky," said Ed Krupp, director of the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, California.

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Julia Roberts Was Born With A Beautiful Smile

The study found faking a smirk is innate. True smiles like Roberts’ toothsome grin cause the eyes to twinkle and narrow and the cheeks to rise. Munawar Hosain / Getty Images file

From MSNBC/Live Science:

Study finds facial expressions are genetic — not learned

From sneers to full-blown smiles, our facial expressions are hardwired into our genes, suggests a new study.

The researchers compared the facial expressions from more than 4,800 photographs of sighted and blind judo athletes at the 2004 Summer Olympics and Paralympic Games.

The analyses showed sighted and blind individuals modified their expressions of emotion in the same way in accordance with the social context. For example, in the Paralympics, the athletes competed in a series of elimination rounds so that the final round of two athletes ended in the winner taking home a gold medal while the loser got a silver medal.

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Lessons For Other Smokers In Obama's Efforts To Quit

Franklin D. Roosevelt smoked cigarettes, and John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton occasionally smoked cigars. Gerald R. Ford preferred a pipe. (Clockwise from top left: AP; Henry Griffin/AP; AP; Mark Wilson/A)

From International Herald Tribune:

Will one of President-elect Barack Obama's New Year's resolutions be to quit smoking once and for all?

His good-humored waffling in various interviews about smoking made it plain that Obama, like many who have vowed to quit at this time of year, had not truly done so.

He told Tom Brokaw of NBC several weeks ago, for example, that he "had stopped" but that "there are times where I've fallen off the wagon." He promised to obey the no-smoking rules in the White House, but whether that meant he would be ducking out the back door for a smoke is not known. His transition team declined to answer any questions about his smoking, past or present, or his efforts to quit.

Anti-smoking activists would love to see Obama use his bully pulpit to inspire others to join him in trying to kick the habit, but he has not yet taken up their cause.

The last president to smoke more than occasionally was Gerald Ford, who was quite fond of his pipes. Jimmy Carter and both Presidents George Bush were reportedly abstainers, but Bill Clinton liked cigars from time to time - though he may have chewed more than he smoked.

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Satellites Unearthing Ancient Egyptian Ruins

Photo: The enclosure wall of the Great Aten temple in Egypt, as seen from the QuickBird satellite.

From CNN:

(CNN) -- Archaeologists believe they have unearthed only a small fraction of Egypt's ancient ruins, but they're making new discoveries with help from high-tech allies -- satellites that peer into the past from the distance of space.

"Everyone's becoming more aware of this technology and what it can do," said Sarah Parcak, an archaeologist who heads the Laboratory for Global Health at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. "There is so much to learn."

Images from space have been around for decades. Yet only in the past decade or so has the resolution of images from commercial satellites sharpened enough to be of much use to archaeologists. Today, scientists can use them to locate ruins -- some no bigger than a small living room -- in some of the most remote and forbidding places on the planet.

In this field, Parcak is a pioneer. Her work in Egypt has yielded hundreds of finds in regions of the Middle Egypt and the eastern Nile River Delta.

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Burning Coal At Home Is Making A Comeback

Kyle Buck of Sugarloaf, Pa., fills a stove with anthracite coal as his wife, Kelly, plays with their daughter Lila. Laura Pedrick for The New York Times

From The New York Times:

SUGARLOAF, Pa. — Kyle Buck heaved open the door of a makeshift bin abutting his suburban ranch house. Staring at a two-ton pile of coal that was delivered by truck a few weeks ago, Mr. Buck worried aloud that it would not be enough to last the winter.

“I think I’m going through it faster than I thought I would,” he said.

Aptly, perhaps, for an era of hard times, coal is making a comeback as a home heating fuel.

Problematic in some ways and difficult to handle, coal is nonetheless a cheap, plentiful, mined-in-America source of heat. And with the cost of heating oil and natural gas increasingly prone to spikes, some homeowners in the Northeast, pockets of the Midwest and even Alaska are deciding coal is worth the trouble.

Burning coal at home was once commonplace, of course, but the practice had been declining for decades. Coal consumption for residential use hit a low of 258,000 tons in 2006 — then started to rise. It jumped 9 percent in 2007, according to the Energy Information Administration, and 10 percent more in the first eight months of 2008.

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European Neanderthals Had Ginger Hair And Freckles

The gene known as MC1R suggests the Neanderthals had
fair skin and even freckles like redheads.

From The Telegraph:

Neanderthals living in Europe were fair skinned, freckled and had ginger hair, a study has revealed.

In a major breakthrough, Spanish scientists have discovered the blood group and two other genes of the early humans who lived 43,000 ago.

After analysing the fossil bones found in a cave in north-west Spain, the experts concluded they had human blood group "O" and were genetically more likely to be fair skinned, perhaps even with freckles, have red or ginger hair and could talk.

The investigating team from Spain's government scientific institute, CSIC, used the very latest forensic techniques to remove the bones for analysis to prevent them getting contaminated with modern DNA.

Carles Lalueza, an evolutionary biologist with the investigation, said: "What we were trying to do was to create the most realistic image of the Neanderthals with details that are not visible in the fossils, but which form part of their identity."

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Natural Disasters 'Killed Over 220,000' In 2008

From Yahoo News/AFP:

BERLIN (AFP) – Natural disasters killed over 220,000 people in 2008, making it one of the most devastating years on record and underlining the need for a global climate deal, the world's number two reinsurer said Monday.

Although the number of natural disasters was lower than in 2007, the catastrophes that occurred proved to be more destructive in terms of the number of victims and the financial cost of the damage caused, Germany-based Munich Re said in its annual assessment.

"This continues the long-term trend we have been observing. Climate change has already started and is very probably contributing to increasingly frequent weather extremes and ensuing natural catastrophes," Munich Re board member Torsten Jeworrek said.

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Lifeline For Renewable Power

Photo: Green lines: Tapping energy from remote wind and solar farms will require more high-voltage transmission lines like these, near Yermo, CA, which link southern Nevada with Los Angeles. Credit: Ewan Burns

From Technology Review:

Without a radically expanded and smarter electrical grid, wind and solar will remain niche power sources.

Push through a bulletproof revolving door in a nondescript building in a dreary patch of the former East Berlin and you enter the control center for Vattenfall Europe Transmission, the company that controls northeastern Germany's electrical grid. A monitor displaying a diagram of that grid takes up most of one wall. A series of smaller screens show the real-time output of regional wind turbines and the output that had been predicted the previous day. Germany is the world's largest user of wind energy, with enough turbines to produce 22,250 megawatts of electricity. That's roughly the equivalent of the output from 22 coal plants--enough to meet about 6 percent of Germany's needs. And because Vattenfall's service area produces 41 percent of German wind energy, the control room is a critical proving ground for the grid's ability to handle renewable power.

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Why Isn't The Darkest Month Of The Year Also The Coldest?

From Slate:

Sunday marked the winter solstice—both the official start of winter and the shortest day of the year. But December is rarely as cold as January. Why isn't the month with the least sunlight also the one with the lowest temperatures?

Because water retains heat. Between 70 percent and 75 percent of the Earth's surface is covered in oceans, rivers, and lakes. (There's even more water vaporized in the air or stored in the ground.) During seasons of longer days and more sunlight, these geographical features are able to store up and retain heat over long periods of time, before emitting it as the days get shorter. A body of water is far more effective as a space heater than, say, a big field of rocks: The water holds on to five times as much heat per gram.

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Humans And Chimps Register Faces By Using Similar Brain Regions

Photo: Chimpanzee. Chimpanzees recognize their pals by using some of the same brain regions that switch on when humans register a familiar face. (Credit: iStockphoto)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Dec. 27, 2008) — Chimpanzees recognize their pals by using some of the same brain regions that switch on when humans register a familiar face, according to a report published online on December 18th in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication. The study—the first to examine brain activity in chimpanzees after they attempt to match fellow chimps' faces—offers new insight into the origin of face recognition in humans, the researchers said.

"We can learn about human origins by studying our closest relatives," said Lisa Parr, a researcher at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center, Emory University. "We can discover what aspects of human cognition are really unique and which are present in other animals."

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2009 To Arrive Not A Second Too Soon

From Yahoo News/Space:

Wait a second. The start of next year will be delayed by circumstances beyond everyone's control. Time will stand still for one second on New Year's Eve, as we ring in the New Year on that Wednesday night. As a result, you'll have an extra second to celebrate because a "Leap Second" will be added to 2008 to let a lagging Earth catch up to super-accurate clocks.

By international agreement, the world's timekeepers, in order to keep their official atomic clocks in step with the world's irregular but gradually slowing rotation, have decreed that a Leap Second be inserted between 2008 and 2009.

The extra second, ordered by the world's nominal timekeeper, the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service, will be marked officially at the stroke of midnight on Wednesday in Greenwich, England, the home of what is popularly known as Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) – Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) to the more technically inclined – the standard time for the planet.

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Half Of The USA Is Covered In Snow

From Watts Up With That?:

This is something you don’t see every day. We recently heard that Canada had a white Christmas EVERYWHERE, the first time in four decades. Here we see that the USA has an increased albedo (surface reflectivity) for about 1/2 of it’s land area. The increased albedo combined with low sun angle this time of year conspires to keep ice and snow unmelted.

Look for a long and extended winter weather pattern as we head towards the spring equinox, which can’t get here fast enough.

Here is a more colorful view of snow depth on Dec 25th from the National Hydrologic Remote Sensing Center:

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Scientific Illiteracy All The Rage Among The Glitterati

Kate Moss, who believes diet can detox your body. GETTY IMAGES

From The Independent:

When it comes to science, Barack Obama is no better than many of us. Today he joins the list of shame of those in public life who made scientifically unsupportable statements in 2008.

Closer to home, Nigella Lawson and Delia Smith faltered on the science of food, while Kate Moss, Oprah Winfrey and Demi Moore all get roastings for scientific illiteracy.

The Celebrities and Science Review 2008, prepared by the group Sense About Science, identifies some of the worst examples of scientific illiteracy among those who profess to know better – including top politicians.

Mr Obama and John McCain blundered into the MMR vaccine row during their presidential campaigns. "We've seen just a skyrocketing autism rate," said President-elect Obama. "Some people are suspicious that it's connected to the vaccines. This person included. The science right now is inconclusive, but we have to research it," he said.

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2008 Was The Year Man-Made Global Warming Was Disproved

Polar bears will be fine after all Photo: AP

From The Telegraph:

Looking back over my columns of the past 12 months, one of their major themes was neatly encapsulated by two recent items from The Daily Telegraph.

The first, on May 21, headed "Climate change threat to Alpine ski resorts" , reported that the entire Alpine "winter sports industry" could soon "grind to a halt for lack of snow". The second, on December 19, headed "The Alps have best snow conditions in a generation" , reported that this winter's Alpine snowfalls "look set to beat all records by New Year's Day".

Easily one of the most important stories of 2008 has been all the evidence suggesting that this may be looked back on as the year when there was a turning point in the great worldwide panic over man-made global warming. Just when politicians in Europe and America have been adopting the most costly and damaging measures politicians have ever proposed, to combat this supposed menace, the tide has turned in three significant respects.

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Dino Extinction May Have Been Caused By ‘Magnetic Chaos’

From Zeenews.com:

Washington, Dec 13: A new theory has suggested that the mass extinction event that killed the dinosaurs 250 million years ago, was caused by the Earth’s magnetic field going into complete disarray, exposing the planet to a shower of cosmic radiation.

According to a report in Discovery News, the theory has been put forward by Yukio Isozaki of the University of Tokyo.

The Permian-Triassic mass extinction event happened 250 million years ago, snuffing out 90 percent of life on the planet.

Now, the new theory by Isozaki suggests that the catastrophe was set in motion 15 million years earlier, deep in the Earth.

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Your Brain Sees $$$ More Clearly Than You Know

Photo: Visual areas of the brain that responded more to valuable objects in a study that shows our brain may recognize value better than our conscious mind. Credit: John Serences, UC San Diego

From Live Science:

When you see something of value, your brain essentially sees dollar signs, a new study finds.

The effect occurs even if you don't consciously realize the object's worth.

Researchers scanned the brains of subjects who were presented with choices of constantly changing red and green objects that represented 10 cents or nothing, with good choices in a game leading to potential winnings of $10.

Upon seeing objects that had been of value previously, brain activity lit up in several areas, including a part of the cortex known as V1, which is associated with representing basic features such as edge orientations and color.

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NASA Looks Forward Beyond 2008 Successes

Photo: TS-126 spacewalker Heide Stefanyshyn-Piper rides the International Space Station's Canadarm2 to space shuttle Endeavour's payload bay, 18 Nov 2008

From Voice Of America:

At NASA, 2008 will be remembered for shuttle missions, discoveries on Mars, and mysteries revealed across the solar system and beyond. While looking back at the U.S. space agency's 2008 successes, VOA looks at the agency's uncertain future and its plans to bring humankind to Moon.

NASA's Constellation project is accelerating, with engineers building and testing rockets and capsules that will be the primary vehicles for human space exploration after the shuttle fleet is retired in 2010.

The core of NASA's current activities is a return to the moon, with astronauts landing there by 2020.

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Regenerate Your Brain? -The Science Says It's Possible

From Daily Galaxy:

Contrary to popular belief, recent studies have found that there are probably ways to regenerate brain matter.

Animal studies conducted at the National Institute on Aging Gerontology Research Center and the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, for example, have shown that both calorie restriction and intermittent fasting along with vitamin and mineral intake, increase resistance to disease, extend lifespan, and stimulate production of neurons from stem cells.

In addition, fasting has been shown to enhance synaptic elasticity, possibly increasing the ability for successful re-wiring following brain injury. These benefits appear to result from a cellular stress response, similar in concept to the greater muscular regeneration that results from the stress of regular exercise.

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The Shape Of Things To Come On The Internet

Internet Sites Could Be Given 'Cinema-Style Age Ratings', Culture Secretary Says -- The Telegraph

Internet sites could be given cinema-style age ratings as part of a Government crackdown on offensive and harmful online activity to be launched in the New Year, the Culture Secretary says.

In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Andy Burnham says he believes that new standards of decency need to be applied to the web. He is planning to negotiate with Barack Obama’s incoming American administration to draw up new international rules for English language websites.

The Cabinet minister describes the internet as “quite a dangerous place” and says he wants internet-service providers (ISPs) to offer parents “child-safe” web services.

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Winter Cold Puts A Chill On Green Energy

In Minnesota, Alan Stankevitz did a new winter chore for homeowners: clearing the solar panels. Alan Stankevitz

From The New York Times:

Old Man Winter, it turns out, is no friend of renewable energy.

This time of year, wind turbine blades ice up, biodiesel congeals in tanks and solar panels produce less power because there is not as much sun. And perhaps most irritating to the people who own them, the panels become covered with snow, rendering them useless even in bright winter sunshine.

So in regions where homeowners have long rolled their eyes at shoveling driveways, add another cold-weather chore: cleaning off the solar panels. “At least I can get to them with a long pole and a squeegee,” said Alan Stankevitz, a homeowner in southeast Minnesota.

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Space Station Cargo Delivery Still Expensive

From Future Pundit:

Orbital Sciences Corp has won a $1.9 billion contract to carry 20 metric tons of cargo to the International Space Station in 8 flights. Think about those numbers. That's $95 million per metric ton to move cargo from ground level to low orbit. Those deliveries start in 2011 and run through 2015. A metric ton is 1000 kilograms or 2204.6 lbs. So the cost of putting stuff into low Earth orbit in 2015 is still going to be around $43k per lb or $95k per kg. At these prices large scale human colonization of space still seems a very distant prospect.

Those costs will come down a lot if a beanstalk into space built using nanotubes becomes possible. A bigger cost reduction for a Mars mission will come from nanotech advances. A bunch of nanodevices that can transform Mars landscape and produce needed supplies for a colony would reduce the size of the payload needed for setting up an initial colony.

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Google's Grand Ambitions

From CBS:

(CNET) Google stretched its wings in 2008, furthering an expansion beyond its core search and search-advertising business. But the economy and the government raised the possibility that those wings could be clipped.

The company began the year overcoming opposition to its $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick, a move that gave Google more clout in the market for graphical "display" ads. But that antitrust fight was a harbinger of things to come.

In April, Google showed its ambitions to house not just its own online applications such as Google Docs, but also others' with a project called Google App Engine. Basic applications are free, but more taxing ones cost money, a pay-as-you-go model that's popular with the cloud-computing concept.

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