'Longevity Gene' Common Among People Living To 100 Years Old And Beyond

Dr. Friederike Flachsbart (left) and Professor Almut Nebel of the Kiel Institute of Clinical Molecular Biology examining the genetic samples from 100-year-old subjects. (Credit: Copyright: CAU; picture by Sandra Ogriseck)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Feb. 4, 2009) — A variation in the gene FOXO3A has a positive effect on the life expectancy of humans, and is found much more often in people living to 100 and beyond – moreover, this appears to be true worldwide.

A research group in the Faculty of Medicine at the Christian-Albrechts-University in Kiel (CAU) has now confirmed this assumption by comparing DNA samples taken from 388 German centenarians with those from 731 younger people. The results of the study appear this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ("PNAS").

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Timing of Seasons Is Changing

Image from Businessweek

From Live Science:

The Earth's seasons have shifted back in the calendar year, with the hottest and coldest days of the years now occurring almost two days earlier, a new study finds.

This shift could be the work of global warming, the researchers say.

To figure this out, scientists at the University of California, Berkeley and Harvard studied temperature data from 1850 to 2007 compiled by the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit in the United Kingdom.

They found that temperatures over land in the 100-year period between 1850 and 1950 showed a simple, natural pattern of variability, with the hottest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere landing around July 21. But from the mid-1950s onward (the period when global average temperatures began to rise), the hottest day came 1.7 days earlier.

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Valve Concerns Delay February Space Shuttle Launch

Space shuttle Discovery atop the crawler transporter nears the end of it's 3.4 mile journey to pad 39A to prepare for the next launch at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2009. Discovery is scheduled to launch on Feb. 12. (AP Photo/John Raoux)

From Yahoo News/Space.com:

NASA has delayed the planned Feb. 12 launch of the space shuttle Discovery by least a week to allow extra time to evaluate vital fuel valves on the spacecraft, agency officials said late Tuesday.

Discovery was slated to launch toward the International Space Station on Feb. 12 to deliver the last set of U.S.-built solar arrays to the orbiting laboratory. The mission is now scheduled to blast off no earlier than Feb. 19 at about 4:41 a.m. EST (0941 GMT), but an official launch target will be determined at a later date.

"By looking at it right now, we think it's about a week delay, but we're not going to put pressure on the team," said John Shannon, NASA's space shuttle program manager, in a briefing at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. "We'll just let the information drive us."

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Astronomers Discover Link Between Supermassive Black Holes And Galaxy Formation

Two giant elliptical galaxies, NGC 4621 and NGC 4472, look similar from a distance, as seen on the right in images from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. But zooming into these galaxies' cores with Hubble Space Telescope reveals their differences (left, black and white images). NGC 4621 shows a bright core, while NGC 4472 is much dimmer. The core of this galaxy is populated with fewer stars. Many stars have been slung out of the core when the galaxy collided and merged with another. Their two supermassive black holes orbited each other, and their great gravity sent stars careening out of the galaxy's core. (Credit: NASA/AURA/STScI and WikiSky/SDSS)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Feb. 3, 2009) — A pair of astronomers from Texas and Germany have used a telescope at The University of Texas at Austin's McDonald Observatory together with Hubble Space Telescope and many other telescopes around the world to uncover new evidence that the largest, most massive galaxies in the universe and the supermassive black holes at their hearts grew together over time.

"They evolved in lockstep," said The University of Texas at Austin's John Kormendy, who co-authored the research with Ralf Bender of Germany's Max-Planck-Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics and Ludwig Maximilians University Observatory. The results are puiblished in this week's issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters.

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U.S. Becomes Top Wind Producer, Solar Next

Vail Resorts said Tuesday that it would buy credits for wind power like that generated by the turbines at the Gray County Wind Farm in Kansas. Orlin Wagner/Associated Press

From Scientific American:

LONDON (Reuters) - The United States overtook Germany as the biggest producer of wind power last year, new figures showed, and will likely take the lead in solar power this year, analysts said on Monday.

Even before an expected "Obama bounce" from a new President who has vowed to boost clean energy, U.S. wind power capacity surged 50 percent last year to 25 gigwatts (GW) -- enough to power more than five million homes.

Political and business leaders worldwide have urged "green growth" spending on clean energy to fight both recession and climate change.

German wind power capacity reached nearly 24 GW, placing it second ahead of Spain and fourth-placed China, which doubled its installed wind power for the forth year running, said the Brussels-based Global Wind Energy Council.

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New .tel Domain Names Set To Create The World's Virtual Phone Book

From The Independent:

Millions of new internet addresses are put up for sale today, giving the public the chance to insert their entry into the world’s largest phone book.

The new “.tel” domain names go up for grabs this afternoon. Unlike other website addresses, however, they are not meant to act as catchy names for websites but rather to become people’s individual entries in a universal virtual directory.

Companies and individuals are being encouraged to list their phone numbers, websites, postal addresses, e-mail addresses and even their Facebook details in their .tel entry.

“.tel is your place on the internet, which will act like a switchboard.” said Kash Mahdavi, the chief executive of Telnic, the London-based company that runs the .tel registry. “You can say, ‘Here are my Facebook details, here is my mobile number, and people will always be able to find you’.”

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Dean Kamen Aims 'To Fix The World' With A 200-Year-Old Engine.

Dean Kamen wants to 'to fix the world' - using a 200-year-old engine Photo: BLAKE FITCH

Dean Kamen: Part Man, Part Machine -- The Telegraph

Some see Dean Kamen as a Willy Wonka character whose most famous invention - the Segway personal transporter - is still the butt of jokes. Others compare him to Henry Ford. His next project, after perfecting an electric car, is to 'to fix the world' - using a 200-year-old engine nobody else thinks can work. By Adam Higginbotham

Ten years ago, on the summit of a hill in the verdant New England countryside, at the highest point he could find between Boston and Manchester, New Hampshire, Dean Kamen designed and built the sprawling, hexagonal house he called Westwind.

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Biofuels More Harmful To Humans Than Petrol And Diesel, Warn Scientists

A jatropha nursery in the Ivory Coast. Photograph: Kambou Sia/AFP/Getty Images

From The Guardian:

Corn-based bioethanol has higher burden on environment and human health, says US study

Some biofuels cause more health problems than petrol and diesel, according to scientists who have calculated the health costs associated with different types of fuel.

The study shows that corn-based bioethanol, which is produced extensively in the US, has a higher combined environmental and health burden than conventional fuels. However, there are high hopes for the next generation of biofuels, which can be made from organic waste or plants grown on marginal land that is not used to grow foods. They have less than half the combined health and environmental costs of standard gasoline and a third of current biofuels.

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Smallest Exoplanet Is Most Earth-like Yet

From Wired News:

The smallest exoplanet ever seen is less than twice the size of Earth, and orbits a star similar to our sun. Astronomers recently spotted this world, the most Earth-like planet yet discovered, with the COROT satellite.

"For the first time, we have unambiguously detected a planet that is 'rocky' in the same sense as our own Earth,” said Malcolm Fridlund, ESA COROT project scientist.

For all its similarity to our own globe, though, it is still a far cry away from a habitable Earth-twin. For one thing, it is so hot — between 1,830 and 2,730 degrees Fahrenheit — that scientists think it might be covered in lava. It orbits extremely close to its sun and whips around the star once every 20 hours.

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Google Ocean Will Let Users Explore Shipwrecks And Reefs In The Deep Blue Sea

Watch footage of Google Ocean here...



From Daily Mail:

They cover two thirds of the globe and contain 80 per cent of all life.

Yet the oceans are such as mystery that we know more about the surface of the Moon than we do about the undersea world.

Now for the first time, aspiring Jacques Cousteaus will be able to explore every square mile of the sea from the comfort of their own homes.

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When Dreams Come True

Photo from Haikudesigns

From Science News:

People interpret dreams in ways that affect their waking lives, especially when those dreams support pre-existing beliefs

Dreams don’t just bubble up at night and then evaporate like morning dew once the sun rises. What you dream shapes what you think about your upcoming plans and your closest confidants, especially if nighttime reveries fit with what’s already convenient to believe, a new report finds.

In an effort to understand whether people take their dreams seriously, Carey Morewedge of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and Michael Norton of Harvard University surveyed 149 college students attending universities in India, South Korea or the United States about theories of dream function.

People across cultures often assume that dreams contain hidden truths, much as Sigmund Freud posited more than a century ago, Morewedge and Norton report in the February Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. In fact, many individuals consider dreams to provide more meaningful information regarding daily affairs than comparable waking thoughts do, the two psychologists conclude.

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Windows 7: Better Late Than Never

(AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

From CBS News:

Larry Magid Says Windows 7 Is What Vista Should Have Been

(CBS) I don't know why it took so long, but Microsoft has finally fixed Vista. Only it isn't calling it Vista. Instead the company is working on what it's calling a new version of Windows -- Windows 7. The operating system isn't commercially available but is likely to be out by the end of the year.

I don't know how much Microsoft plans to charge for the upgrade once it's officially available, but they should give it away free to anyone who bought Vista or a PC with Vista preinstalled. Even though there are some new features, Windows 7 strikes me mostly as a bug fix. It speeds up Windows and fixes one of its most annoying "features" and makes one particularly useful change to the user interface. It seems to me that anyone who paid for Vista is entitled to this upgrade.

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Treasure Hunters Say They’ve Found a 1744 Shipwreck

A bronze cannon recovered from the wreck of the HMS Victory was hoisted onto the deck of the Odyssey Explorer. Photo courtesy of Odyssey Marine Exploration

From The New York Times:

Sea explorers probing the depths of the English Channel have discovered what they say is a legendary British warship that sank in a fierce storm in 1744, losing more than 900 men and possibly four tons of gold coins that could be worth $1 billion.

The team found the wreckage of the warship, the H.M.S. Victory, last year and confirmed its identity through a close examination of 41 bronze cannons visible on the sandy bottom, Gregory P. Stemm, head of the discovery team, said Monday at a news conference in London.

The team lifted two of the cannons from the seabed and gave them to the British Defense Ministry, he said. The team’s leaders are now negotiating with British authorities on the disposition of the artifacts and treasure before the divers attempt further recoveries.

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Nuclear Fusion Fission Hybrid Reactor To Destroy Waste

Photo from ABC News (Australia)

From Future Pundit:

The idea behind long term (tens or hundreds of thousands of years) nuclear waste storage facilities is that we can't solve the nuclear waste disposal problem quickly. But matter is so manipulable in the hands of sufficiently smart scientists and technologists that sometimes supposedly insolvable problems become solvable. UT Austin researchers think they know how to convert nuclear power plant waste into far safer elements with a hybrid reactor.

AUSTIN, Texas--Physicists at The University of Texas at Austin have designed a new system that, when fully developed, would use fusion to eliminate most of the transuranic waste produced by nuclear power plants.

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Biodiversity Hotspot Enabled Neanderthals To Survive Longer In South East Of Spain

Photo: Present day landscapes of Gibraltar (above) and reconstructed landscapes of Gibraltar from 30,000 years ago (below). (Credit: Museum of Gibraltar)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Feb. 2, 2009) — Over 14,000 years ago during the last Pleistocene Ice Age, when a large part of the European continent was covered in ice and snow, Neanderthals in the region of Gibraltar in the south of the Iberian peninsula were able to survive because of the refugium of plant and animal biodiversity. Today, plant fossil remains discovered in Gorham's Cave confirm this unique diversity and wealth of resources available in this area of the planet.

The international team jointly led by Spanish researchers has reconstructed the landscape near Gorham's Cave in Gibraltar, by means of paleobotanical data (plant fossil records) located in the geological deposits investigated between 1997 and 2004. The study, which is published in the Quaternary Science Reviews, also re-examines previous findings relating to the glacial refugia for trees during the ice age in the Iberian Peninsula.

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FDA Approves Test To Inject Embryonic Stem Cells Into Humans

Image from ProQuest

From Live Science:

The federal government has approved the first study by a company that will use human embryonic stem cells injected into a human.

The Geron corporation announce the approval today. The therapy used in the study is designed to treat spinal cord injuries by injecting stem cells — which are able to transform into the many different types of cells we need in our bodies — directly into the patients' spinal cords.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted clearance of the company's application for the clinical trial of GRNOPC1 in patients with acute spinal cord injury.

"This marks the beginning of what is potentially a new chapter in medical therapeutics - one that reaches beyond pills to a new level of healing: the restoration of organ and tissue function achieved by the injection of healthy replacement cells," said Geron's president and CEO. Dr. Thomas B. Okarma.

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Japan Warns Of Volcano Eruption Within 48 Hours

Japan' has warned the Mount Asama volcano could erupt within 48 hours Photo: Reuters

From The Telegraph:

Tens of thousands of people living near Japan's volatile Mount Asama have been told to brace themselves for a major volcanic eruption within 48 hours.

The volcano is one of Japan's most active and last erupted in September 2004 when molten rock and ash blanketed areas more than 125 miles from the crater.

Even by Japanese standards, Mount Asama is an active volcano, with frequent bouts of activity over recent years. The most famous eruption came in 1783 and caused the deaths of more than 1,500 people and widespread damage.

Japan's Meteorological Agency yesterday raised the alert level for the 8,420ft peak, warning of an imminent eruption and forbidding anyone to scale the mountain.

More than 45,000 nearby residents have been put on alert and told to be ready to leave their homes within two hours notice.

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Update: Volcano erupts near Tokyo raining ash down on city -- Seattle PI/AP

Rubik's Revenge: Cube Inventor Set To Launch 21st Century Version Of Iconic Puzzle

Rubik's 360 (Click On Image To Enlarge)

From The Daily Telegraph:

For a few years the Rubik's Cube had millions under its spell.

Umpteen hours were spent on the infuriating device, which became the fastest selling puzzle of all time.

Eventually of course, more and more discovered the secret of how to solve it and word spread that youngsters were cracking the Cube in as little as eight seconds.

To the inventor, Professor Erno Rubik, this was merely the challenge to create something even more difficult.

And he appears to have done just that with the Rubik's 360, which is due to be formally unveiled this week.

Using the same formula of an apparently simple task that is maddeningly hard to complete, it involves moving plastic balls through a set of transparent spheres.

Professor Rubik, 64, a reclusive Hungarian, said: 'The 360 is one of the most innovative and exciting puzzles we've developed since the Cube, adopting elements of myoriginal design, challenging the solver to use skill, dexterity and logic.'

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Can A Person Be Scared To Death?

Edvard Munch's famous painting: "The Scream"

From Scientific American:

A 79-year-old woman dies in North Carolina after a heart attack brought on by terror.

A Charlotte, N.C., man was charged with first-degree murder of a 79-year-old woman whom police said he scared to death. In an attempt to elude cops after a botched bank robbery, the Associated Press reports that 20-year-old Larry Whitfield broke into and hid out in the home of Mary Parnell. Police say he didn't touch Parnell but that she died after suffering a heart attack that was triggered by terror. Can the fugitive be held responsible for the woman's death? Prosecutors said that he can under the state's so-called felony murder rule, which allows someone to be charged with murder if he or she causes another person's death while committing or fleeing from a felony crime such as robbery—even if it's unintentional.

But, medically speaking, can someone actually be frightened to death? We asked Martin A. Samuels, chairman of the neurology department at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

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Extinct Ibex Is Resurrected By Cloning

Young Spanish ibex (Capra pyrenaica), Sierra de Gredos, Spain
Photo: Jose Luis GOMEZ de FRANCISCO/naturepl.com

From The Telegraph:

An extinct animal has been brought back to life for the first time after being cloned from frozen tissue.

The Pyrenean ibex, a form of wild mountain goat, was officially declared extinct in 2000 when the last-known animal of its kind was found dead in northern Spain.

Shortly before its death, scientists preserved skin samples of the goat, a subspecies of the Spanish ibex that live in mountain ranges across the country, in liquid nitrogen.

Using DNA taken from these skin samples, the scientists were able to replace the genetic material in eggs from domestic goats, to clone a female Pyrenean ibex, or bucardo as they are known. It is the first time an extinct animal has been cloned.

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My Comment: This is incredible. The implications of this development are profound. Extinct species will be able to be cloned and returned to life.

Too Much TV Linked To Future Fast-food Intake

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Feb. 1, 2009) — High-school kids who watch too much TV are likely to have bad eating habits five years in the future. A new study followed almost 2000 high- and middle-school children and found that TV viewing times predict a poor diet in the future.

Dr Daheia Barr-Anderson worked with a team of researchers from the University of Minnesota to investigate the relationship between television and diet. She said, "To our knowledge, this is the first study to examine the association between television viewing and diet over the transition from adolescence into young adulthood. We've shown that TV viewing during adolescence predicts poorer dietary intake patterns five years later".

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CO2, Temperatures, and Ice AgesA

Click The Image To Enlarge
(Source: http://www.brighton73.freeserve.co.uk/gw/paleo/400000yrfig.htm)

From Watts Up With That:

It is generally accepted that CO2 is lagging temperature in Antarctic graphs. To dig further into this subject therefore might seem a waste of time. But the reality is, that these graphs are still widely used as an argument for the global warming hypothesis. But can the CO2-hypothesis be supported in any way using the data of Antarctic ice cores?

At first glance, the CO2 lagging temperature would mean that it’s the temperature that controls CO2 and not vice versa.

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Water Plays Surprising Role in Climate Change

The twisting road up Mauna Loa's lava fields rises above the clouds.
Credit: CIRES, University of Colorado at Boulder

From Live Science:

This Behind the Scenes article was provided to LiveScience in partnership with the National Science Foundation.

With its sea turtles and surf shops, the Big Island of Hawaii resembles a tropical, watery world. Yet for climate scientists, it's the ideal place to study low-humidity air and the processes that dehydrate the atmosphere.

From the sprawling dome of Mauna Loa — 11,000 feet above Hawaii's coconut-fringed beaches — climate scientists David Noone and Joe Galewsky can track water vapor that's traveled as far as the equator and the pole. They're the first to try to measure vapor's chemical signature in real-time in order to understand the processes controlling the global water cycle.

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The Tech That Makes The Super Bowl Super

From CNET:

At its core, football represents the polar opposite of technology: A bunch of large men run around a field, battling for position and the control of a small pigskin ball.

Of course, the production of an actual NFL game requires lots of technology--from the headsets coaches use to communicate, to the computers used to calculate statistics to the HD cameras that record the contest for the viewing audience.

When it comes to the Super Bowl, one of the biggest sporting events in the world, technology has always played a very central role, and this year is no exception.

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Science May Explain Our Love Of Sports

Super Bowl 42

From Kansas City:

A relatively recent discovery in science may explain our country’s obsession with watching sports — like the expected audience of 90 million or so for today’s Super Bowl.

They call them “mirror neurons,” and they fire in your brain much the same way whether you’re doing something or watching someone else do it. The discovery killed a lot of assumptions scientists had about brain activity.

It explains why you get hungry if you see someone eating a juicy steak, thirsty when you see a cold drink — or excited when you watch sports.

“In a way, your brain is behaving the same way as (the athletes you’re watching),” says Marco Iacoboni, a neuroscientist at UCLA and the author of Mirroring People: The New Science of How We Connect with Others. “Your brain is making the same signals as the athletes you see on the screen, even if you’re just on the sofa eating popcorn.”

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Scientists To Football Players: Give Us Your Brains

Brains! Brains!!: Gaetan Lee (CC Licensed)

From Popular Science:

Amidst a growing body of evidence tying severe health problems to multiple concussions, researchers are tapping NFL stars for a more hands-on corroboration

Whenever rich people gather, charities flock hoping to solicit donations of time and money. But Chris Nowinski is asking NFL players at the Super Bowl this weekend for something a bit more personal. He wants them to donate their brains to science. And he’s getting what he wants.

Nowinski is the founder of the Sports Legacy Institute (SLI), which along with the Boston University School of Medicine is conducting autopsies on former athletes to research the effect of concussive impacts. To date eight former NFL players have promised to donate their brains to science after their death. Nowinski is a former professional wrestler who understands firsthand the potential ramifications of head impacts.

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Do Huge NFL Players Help Teams Win?

From Live Science:

When the Arizona Cardinals meet the Pittsburgh Steelers in Sunday's Super Bowl, every starting offensive lineman will be a member of the 300-pound club.

This season, there were more than 600 players — about 20 percent of the league — in triple donuts. Even with 6-foot plus heights, their Body Mass Index (BMI) levels are all in the range of grade 2 obesity, one step below what's called morbid obesity.

This super-sizing of NFL players has accelerated in recent years, and some studies suggest health risks are growing. But studies are conflicting on this point.

And the big question on the minds of coaches and owners: Do heavier players mean more wins? No, one study found.

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2009 Super Bowl Tech

Cool Science News Editor: Popular Mechanics has posted a number of fun and interesting links to the game of football, and to the Super Bowl. They are listed below ... so read and enjoy.

The Tech Behind the Football Broadcast-Only First Down Line. The yellow first down line is so ingrained now that NFL junkies may be disappointed when a real game reminds them its just an effect. Allen St. John explains the origin of the little line that makes first downs stand out, and how it works.

Meet the Guy Behind the Super Bowl's Sound. Scott Carter captures the grunts, chatter and tackles on the playing field for NFL Films. And he uses more than 300 pounds of gear to do it.

When Will the NFL Broadcast in 3D? A stereoscopic first is coming to Super Bowl XLIII in the form of a 3D commercial break, featuring the debut of Dreamworks Animations' 3D trailer for Monsters vs. Aliens as well as a spot for Sobe drinks. Is 3D football around the corner?

10 Steps in the High-Tech Evolution of Pro Football Helmets. In this exclusive kickoff weekend excerpt from the new PM book How a Curveball Curves: The Incredible Science of Sports, track the high-tech history of brain safety on the gridiron, from "head harnesses" to face masks

6 Questions for Telestrator Inventor Leonard Reiffel. On the eve of Super Bowl XLII, the man behind the digital doodler made famous by John Madden talks about his invention and the evolution of touchscreen tech

HDTV: Everything You Need to Know. We untangle television invention from realitymanual-freeby untangling the top 10 hi-def myths.

Football Physics: The Anatomy of a Hit The average football sack can produce a bone-shattering 1600 lbs of force. Armed with new tools, researchers are now studying the science of a gridiron fundamental: The tackle.

From UGO.com: Guys' Guide to Super Bowl History. Our friends at geek guy site UGO take a look at the history of the Super Bowl, the best games played in the history of the big game, and some of the bigger moments in mid-game entertainment.

High-Tech Brings High Stakes for Super Bowl XLI. With an estimated $7 billion wagered on the Big Game, websites vie for action with increasingly outlandish proposition wagersor prop betsthat make up nearly 50 percent of the total wagers because theyre accessible to those who dont exactly sweat the stat sheets.

Super Bowl XLI: Behind the High-Tech Scenes. Twenty-two guys play it, but 80 million people watch it. So for the biggest broadcast of the year, CBS Sports rigged up Dolphin Stadium with some 50 cameras, hundreds of engineers and a state-of-the-art lighting system special for the Big Game.

Head-Coach Headset Tech: Call in the Geeks. While football purists still get misty recalling a solitary strategist in a fedora scribbling X's and O's on a blackboard, that image of the head coach is as outdated as that of every rookie quarterback calling his own plays.


The Evolution of the Football. From round to watermelon to its present familiar shape, the football has been stoking the passions of fans for over 100 years.

The Physics of ‘The Hit’ -- Superbowl Science

Baltimore running back Willis McGahee was seriously injured after a collision with the Steelers' Ryan Clark in the A.F.C. championship game. Julie Jacobson/Associated Press

From The New York Times:

TAMPA, Fla. — Isaac Newton’s apple hurt considerably less than Ryan Clark’s coconut. But they did have a few things in common.

Clark’s shockingly violent hit on the Baltimore Ravens’ Willis McGahee two Sundays ago — a full-speed, helmet-to-helmet crash that left McGahee unconscious and Clark all but — didn’t just follow the N.F.L.’s rules, but Newton’s as well. Force equaled mass times acceleration. Momentum was conserved. And the bodies finally came to rest, McGahee’s on a stretcher.

“How I look at it, you can be the hammer or the nail,” the inner scientist in Clark explained this week. “I try to be the hammer.”

The tackle, the art of making the ball carrier not stay in motion, is football’s most primeval action. Amusing physicists the way batting averages do actuaries, collisions lead the highlight reels, impart the force of a deadly car crash, and rely upon kinematics that date to a considerably different big bang.

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How Ancient Greeks Chose Temple Locations

The ancient Greek Temple of Hera in Selinunte, also knowns as "temple E",
at Castelvetrano, in Sicily, Italy. Image from Wikipedia

From Live Science:

To honor their gods and goddesses, ancient Greeks often poured blood or wine on the ground as offerings. Now a new study suggests that the soil itself might have had a prominent role in Greek worship, strongly influencing which deities were venerated where.

In a survey of eighty-four Greek temples of the Classical period (480 to 338 B.C.), Gregory J. Retallack of the University of Oregon in Eugene studied the local geology, topography, soil, and vegetation — as well as historical accounts by the likes of Herodotus, Homer, and Plato — in an attempt to answer a seemingly simple question: why are the temples where they are?

No clear pattern emerged until he turned to the gods and goddesses. It was then that he discovered a robust link between the soil on which a temple stood and the deity worshiped there.

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Ancient Creature Points To Parallel Evolution

Light optical microscope images of placozoans.
(Image from NASA Astrobiology Institute)

From New Scientist:

AN UPDATED family tree of the animal kingdom could radically change the way we think about the evolution of species.

According to conventional thinking, simple animals, including sponges, jellyfish and corals, evolved step-by-step in a linear fashion into those with more complex bodies, such as mammals.

Now Rob DeSalle of the American Museum of Natural History in New York and his colleagues have challenged this way of thinking.

The team analysed DNA and other molecular evidence across the animal kingdom, including tiny sea creatures called placozoans. They have found that the placozoans are the closest living thing to the ancestor of all animals.

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Is Google Broken? -- News Updates On Google's Glitch Today

Google Error Sends Warning Worldwide -- New York Times

Google’s Internet search service malfunctioned for nearly 55 minutes Saturday morning, upending users around the world with search results that carried false safety warnings and Web links that did not work.

The company acknowledged Saturday that all searches produced links with the same warning message: “This site may harm your computer.” Clicking on any of the links led to an error message stating that the desired site could not be reached.

“What happened?” Google explained in its blog. “Very simply, human error.”

Google said it periodically updates its list of sites suspected of carrying dangerous software that could harm computers, and that Saturday morning a Google employee mistyped a Web address for one such site, causing all sites to be flagged harmful.

There was some momentary tension when Google seemed to imply that the glitch was caused by StopBadware.org, the company that helps Google determine which sites are unsafe. Google later posted a statement that took the blame for the error.

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More News On Google's Hiccup Today

Google users get bogus warning on site searches -- AP
Google Flags Whole Internet As Malware -- Washington Post
Google mistakenly warns that search results 'may harm your computer' -- L.A. Times
'Human error' hits Google search -- BBC News
Millions hit by Google 'breakdown' -- The Telegraph
Internet chaos as Google goes gaga -- Daily Mail
Human error causes Google search bug -- Computer World
Google taking security a little too seriously? -- CNET News
Google blames ‘human error’ for search ‘malware’ hiccup -- ZDNet
Google Red-Faced...And Me, Too -- Traffick
Google Glitch Briefly Disrupts World’s Search -- The Lede

Action Sunrise At The Very Large Array

From Live Science:

Astronomers recently used the NSF's Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope (above) to help find the most distant water yet seen in the Universe, in a galaxy more than 11 billion light-years from Earth. Previously, the most distant water had been seen in a galaxy less than 7 billion light-years from Earth.

The soggy galaxy is dubbed MG J0414+0534. In a region near its core, water molecules are acting as masers, the radio equivalent of lasers, to amplify radio waves at a specific frequency.

The water molecules showed themselves with a tell-tale radio "fingerprint." The first indication came from the giant, 100-meter-diameter radio telescope in Effelsberg, Germany, and scientists confirmed the discovery using the VLA. The astronomers say their finding indicates that such giant, water masers were more common in the early Universe than they are today. MG J0414+0534 is seen as it was when the Universe was roughly one-sixth of its current age.

Read more ....

Inside Alaska's Explosive Redoubt Volcano

Mount Redoubt volcano in Alaska as seen from the northwest on March 4, 1990. Steam commonly vents from the dome in the crater in between eruptions. Credit: USGS.

From Live Science:

Mount Redoubt volcano in Alaska could erupt within days to weeks, say scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey, amazing the rest of us with their certainty.

Here's what makes them so sure: Magma rising toward the surface from beneath a volcano like Redoubt can cause earthquakes and other seismic rumblings. And seismic activity at Redoubt, which is 106 miles (170 km) southwest of Anchorage, has increased recently.

"If you're going to bring magma to the surface you've got to break rock, and every time rocks break at the subsurface beneath a volcano, that's an earthquake," said volcanologist Charles Mandeville of the American Museum of Natural History in New York. "They're recording a whole bunch of earthquakes almost continuously right now," he said, referring to scientists at the Alaska Volcano Observatory in Anchorage.

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The Biology Of Dating: Why Him, Why Her?

From Time Magazine:

Ah, the eternal question: why is HE with HER? Biological anthropologist Helen Fisher thinks she has found the answer after studying the academic literature on personality and after poring over 40,000 responses to a questionnaire on an online dating site. A Rutgers professor and paid advisor for Chemistry.com, Fisher not only believes in romantic chemistry, but is zeroing in on specific chemicals. She spoke with TIME about her latest book, Why Him, Why Her: Finding Real Love by Understanding Your Personality Type.

A lot of things influence who we're attracted to, but one thing that has always puzzled scientists is the role that personality plays in mate selection. Have you solved that riddle?
There are two parts of personality. There's character, which is everything you grew up to believe and do and think. And then there's temperament, which is your inherited traits. Some people are more stubborn than others, some are more curious, some are more aggressive. What I'm trying to do is add the role of biology, of temperament, to our human understanding of love.

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How Does A Dog Walk? Surprisingly, Many Of Us Don't Really Know

How do dogs walk? It turns out that all four-legged animals step with their left hind leg followed by their left foreleg. Then they step with their right hind leg followed by the right foreleg, and so on. Animals differ from one another only in the timing of that stepping. (Credit: iStockphoto/Tim McCaig)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Jan. 29, 2009) — Despite the fact that most of us see our four-legged friends walking around every day, most of us-including many experts in natural history museums and illustrators for veterinary anatomy text books-apparently still don't know how they do it.

A new study published in the January 27th issue of Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, shows that anatomists, taxidermists, and toy designers get the walking gait of horses and other quadruped animals wrong about half the time. That's despite the fact that their correct walking behavior was described and published more than 120 years ago.

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Neil Armstrong Walking On The Moon Is Most Memorable Television Moment

From The Telegraph:

Astronaut Neil Armstrong walking on the moon is the most memorable television first, according to a survey of 3,000 people.

More than half chose the moment in 1969 when man first walked on the moon as their most memorable television world first.

Among the other events which left their mark on viewers was the election of Barack Obama as the first African-American president, nominated by 37.5 per cent of people questioned.

Third most memorable was the assassination of President John F Kennedy in 1963, nominated by 27 per cent.

The survey was commissioned by Sony Bravia to mark the UK launch of the world's thinnest LCD TV.

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Rising Acidity Is Threatening Food Web of Oceans, Science Panel Says

From New York Times:

The oceans have long buffered the effects of climate change by absorbing a substantial portion of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. But this benefit has a catch: as the gas dissolves, it makes seawater more acidic. Now an international panel of marine scientists says this acidity is accelerating so fast it threatens the survival of coral reefs, shellfish and the marine food web generally.

The panel, comprising 155 scientists from 26 countries and other international groups, is not the first to point to growing ocean acidity as an environmental threat. For example, a group of eminent scientists convened by The Nature Conservancy issued a similar assessment in August. But the new report’s blunt language and international backing give its assessment unusual force. It called for “urgent action” to sharply reduce emissions of carbon dioxide.

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Time To Dive Into Google Ocean?

From PC Pro News:

Google is rumoured to be delving underwater with a new upgrade to its Google Earth software.

Having already conquered the land and the sky, Google is preparing to add maps of the sea beds to the Earth package.

The company is expected to launch Google Ocean at the California Academy of Sciences next week, which includes an aquarium among its attractions.

Vice President turned environmental evangelist, Al Gore, will join Google's chief executive Eric Schmidt and vice president of search Marissa Mayer at the event.

Invitations reportedly describe the launch as "the next big step in the evolution of Google Earth".

The upgrade is expected to provide underwater topography, with a layer showing the depth of the sea floor. It will allow users to search for particular points of interest, such as famous shipwrecks.

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Stem Cell Transplant Reverses Early Stage Multiple Sclerosis

From Eureka Alert:

CHICAGO --- Researchers from Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine appear to have reversed the neurological dysfunction of early-stage multiple sclerosis patients by transplanting their own immune stem cells into their bodies and thereby "resetting" their immune systems.

"This is the first time we have turned the tide on this disease," said principal investigator Richard Burt, M.D. chief of immunotherapy for autoimmune diseases at the Feinberg School. The clinical trial was performed at Northwestern Memorial Hospital where Burt holds the same title.

The patients in the small phase I/II trial continued to improve for up to 24 months after the transplantation procedure and then stabilized. They experienced improvements in areas in which they had been affected by multiple sclerosis including walking, ataxia, limb strength, vision and incontinence. The study will be published online January 30 and in the March issue of The Lancet Neurology.

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Fight Brews Over How To Build A Better Internet

Switch and Data’s PAIX in Palo Alto is a primary Internet exchange point in North America. (Tony Avelar/The Christian Science Monitor)

From Christian Science Monitor:

The stimulus bill has $6 billion to expand broadband access. But who can do it soonest vs. best?

America, where the Internet was invented, has fallen behind many European and East Asian countries in Internet speed, cost, and reach.

Roughly 10 percent of US households have no access to a high-speed, or broadband, data connection. Barely 3 percent have fiber-optic connections capable of delivering high-speed data that future industries are expected to rely on. While countries like Sweden are wiring themselves up with the next-generation Internet, the US is making do with a network roughly on par with Iceland.

So a $6 billion effort to upgrade America’s Internet – part of the stimulus package Congress is trying to pass – would seem a political slam-dunk. The US stimulates its economy right away with projects that would pay dividends well into the 21st century.

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Forecasting Guru Announces: “No Scientific Basis For Forecasting Climate”

Photo: J. Scott Armstrong, founder of the
International Journal of Forecasting

From Watts Up With That?

It has been an interesting couple of days. Today yet another scientist has come forward with a press release saying that not only did their audit of IPCC forecasting procedures and found that they “violated 72 scientific principles of forecasting”, but that “The models were not intended as forecasting models and they have not been validated for that purpose.” This organization should know, they certify forecasters for many disciplines and in conjunction with John Hopkins University if Washington, DC, offer a Certificate of Forecasting Practice. The story below originally appeared in the blog of Australian Dr. Jennifer Marohasy. It is reprinted below, with with some pictures and links added for WUWT readers. - Anthony

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Atomic Weight: Balancing The Risks And Rewards Of A Power Source

DAVIS BESSE: The nuclear power plant near Toledo, Ohio, was shut down for two years due to an equipment failure that might have resulted in a catastrophic meltdown if it had continued to go without detection. Courtesy of NRC

From Scientific American:

Nuclear power--like most forms of electricity generation--carries inherent risks. Is it worth the minor chance of a major catastrophe?

On Feb. 16, 2002, the nuclear power plant called Davis–Besse on the shores of Lake Erie near Toledo, Ohio, shut down. On inspection, a pineapple-size section on the 6.63-inch- (16.84-centimeter-) thick carbon steel lid that holds in the pressurized, fission-heated water in the site's sole reactor had been entirely eaten away by boric acid formed from a leak. The only thing standing between the escape of nuclear steam and a possible chain of events leading to a meltdown was an internal liner of stainless steel just three sixteenths of an inch (0.48 centimeter) thick that had slowly bent out about an eighth of an inch (0.32 centimeter) into the cavity due to the constant 2,200 pound-per–square-inch (155-kilogram-per-square-centimeter) pressure.

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Alaska Volcano Appears Close to Eruption

Mount Redoubt: A group of dipnetters float down the Kenai River with Mount Redoubt volcano on the horizon, near the mouth of the river at Kenai, Alaska. Mount Redoubt is showing signs that it may erupt soon.AP Photo/Al Grillo

From Discovery News:

Jan. 29, 2009 -- Mount Redoubt, a volcano 100 miles southwest of Anchorage, is rumbling and simmering, prompting geologists to warn that an eruption may be imminent.

Scientists from the Alaska Volcano Observatory have been monitoring activity round-the-clock since the weekend.

On Thursday, the observatory said: "Seismicity remains above background and largely unchanged with several volcanic earthquakes occurring every hour."

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Great Bright Hope To End Battle Of The Light Bulbs

Cambridge University professor Colin Humphreys with his newly developed LED
that has a lifespan of 60 years and costs just £2

From The Daily Mail:

A lighting revolution is on the way that could end at the flick of a switch the battle between supporters of conventional bulbs and the eco-friendly variety.

Cambridge University researchers have developed cheap, light-emitting diode (LED) bulbs that produce brilliant light but use very little electricity. They will cost £2 and last up to 60 years.

Despite being smaller than a penny, they are 12 times more efficient than conventional tungsten bulbs and three times more efficient than the unpopular fluorescent low-energy versions.

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Is Technology Producing A Decline In Critical Thinking And Analysis?

As technology has played a bigger role in our lives, our skills in critical thinking and analysis have declined, while our visual skills have improved. (Credit: iStockphoto/Jim DeLillo)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Jan. 29, 2009) — As technology has played a bigger role in our lives, our skills in critical thinking and analysis have declined, while our visual skills have improved, according to research by Patricia Greenfield, UCLA distinguished professor of psychology and director of the Children's Digital Media Center, Los Angeles.

Learners have changed as a result of their exposure to technology, says Greenfield, who analyzed more than 50 studies on learning and technology, including research on multi-tasking and the use of computers, the Internet and video games. Her research was published this month in the journal Science.

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Women Have Nightmares, Men Dream of Sex

Photo from (Diets In Review)

From Live Science:

Women have more nightmares than men, a British researcher says, but men are more likely to dream about sex.

Psychologist Jennie Parker of the University of the West of England asked 100 women and 93 men between the ages of 18 and 25 to fill out dream diaries, priming participants before dreams occurred to record them. The research was part of her doctoral dissertation.

"My most significant finding is that women in general do experience more nightmares than men," she said. "An early study into dreams led to my discovering that normative research procedures into dream research often considered the structure of dreams, but that there is a gaping hole in terms of academic study that investigates emotional significance in the analysis of dreams."

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What's Happening To The Sun?

The First Cycle 24 Sunspot: NOAA

From Popular Science:

Could its unusual behavior herald a new ice age?

For about 50 years from roughly 1650 to 1700, the Sun took a break from its typical sunspot activity. That phase of solar rest coincided with what we now refer to as "The Little Ice Age" -- a period of cooling on the Earth that resulted in bitterly cold winters, particularly in Europe and North America. Scientists attribute the Little Ice Age to two main causes: increased volcanic activity and reduced solar activity.

Could it happen again? And are we headed there now?

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Scientists Not So Sure 'Doomsday Machine' Won't Destroy World

Photo: March 22, 2007: Magnet core of the largest superconducting solenoid magnet at European Organization for Nuclear Research's Large Hadron Collider. AP

From FOX News:

Still worried that the Large Hadron Collider will create a black hole that will destroy the Earth when it's finally switched on this summer?

Um, well, you may have a point.

Three physicists have reexamined the math surrounding the creation of microscopic black holes in the Switzerland-based LHC, the world's largest particle collider, and determined that they won't simply evaporate in a millisecond as had previously been predicted.

Rather, Roberto Casadio of the University of Bologna in Italy and Sergio Fabi and Benjamin Harms of the University of Alabama say mini black holes could exist for much longer — perhaps even more than a second, a relative eternity in particle colliders, where most objects decay much faster.

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Fringe Fact v. Fiction: Could Your Brain Actually Turn to Goo?

From Popular Mechanics:

In its 12th episode, Fringe brought back one of the all-time greatest, grossest sci-fi horrors: Liquefied brains.

While investigating a string of murders, the agents find viscous liquid oozing from victims' orifices–something has turned their brains into nothing but goo. Sure enough, drilling a hole into a victim sends brown goo, all that's remaining of his brain, dripping out of his skull. "The brain goo that they made is maybe the most disgusting thing I've ever seen," Fringe star Joshua Jackson said in a promo for last night's episode, "The No-Brainer." But is the brain science as far off the mark as it has been in past episodes?

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Staying Afloat -- Treading Water In A Sea of Data

From The New Atlantis:

In March 1997, Wired magazine, ever the zealous prophet of near-future consumer tech, breathlessly trumpeted the imminent death of the Internet browser and the rise of so-called “push media.” In short, the idea was that the Web would expand beyond the confines of the browser, both to additional desktop applications and to a host of other devices: phones, televisions, appliances, and even wallpaper. Next, all of these devices would coordinate their information delivery, transforming the Web from a passive medium, in which users request information, to an active medium, in which information “pushes” itself toward users. This new medium, we learn, would not “wait for clicks”: it’s “always-on, mildly in-your-face” and will “bombard you with an intensity that invitational media never muster.” Content, we are promised—or warned?—“will not hesitate to find you.”

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