Wind Turbines In Europe Do Nothing For Emissions-Reduction Goals

Under current EU law, German wind turbines aren't helping to reduce CO2 emissions. They simply allow Eastern European countries to pollute more. REUTERS

From Spiegel Online:

Despite Europe's boom in solar and wind energy, CO2 emissions haven't been reduced by even a single gram. Now, even the Green Party is taking a new look at the issue -- as shown in e-mails obtained by SPIEGEL ONLINE.

Germany's renewable energy companies are a tremendous success story. Roughly 15 percent of the country's electricity comes from solar, wind or biomass facilities, almost 250,000 jobs have been created and the net worth of the business is €35 billion per year.

But there's a catch: The climate hasn't in fact profited from these developments. As astonishing as it may sound, the new wind turbines and solar cells haven't prohibited the emission of even a single gram of CO2.

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Twitter Fast Growing Beyond Its Messaging Roots

From Wired:

Thanks to its open-ended design and a thriving user community, Twitter is fast outgrowing its roots as a simple, easy-to-use messaging service. Enterprising hackers are creating apps for sharing music and videos, to help you quit smoking and lose weight -- spontaneously extending the text-based service into one of the web's most fertile (and least likely) application platforms.

Hardware hackers have set up household appliances to send status alerts over Twitter, like a washing machine that tweets when the spin cycle is through, or a home security system that tweets whenever it senses movement inside the house. Others have incorporated Twitter into their DIY home automation systems. Forgot to turn off the lights? Send a tweet to flip the switch by remote control.

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A Unique View of Egypt

The Pyramid of Giza: GeoEye

From Popsci:

The GeoEye satellite continues its stunning photo series

Here are a couple more from our favorite eye in the sky.

Both half-meter resolution images were snapped from space by the GeoEye-1 satellite, which also took those fantastic pics of the National Mall on Inauguration Day.

First, the Great Pyramid in Giza, Egypt, the tomb constructed around 1560 BC for the Fourth dynasty King Khufu. Sitting just in front of the Great Pyramid is the Great Sphinx of Giza. Built a few decades later, it is the world’s oldest known monumental sculpture.

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Teens Spend Average Of 87 Hours A Year Looking At Porn Online

Teenagers are spending more than eight hours a week browsing the internet for soft porn, plastic surgery and family planning websites

From The Daily Mail:

The average teenager spends one hour and 40 minutes a week browsing sites for pornography, according to new research.

That equates to 87 hours a year spent surfing for porn. A further hour and 35 minutes is spent looking at dieting and weight loss websites.

The study of 1,000 youngsters found the average teenager was online 31 hours each week looking at soft pornography, plastic surgery, dieting, family planning and emotional support.

Another hour and eight minutes is dedicated to exploring cosmetic surgery websites, to learn about breast surgery, bum lifts and collagen implants.

The research was conducted by CyberSentinel.co.uk, a computer software that enables parents to block websites and monitor use of the internet.

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Biologists Find Gene Network That Gave Rise To First Tooth

Malawi cichlids exhibit toothed oral and pharyngeal jaw. (Credit: From: An Ancient Gene Network Is Co-opted for Teeth on Old and New Jaws Fraser GJ, Hulsey CD, Bloomquist RF, Uyesugi K, Manley NR, et al. PLoS Biology Vol. 7, No. 2, e31 doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1000031)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Feb. 10, 2009) — A new paper in PLoS Biology reports that a common gene regulatory circuit controls the development of all dentitions, from the first teeth in the throats of jawless fishes that lived half a billion years ago, to the incisors and molars of modern vertebrates, including you and me.

"It's likely that every tooth made throughout the evolution of vertebrates has used this core set of genes," said Gareth Fraser, postdoctoral fellow at Georgia Tech's School of Biology.

The first vertebrates to have teeth were a group of eel-like jawless fish known as the conodonts that had teeth not in their mouth, but lining the throat. This particular group is long since extinct, but some modern fish retain teeth in the throat (pharynx). Dr. Fraser and colleagues studied tooth formation in a group of fish known for their rapid rate of evolution, the cichlids of Africa's Lake Malawi. The cichlids have teeth both in their oral jaws, like humans, and deep in their throats on a pharyngeal jaw. A co-author of the paper, Darrin Hulsey, first identified a surprising positive correlation between the number of teeth in the oral jaw and in the throat in these fish.

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Mythic Birthplace of Zeus Said Found

The Chariot of Zeus image is from the 1879
"Stories from the Greek Tragedians" by Alfred Church.

From Live Science:

The Greek god of thunder and lightning had Earthly beginnings, and scientists think they finally know where.

Ancient Greeks first worshipped the omnipotent Zeus at a remote altar on Mount Lykaion, a team of Greek and American archaeologists now think. During a recent dig at the site, the researchers found ceremonial goods commonly used in cult activity and dated at over three millennia old, making them the earliest known "appearance" of Zeus in Greece.

The discovery challenges the idea that Zeus worship began on the Greek island of Crete, which at least one classical historian names as the god's mythic birthplace. The latest finds on Mount Lykaion, in the mainland province of Arcadia, are as old as the idea of Zeus himself, said the project's senior research scientist David Romano, of the University of Pennsylvania.

"This new evidence strongly suggests that there were drinking (and perhaps feasting) parties taking place on the top of the mountain in the Late Helladic period, around 3,300 or 3,400 years ago," Romano said.

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Televisions 'To Be Fitted In Contact Lenses Within Ten Years'

Channels could be changed by voice, making remote controls a thing of the past

From The Telegraph:

Televisions could be fitted into contact lenses within ten years, according to analysts.

The sets would be powered by the viewer's body heat, according to Ian Pearson, a so-called "futurologist" who has advised leading companies including BT on new technologies.

Mr Pearson told the Daily Mail he believed that channels could be changed by voice command or via a wave of the hand.

Meanwhile "emotional viewing" could be another development in television technology, according to a report commissioned by the technology retailer Comet.

A "digital tattoo" fitted to the viewer would pick up on the feelings of characters on screen and create impulses causing them to feel the same way.

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The European Space Agency's Herschel Observatory Is Finished And Ready To Go Into Orbit

Key features on the Herschel space observatory. The inset compares Herschel with Hubble and the future James Webb Space Telescope.

From The BBC:

Stare into the curve of Herschel's mirror too long and you get a slightly giddy feeling that comes from not being able to judge where its surface really starts.

It is enchanting, spectacular and - at 3.5m in diameter - it will soon become the biggest telescope mirror in space, surpassing that of Hubble.

The great 18th Century astronomer William Herschel would have been astonished by the silver sensation that now bears his name.

The European Space Agency (Esa) is certainly very proud of its new observatory. It has been working on the venture for more than 20 years.

"The mirror is an enormous piece of hardware," enthused Thomas Passvogel, Esa's programme manager on the Herschel space observatory.

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Bacteria, Not Flu, Cause Of 1918 Pandemic

The 1918 flu pandemic is estimated to have caused the death of between 50 million and 100 million people in approximately 18 months (Source: US National Archives)

From ABC News/Reuters:

Strep infections and not influenza may have killed most people during the 1918 influenza pandemic, which suggests predictions about a new pandemic could be exaggerated, say US researchers.

The findings suggest that amassing antibiotics to fight bacterial infections may be as important as stockpiling antiviral drugs to battle flu, they say.

Professor Keith Klugman of Emory University, Atlanta and colleagues report their findings in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases.

The team looked at information available about the 1918 flu pandemic, which killed between 50 million and 100 million people globally in the space of about 18 months.

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Mummies Found In Newly Discovered Tomb In Egypt

In this photo released Monday, Feb. 9, 2009 by Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, the remains of a newly-discovered Egyptian mummy and sarcophagus are seen in a tomb at Saqqara, south of Cairo, in Egypt, Sunday, Feb. 8, 2009. A storeroom housing about two dozen ancient Egyptian mummies has been unearthed inside a 2,600-year-old tomb during the latest round of excavations at the vast necropolis of Saqqara south of Cairo, archaeologists said Monday. (AP Photo/Supreme Council of Antiquities)

From Yahoo News/AP:

CAIRO – A storeroom housing about two dozen ancient Egyptian mummies has been unearthed inside a 2,600-year-old tomb during the latest round of excavations at the vast necropolis of Saqqara south of Cairo, archaeologists said Monday.

The tomb was located at the bottom of a 36-foot deep shaft, said Egypt's top archaeologist, Zahi Hawass. Twenty-two mummies were found in niches along the tomb's walls, he said.

Eight sarcophagi were also found in the tomb. Archaeologists so far have opened only one of the sarcophagi — and found a mummy inside of it, said Hawass' assistant Abdel Hakim Karar. Mummies are believed to be inside the other seven, he said.

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Digital Overload Is Frying Our Brains

From Wired News:

Paying attention isn't a simple act of self-discipline, but a cognitive ability with deep neurobiological roots — and this complex faculty, says Maggie Jackson, is being woefully undermined by how we're living.

In Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age, Jackson explores the effects of "our high-speed, overloaded, split-focus and even cybercentric society" on attention. It's not a pretty picture: a never-ending stream of phone calls, e-mails, instant messages, text messages and tweets is part of an institutionalized culture of interruption, and makes it hard to concentrate and think creatively.

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New Google Earth Tools Let Us Explore The Land Use Changes Around Climate Stations Over Time

The yellow dot is the location of the USHCN MMTS thermometer, and the white arrows arrows in the more recent view point to some things that have changed around the sensor over a six year period from 1999 to 2005. You can view the individual larger images also: Aurora in 1999 and Aurora in 2005

From Watts Up With That?

This past week Google introduced the latest iteration of their popular earth visualization program - Google Earth Version 5.0

In it was something I had been hoping for for months: a way to display historical aerial imagery and thus land use change around a climate monitoring station in an interactive timeline timeline.

The best part: it’s easy, and its’ free.

for example, here is my first effort, a simple two frame blink comparator showing changes around the USHCN station MMTS sensor at the water treatment plant in Aurora, IL, a suburb of Chicago:

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Newborn Brain Cells 'Time-Stamp' Memories

Image from Impact Lab

From E! Science News:

LA JOLLA, CA—"Remember when…?" is how many a wistful trip down memory lane begins. But just how the brain keeps tabs on what happened and when is still a matter of speculation. A computational model developed by scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies now suggests that newborn brain cells—generated by the thousands each day—add a time-related code, which is unique to memories formed around the same time. "By labeling contemporary events as similar, new neurons allow us to recall events from a certain period," speculates Fred H. Gage, Ph.D., a professor in the Laboratory for Genetics, who led the study published in the Jan. 29, 2009, issue of the journal Neuron. Unlike the kind of time stamp found on digital photographs, however, the neuronal time code only provides relative time.

Ironically, Gage and his team had not set out to explain how the brain stores temporal information. Instead they were interested in why adult brains continually spawn new brain cells in the dentate gyrus, the entryway to the hippocampus. The hippocampus, a small seahorse-shaped area of the brain, distributes memory to appropriate storage sections in the brain after readying the information for efficient recall.

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Motivating Minds -- Why People Procrastinate

From The Economist:

People procrastinate when asked to think in the abstract

TO SOME there is nothing so urgent that it cannot be postponed in favour of a cup of tea. Such procrastination is a mystery to psychologists, who wonder why people would sabotage themselves in this way. A team of researchers led by Sean McCrea of the University of Konstanz, in Germany, reckon they have found a piece of the puzzle. People act in a timely way when given concrete tasks but dawdle when they view them in abstract terms.

Dr McCrea and his colleagues conducted three separate studies. First they recruited 34 students who were offered €2.50 ($3.30) for completing a questionnaire within the subsequent three weeks. Half of the students were then sent an email asking them to write a couple of sentences on how they might go about various activities, such as opening a bank account or keeping a diary. The others were asked to write about why someone might want to open a bank account or keep a diary.

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Meet The First Commercial Rocketship Pilots.

Rick Searfoss, former space shuttle commander, now XCOR’s chief test pilot, has helped make the desert town of Mojave the world capital of civilian manned rocket vehicle flight. (Chad Slattery)

From Air And Space Smithsonian Magazine:

In the old days it was straightforward enough. The planet had two corps of astronauts, Soviet and U.S., and to join one, you had to be a military test pilot. But now the rules have changed. You don’t have to be an American or a Russian anymore, and you don’t even have to be a government employee.

In 2004, Burt Rutan and his small company in Mojave, California, Scaled Composites, broke the government monopoly on human spaceflight. The company built SpaceShipOne using the same carbon fiber molding techniques used by airplane homebuilders everywhere, at the ridiculously paltry cost of $25 million. At the controls on its first flight into space sat not a steely-eyed missile man forged in the cold war but a 63-year-old high school dropout from South Africa. “I’m just a guy,” Mike Melvill exulted after SpaceShipOne’s inaugural flight into space. “An old guy!” The implication was inescapable. If he could drive a spaceship, so could anyone.

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Space Telescope To Boost Hunt For Alien Earths

Kepler Telescope (Image from Nasa)

From The New Scientist:

HOW common are alien Earths - small, rocky planets orbiting at the right distance to be not so hot that water boils and not so cold that it stays frozen? Till now clues have been hard to come by, because surveys have not been sensitive enough to find many such planets.

That should soon change thanks to the Kepler space telescope, which NASA is expecting to launch on 5 March. Its unique positioning in the solar system and unprecedented sensitivity mean that for the first time we will be able to see Earth-size planets in the "habitable zone" of their stars - the region where the temperature on the planet should be right for liquid water to exist at its surface.

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Inner Workings Of Photosynthesis Revealed By Powerful New Laser Technique

The laser light source used in this study was developed in the Physics Department at Imperial College and the technology transferred to RAL. It is capable of producing ultra-short pulses of light of very high intensity which are made up of a broad range of colours. (Credit: Image courtesy of Imperial College London)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Feb. 7, 2009) — Instant pictures showing how the sun's energy moves inside plants have been taken for the first time, according to research out February 6 in Physical Review Letters.

The images unravel some of the inner workings of the most efficient solar energy process on earth - photosynthesis. Inside a photosynthetic protein, the sun's energy is efficiently guided across the molecule to drive a chemical reaction that stores energy as food and takes in carbon dioxide. Scientists would very much like to harness this process as they search for new energy solutions to replace fossil fuels. To do this, they need to understand this energy transport process in more detail.

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3-D Enthusiasm Is Anything But Flat

Welcome to my world: K.C. Blake is director of business development at the L.A.-based Entertainment Technology Center, where the Home 3D Experience Lab is housed.
(Stephanie Diani/Special to The Christian Science Monitor)

From The Christian Science Monitor:

Like high-def television before it, 3-D technology is ahead of its content, and consumers are hungry.

South Central Los Angeles

In a converted warehouse near one of Los Angeles’s toughest neighborhoods, a coterie of professional “techno-speculators” is playing around with what a growing number of entertainment industry folks hope the future of the small screen will be, namely 3-D.

This is the Entertainment Technology Center at the University of Southern California, where the Home 3D Experience Lab, ETC’s newest brainchild, is currently housed in a bare-bones room. The 3-D lab just opened this past week and isn’t complete yet, meaning the team is still assembling all the various iterations of 3-D as it will be experienced in consumers’ homes. But the fundamentals are in place – glasses, screens, and playback devices – says Bryan Gonzalez, the lab’s technical project specialist.

“For the state of the art in 3-D for the home environment, this is where the industry leaders can gather to discuss where it’s going,” says executive director David Wertheimer. The nonprofit research center is funded by content and technology companies, including nearly all the major film studios.

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Step Made Toward Invisible Electronics

The new helmet for the F35 fighter. It's also the Heads Up Display, or HUD. Meaning the pilot will get the data he needs to fly and flight the aircraft - displayed on the inside of his visor. (Photo from The Donovan)

From Live Science:

Researchers have made an advance toward a long-sought goal of building "invisible electronics" and transparent displays.

The work could eventually lead to better heads-up displays for pilots or even windshield displays and cars, as well as electronic paper that could deliver all the contents of a magazine or a newspaper on one, ever-changing, portable and perhaps even disposable sheet. Another goal: wearable electronic clothing displays.

The scientists, led by Chongwu Zhou and colleagues at UCLA developed tiny, transparent electronic circuits they say are more powerful than similar devices developed in recent years.

The work was detailed in the Jan. 27 issue of ACS Nano, a monthly journal.

In the new study, Chongwu Zhou and colleagues point out that although scientists have previously developed nano-sized transparent circuits, previous versions are limited to a handful of materials that are transparent semiconductors.

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Kissing Feels So Pleasurable Due To Hormone Surge, Find Scientists

From The Telegraph:

The reason that kissing feels so pleasurable is that sparks a surge of hormones in our brains, according to new research.

Couples who share a passionate kiss this Valentine's Day will enjoy sensations of relaxation and excitement because of a complex series of chemical processes, as well as their love for their partners.

The study showed that women need more than just a kiss to experience the same chemical high as men - with additional features such as a romantic atmosphere of dimmed lights and mood music also required.

Wendy Hill, professor of psychology at Lafayette College, Pennsylvania began the research to find out why the mundane physical activity of rubbing lips can elicit such a gratifying emotional response.

Her team tested the levels of two hormones, cortisol and oxytocin, in 15 couples before and after holding hands and kissing.

They found that kissing reduced the levels of cortisol, a stress hormone, in both sexes. But levels of oxytocin, a hormone linked to social bonding that they expected to be boosted by kissing, only rose among the men.

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New Science Could Defeat Food Crises

Wheat Fields (Image from Cutting Edge News)

From The Guardian:

Breakthroughs in microscopic engineering could boost shelf life of food and increase crop yields.

A controversial scientific revolution that could give packaged foods a dramatically longer shelf life and boost crop growth has "real potential" to help feed a fast-growing world, according to environment secretary Hilary Benn.

New developments in nanotechnology, engineering carried out at a microscopic level, could lead to plastic packaging designed to stop food and drink spoiling by killing bacteria or preventing oxygen getting through the container.

The technology could also be used to enrich food with supplements and preserve vitamins that would otherwise be destroyed as food aged. Farmers could also use it to ensure the slow release of fertilisers at the right time for crops, and to detect threats from pests or pollutants. The technology is, however, highly controversial, with green campaigners arguing that its effects on human health are unknown.

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The Look Of Love? Women Are Attracted To Men With Big Pupils, Says Study

Was Jennifer Aniston's character Beth in the film He's Just Not That Into You attracted to her boyfriend Neil, played by Ben Affleck, because of his big pupils?

From The Daily Mail:

Researchers have discovered what women are really thinking when they look into a man’s eyes – and it is all about the size of their...pupils.

Women become attracted to men with large pupils just as they are approaching their most fertile time of the month, the study at Edinburgh University found.

Scientists suggest that it may be because it indicates that the man is sexually interested in them and available for mating. Pupil size made no significant difference for the rest of the menstrual cycle.

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Global Warming Studies Often Depend On Average Citizens

Photo: From Care Global Warming.

From McClatchy:

WASHINGTON — It has to do with brown-headed cowbirds and clear-cut forests, lilacs and wildfires, vineyards in the Rhine Valley, marmots, dandelions, tadpoles, cherry trees around the Tidal Basin in Washington and musty old records stuffed in shoe boxes in people's closets and stacked on museum shelves.

As scientists track global warming, they're using sometimes centuries-old data to assess its impact on plants, animals, insects, fish, reptiles and amphibians. Increasingly, they're discovering that it can take only one seemingly insignificant change to disrupt an entire ecosystem.

"People talk about a 1- or 2-degree rise in temperature and it's inconsequential to us. Who cares?" said Greg Jones, an environmental studies professor at Southern Oregon University who's been studying wine grapes. "But in an ecosystem it can have dramatic effects."

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America’s Wind Corridor

New trade: A Clipper crew assembles the hub of a wind turbine in an Iowa factory
that formerly built printing presses. (Mark Clayton)

From The Christian Science Monitor:

From Minnesota to Texas, wind power sweeps new jobs into old-tech towns.

Cedar Rapids and Estherville, Iowa

Hundreds of workers lost their jobs after the Rockwell-Goss printing press factory closed here in Cedar Rapids in 2001. The hulking empty shell sat idle on the outskirts of the city for four years.

But that was before wind power blew into town, bringing thousands of clean-tech manufacturing jobs to Iowa and the Midwest.

In many cases, the new industry is setting up shop in defunct heavy manufacturing plants, bringing new economic life and vitality to old settings.

Bob Loyd, who once oversaw crews manufacturing the last printing presses to leave the old Rockwell-Goss factory, now manages workers assembling the newest generation of giant wind turbines in the same building.

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Curing Baldness Could Be A Step To Organ Regeneration

Deep roots. For a hair follicle to begin a new phase of growth, an elusive group of cells called the hair germ (bright red) must be activated. This progression of images shows that the hair germ begins proliferating (green) before other cells do, suggesting a two-step mechanism.

From The Next Big Future:

Research from Rockefeller University reveals that a structure at the base of each strand of hair, the hair follicle, uses a two-step mechanism to activate its stem cells and order them to divide. The mechanism provides insights into how repositories of stem cells may be organized in other body tissues for the purpose of supporting organ regeneration.

So understanding and fixing the stem cells and the replenishment of stem cells in hair follicles could lead to a baldness cure and also to human regeneration of organs.

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Large Hadron Collider To Be Re-Started Later This Year

At Cern, the Large Hadron Collider could recreate conditions that last prevailed when the universe was less than a trillionth of a second old. Above is one of the collider's massive particle detectors, called the Compact Muon Solenoid. Valerio Mezzanotti for The New York Times

From The Telegraph:

Scientists are expected to make a decision within days on when the Large Hadron Collider, the broken "Big Bang" machine, will be re-started.

The LHC suffered a catastrophic malfunction soon after being switched on last September amid a fanfare of publicity.

Officials and scientists from the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), which built the £4billion device, have been in talks this week about when to re-start it.

They have also discussed what caused the LHC to grind to a halt and how to prevent similar incidents happening in the future.

CERN have now said that they hope the machine will be up and running in time to deliver the first batch of data for experts to begin experiments by the end of the year.

A final decision on the exact date to switch it back on is expected following a meeting on Monday.

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Nearly A Billion People Go Hungry Every Day – Can GM Crops Help Feed Them?

A protester vandalises a GM crop trial. Qualms about GM food may be a luxury Africa can ill afford. Photograph: Barry Batchelor/PA

From The Guardian:

Leading scientists met last night to debate whether genetically modified crops can feed the world's hungry. The issue, it seems, is as divisive as ever

The Science Museum in London is running an exhibition until the end of May called Future Foods. It attempts to give a balanced view of the pros and cons of genetically modified crops, which are back on the agenda in the light of fears over a major food crisis. It does a good job too.

As part of the exhibition, the museum organised a debate at the Dana Centre to give the public a chance to debate GM crops and the food crisis with some key scientists. I chaired the event and picked up on a few issues I thought might be worth sharing.

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Study: How Money Can Buy Happiness

From Live Science:

You've heard many times that money can't buy happiness. That probably never stopped you from shopping. But a new study suggests you might want to spend more on doing things and less on stuff.

Buying life experiences rather than material possessions leads to greater happiness for both the consumer and those around them, researchers announced today at the annual meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology.

A meal out or tickets to the theater result in increased well-being because they satisfy higher order needs, specifically the need for social connectedness and vitality — a feeling of being alive, the researchers say.

"These findings support an extension of basic need theory, where purchases that increase psychological need satisfaction will produce the greatest well-being," said Ryan Howell, assistant professor of psychology at San Francisco State University.

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"Noah's Flood" Not Rooted In Reality, After All?

Some believe that Noah's Ark came to rest on Turkey's Mount Ararat, above. But the ancient flood that some scientists think gave rise to the Noah story may not have been quite so biblical in proportion, a January 2009 study says. Photograph by Melik Baghdasaryan/AP/Photolur

From National Geographic:

The ancient flood that some scientists think gave rise to the Noah story may not have been quite so biblical in proportion, a new study says.

Researchers generally agree that, during a warming period about 9,400 years ago, an onrush of seawater from the Mediterranean spurred a connection with the Black Sea, then a largely freshwater lake. That flood turned the lake into a rapidly rising sea.

A previous theory said the Black Sea rose up to 195 feet (60 meters), possibly burying villages and spawning the tale of Noah's flood and other inundation folklore.

But the new study—largely focused on relatively undisturbed underwater fossils—suggests a rise of no more than 30 feet (10 meters).

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Neanderthal Genome To Be Unveiled

Image: Neanderthals are the closest hominid relatives of modern humans. The two species co-existed in Europe and western Asia as late as 30,000 years ago. (American Museum of Natural History). (Image from Berkley Lab)

From Nature:

Draft sequence opens window on human relatives.

The entire genome of a 38,000-year-old Neanderthal has been sequenced by a team of scientists in Germany. The group is already extracting DNA from other ancient Neanderthal bones and hopes that the genomes will allow an unprecedented comparison between modern humans and their closest evolutionary relative.

The three-year project, which cost about €5 million (US$6.4 million), was carried out at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig. Project leader Svante Pääbo will announce the results of the preliminary genomic analysis at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in Chicago, Illinois, which starts on 12 February.

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Are We Bringing Our Germs to Mars?

From Time Magazine:

Star Trek fans know it as the Prime Directive: that there should be no interference with the internal affairs of other civilizations. (Given the frequency with which captains Kirk, Picard, et. al., violate it, however, the Prime Directive seems more like a Prime Suggestion.) Since human beings have yet to explore very far beyond Earth, pondering an interplanetary noninterference policy of our own may seem a little premature — at least until we've mastered warp drives and phasers.

But in fact, such a directive already exists in some form — the international Outer Space Treaty of 1967, which governs the legal framework for activities in space. Best known for banning governments from putting nuclear weapons into orbit, the treaty also requires space-faring nations to avoid "harmful contamination" of other worlds while exploring the solar system. Human beings have yet to set foot on other planets, so the risk today comes from bacteria that can hitch a ride on unmanned spacecraft like NASA's Mars Phoenix Lander, which arrived on the red planet's surface last May.

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Plumbing The Planet: The 5 Biggest Projects Taking On The World's Water Supply

An Israeli employee inspects membranes that extract salt from the water at Ashkelon's seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) plant, south of Tel Aviv. Ashkelon's desalination plant is one the biggest in the world. (Photograph by David Buimovitch/AFP/Getty Images)

From Popular Mechanics:

As nations and regions all over the globe face too much polluted water and too little fresh water, they are turning to some of the largest, most technologically complex projects the world has ever seen. Here, we have compiled five of the biggest and most ambitious. But are they big enough to keep the taps flowing?

The dire statistics are well-known, but deserve repeating: One in six people in the world live without regular access to clean water, according to the United Nations, and one in three lacks access to decent sanitation. Even countries with good water supplies—like the U.S.—will experience trouble sustaining them in the near future, as panelists discussed at the water roundtable PM hosted last fall.

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TED: Change The World With $100,000

From CBS News:

CBS Technology correspondent Daniel Sieberg is reporting from the TED conference in Long Beach, Calif.

The concept is simple; it's the execution that requires global collaboration and commitment. Not to mention some serious cash. Along those lines, TED prizes are an award of $100,000 given to a select group of recipients looking to change the world with one idea or "wish." They can use the money as they choose, and at a ceremony here Thursday night the three winners expressed their hopes for the future.

Jill Tarter, founder of SETI or the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Life, encouraged TED attendees and others to imagine ways that every "earthling" could contribute to a growing database of life beyond our planet or our "cosmic company." In real terms, Tarter wants kids to be more involved in the experience of searching or studying the universe, and improve the way information from space is stored and shared with astronomers. Her announcement was preceded by a taped introduction from Sir Richard Branson, who is actively pursuing commercial space travel through his Virgin Galactic project.

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Top 5 Most Extreme Exoplanets

From Wired Science:

Searching for planets beyond our solar system is a bit like playing Goldilocks — we keep looking for that one that will be just right to host life. While astronomers haven't found a perfect fit yet, they have found plenty that are too big, too hot, too cold, too dense, too close to their star, or too distant.

The first exoplanet discovery was in 1988, though it was controversial at the time and wasn't officially confirmed until 2003. Over the years, more than 330 extrasolar planets have been found, nearly all of them using indirect methods such as detecting the wobble of a star due to the gravitational pull of an orbiting planet or the slight dimming of the star's light as a planet passes in front of it.

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Welcome To Cyber-London (But You Can Only Visit The Posh Bits)

The virtual recreation of London includes Big Ben
though curiously not the Houses of Parliament

From The Daily Mail:

A virtual recreation of London is attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors every day.

An online version of the capital, complete with Big Ben and Marble Arch, is featured on the 3D virtual world website Second Life.

The online city boasts five areas of London - Mayfair, Kensington, Chelsea, Westminster and Hyde Park. All of which are known for the high price of their property and exclusive eateries.

Users who sign up free of charge can create an avatar of themselves, and can walk or fly around while interacting with other users via text or speech.

From today, it will be available from the home page on Second Life, which was set up in 2003 and now has two million avatars.

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Key Insights Into How New Species Emerge

A female apple maggot fly, Rhagoletis pomonella, implants an egg into an apple. Wasps that attack the flies and eat their larvae appear to be changing on a genetic level in the same way that the flies themselves appear to be changing genetically. (Credit: Rob Oakleaf)

From Science Digest:

ScienceDaily (Feb. 6, 2009) — A team of researchers are reporting the ongoing emergence of a new species of fruit fly--and the sequential development of a new species of wasp--in the February 6 issue of the journal Science.

Jeff Feder, a University of Notre Dame biologist, and his colleagues say the introduction of apples to America almost 400 years ago ultimately may have changed the behavior of a fruit fly, leading to its modification and the subsequent modification of a parasitic wasp that feeds on it.

The result is a chain reaction of biodiversity where the modification of one species triggers the sequential modification of a second, dependent species.

"It's a nice demonstration of how the initial speciation of one organism opens up an opportunity for another species in the ecosystem to speciate in kind," said Feder. "Biodiversity in essence is the source for new biodiversity."

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Man Runs 7 Marathons In 5 Days

Photo: Richard Donovan in action in the Himalayan 100 mile race. From RTE.

From Live Science:

Richard Donovan, a 42-year-old from Ireland, is as close to being the real Forrest Gump as anyone.

Running to raise money for a charity called Goal, which works to ease suffering in Darfur, Donovan ran seven marathons on seven continents. If you know your continents, you know that's a challenge. More: He did it in 5 days.

The order of Donovan's insanity, which began Jan. 31:

* Antarctica
* Cape Town, South Africa
* Dubai
* London
* Toronto
* Santiago, Chile
* Sydney, Australia

"What he did was staggering, quite remarkable," John O'Shea, the charity's founder and chief executive, told the news agency AFP.

To prove he's human, Donovan took airline flights between destinations. To keep it real, he flew coach.

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My Comment: As someone who has run a few marathons in his life .... I am impressed.

Reading This Will Change Your Brain

Jeff Sherman / Taxi-Getty Images

From Newsweek:

A leading neuroscientist says processing digital information can rewire your circuits. But is it evolution?

Is technology changing our brains? A new study by UCLA neuroscientist Gary Small adds to a growing body of research that says it is. And according to Small's new book, "iBRAIN: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind," a dramatic shift in how we gather information and communicate with one another has touched off an era of rapid evolution that may ultimately change the human brain as we know it. "Perhaps not since early man first discovered how to use a tool has the human brain been affected so quickly and so dramatically," he writes. "As the brain evolves and shifts its focus towards new technological skills, it drifts away from fundamental social skills."

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How You Can Tell A Person's Class: The Wealthy Fidget, Yawn And Generally Appear Rude, Say Researchers

Photo: Body language: Those from wealthier backgrounds tend to appear more distracted than their less well off counterparts

From The Daily Mail:

Fidgeting, yawning and doodling have long been equated with boredom.

But if the person you're speaking to isn't paying attention, they may be rich rather than rude, a study has revealed.

It found that posh people fidget more - making it possible to tell a person's social class by their body language.

Researchers said those born into privilege may feel less of a need to make a good impression and so are more inclined to fidget when talking to other people.

In contrast, their poorer counterparts are anxious to make a good impression and so are more attentive.

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Science Found Wanting In U.S. Crime Labs

Robert Stinson, convicted of murder in 1984, was freed from a Wisconsin prison last month after tests found that bite-mark and DNA analysis did not match evidence from the crime scene. (Andy Manis/Associated Press)

From International Herald Tribune:

Forensic evidence that has helped convict thousands of defendants for nearly a century is often the product of shoddy scientific practices that should be upgraded and standardized, according to accounts of a draft report by the nation's pre-eminent scientific research group.

The report by the National Academy of Sciences is to be released this month. People who have seen it say it is a sweeping critique of many forensic methods that the police and prosecutors rely on, including fingerprinting, firearms identification and analysis of bite marks, blood spatter, hair and handwriting.

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Britannica 2.0 Shows Wikipedia How It's Done

From Times Online:

The 240-year-old Encyclopaedia Britannica has taken a giant leap into the world of Web 2.0 with the launch of a new online version where users can contribute and edit content.

In a move that takes it head to head with Wikipedia, new features on the Britannica site will allow users to edit and contribute articles in return for the glory of having their name attached to the submission.

However, “voyeuristic” Wikipedia fans ought not to get too excited by the changes as all submissions will undergo a strict vetting process and may or may not make the cut, according to Britannica 's president, Jorge Cauz.

“We’re not trying to be a wiki - that’s the last thing we want to be,” Mr Cauz told The Times.

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East Asia Builds World's Largest Radio Telescope Network

Credit: Landscape photo of the Very Large Array antenna with the moon. Credit: NRAO

From China View:

SHANGHAI, Feb.1 (Xinhua) -- East Asian astronomers are building the world's largest radio telescope array to see the deep into the galaxy and black holes and more accurately determine the orbits of lunar probes such as China's Chang'e-1.

The array, called the East Asia Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) consortium, consists of 19 radio telescopes from China, Japan and the Republic of Korea (ROK) that cover an area with a diameter of 6,000 kilometers from northern Japan's Hokkaido to western China's Kunming and Urumqi.

The VLBI technology is widely used in radio astronomy. It combines the observations simultaneously made by several telescopes to expand the diameter and increase magnification.

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Google Sets up Online Broadband Testing Lab

Google Inc. and two nonprofit partners, on Wednesday, launched a Web site that lets consumers test their Internet connections to reveal possible interference and traffic management by service providers. (AP Photo)

From ABC News:

Google Inc. and two nonprofit partners Wednesday launched a Web site that lets consumers test their Internet connections to reveal possible interference and traffic management by service providers.

The site, Measurement Lab, addresses a need among academics who want to gather data on how Internet connections work in practice. While the workings of the core Internet "highways" are well known and standardized, it's difficult to find out what happens on the network of an Internet service provider, between the "highway" and the customer's home.

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US Wind Power Grew By 50% In 2008 As China's Doubled

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 (New York Times)

From Ars Technica:

The Global Wind Energy Council, an industry group, has totaled the past year's growth in generating capacity, and found that wind had a very good year, with US wind power having its highest annual growth ever, and China doubling its installed capacity.

Many renewable energy technologies, most notably photovoltaic, are struggling to reach what's called "grid parity," where the cost of the power they generate matches that of fossil fuel generation. One technology that's largely there is wind, as maturing turbine technology and economies of scale have made the economics of wind power quite competitive. Those economics can clearly be seen in the latest figures on the growth of the wind industry, which cover 2008. Among the milestones: wind was the largest component of Europe's growth in electric generating capacity, the US became the world's top wind energy producer, and China doubled its installed capacity in just a year—for the fourth year running.

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Holographic Universe: Discovery Could Herald New Era In Fundamental Physics

View through one of the tubes of GEO600.
(Credit: Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics/Leibniz Universität Hannover)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Feb. 4, 2009) — Cardiff University researchers, who are part of a British-German team searching the depths of space to study gravitational waves, may have stumbled on one of the most important discoveries in physics, according to an American physicist.

Craig Hogan, a physicist at Fermilab Centre for Particle Astrophysics in Illinois is convinced that he has found proof in the data of the gravitational wave detector GEO600 of a holographic Universe – and that his ideas could explain mysterious noise in the detector data that has not been explained so far.

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Oldest Fossil Evidence for Animals Found

Hymeniacidon sp. Photograph: Jane Fromont, WA Museum

From Live Science:

The oldest fossilized evidence of animals has been unearthed in Oman and reveals that tiny sea sponges were abundant 635 million years ago, long before most of the planet's other major animal groups evolved, according to a new analysis.

This early life hardly looked like us, but some of the so-called demosponges can be sizable today. Demosponges still make up 90 percent of all sponges on Earth and 100 percent of Earth's largest sponges, including barrel sponges, which can be larger than an old-style phone booth.

The ancient demosponges — probably measuring across no more than the width of a fork tine — were pinned down via fossilized steroids, called steranes, which are characteristic of the cell membranes of the sponges, rather than via direct fossils of the sponges themselves.

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The Father Factor: How Dad's Age Increases Baby's Risk of Mental Illness

When a large study linked schizophrenia to paternal age, some researchers wondered if the root cause, rather than age, was that men who had waited had the makings of the disease themselves. Getty Images

From Scientific American:

Could becoming a father after age 40 raise the risks that your children will have a mental illness?

* It is widely recognized that a 40-year-old woman has an increased risk of bearing a child with Down syndrome. What is not known is that a 40-year-old man has the same risk of fathering a child with schizophrenia—and even higher odds of his offspring having autism. The risk of bipolar disorder appears to rise as well.
* In the past couple of decades, the number of older fathers has increased. Birth rates for men older than 40 have jumped as much as 40 percent since 1980.
* The mechanisms behind the higher risks are still being investigated, although scientists have several hypotheses that could someday lead to better therapies or possibly even cures for these mental illnesses.

When my wife, Elizabeth, was pregnant, she had a routine ultrasound exam, and I was astonished by the images. The baby’s ears, his tiny lips, the lenses of his eyes and even the feathery, fluttering valves in his heart were as crisp and clear as the muscles and tendons in a Leonardo da Vinci drawing. Months before he was born, we were already squabbling about whom he looked like. Mostly, though, we were relieved; everything seemed to be fine.

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Intelligent Life Could Be Thriving On 40,000 Planets

This planet, located near the centre of the Milky Way about 20,000 light years from us, is just one of the 40,000 which could be harbouring intelligent life

From Daily Mail:

Science’s quest to discover life on Mars has so far failed to find even one little green man.

But not to worry. Aliens could be alive and well on almost 40,000 other planets.

Researchers have calculated that up to 37,964 worlds in our galaxy are hospitable enough to be home to creatures at least as intelligent as ourselves.

Astrophysicist Duncan Forgan created a computer programme that collated all the data on the 330 or so planets known to man and worked out what proportion would have conditions suitable for life.

The estimate, which took into account factors such as temperature and availability of water and minerals, was then extrapolated across the Milky Way.

Three scenarios of how life could develop were also taken into account.

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New Google Mars Reveals the Red Planet in 3-D

Mars's massive Victoria Crater is among the landmarks people can explore via high-resolution images in Google Mars 3-D, a new mode launched in February 2009 in the free mapping program Google Earth. Picture courtesy Google

From National Geographic:

Tucked into Monday's media splash for the launch of oceans in Google Earth was another, quieter announcement: A module for exploring Mars is now part of the popular 3-D mapping tool.

Users can soar through alien trenches, see through the eyes of robotic visitors, and toggle between natural color, "night vision," and rainbow-hued topographic views of the red planet.

Virtual Mars is based on pictures from the many orbiters and landers—past and present—that have been sent to study Martian landscapes.

Much of the imagery used in Google Mars 3-D is already publicly available and easy to access on sites across the Internet, noted project leader Noel Gorelick.

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Five Years of Facebook: A Retrospective

From PC World:

It doesn't seem like five years since Facebook appeared on the scene. I was slow to join the throng--my friends list numbers only 242 of the 110 million people who have joined the site since its inception.

Facebook is less juvenile in look-and-feel than MySpace, which it has overtaken in popularity. It is also a lot cleaner, again in look-and-feel but also in content. It also lacks the sexual content that plagues MySpace.

Facebook is more generalist in approach than some other social networking sites, such as Linked-In, which seem aimed at people looking for jobs and customers instead of communicating with people they already know. If you want to exploit your friends, Linked-In seems an excellent place to do it. And they'll exploit you in return.

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