Moon and Venus Converge Friday Night

The scene about two hours after sunset from near Phoenix, Arizona on Friday, Feb. 27, 2009. Simulated sky map made using Starry Night Software.

From Live Science:

It has been a superb winter for viewing the queen of the planets, Venus. February marks the pinnacle of its evening visibility as it stands like a sequined showgirl nearly halfway up in the western sky at sunset.

You can't miss it. Just look west after sunset. In fact, you can see it during the day if you know where to look. Find it just after sunset one evening, then scan around the same spot just before sunset the next day.

Read more ....

Europe Names Crew For Mars 'Mission'

Red Mars from Spirit (Image from NASA)

From Breitart/AFP:

The European Space Agency (ESA) on Friday named a Frenchman and a German who will join four Russians in an innovative 105-day isolation experiment to test whether humans can one day fly to Mars.

From March 31, the six "crew" will be locked inside a special facility in Moscow that replicates conditions of a space trip to Mars.

The simulation will be followed by a 520-day experiment, starting later this year, that would last as long as a real mission to Mars.

The two Europeans are Oliver Knickel, 28, a mechanical engineer in the German army, and Cyrille Fournier, 40, a captain with Air France who flies A320 airliners, ESA said in a press release.

Read more ....

Warnings Issued On Nanotechnology

Photo: One example of nanotechnology is this Kevlar-treated fabric developed for the military in Cambridge, Mass. The coating is extremely thin. ELISE AMENDOLA AP

From The Houston Chronicle:

Some say time's right to assess its environmental impact.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency may soon act to impose the first regulations specific to nanotechnology, a move that could have a significant impact in Houston.

Already, Canada has signaled its intent to require companies working with nanomaterials — designed at the molecular level to have special properties, such as enhanced strength — to report what materials they are working with and in what quantity.

Read more ....

Jurassic Web

Screenshot of a web page in 1996 (Image from Tulane)

From Slate:

The Internet of 1996 is almost unrecognizable compared with what we have today.

It's 1996, and you're bored. What do you do? If you're one of the lucky people with an AOL account, you probably do the same thing you'd do in 2009: Go online. Crank up your modem, wait 20 seconds as you log in, and there you are—"Welcome." You check your mail, then spend a few minutes chatting with your AOL buddies about which of you has the funniest screen name (you win, pimpodayear94).

Read more ....

Additional Evidence That Potato Chips Should Be Eaten Only In Moderation

Acrylamide, found in foods such as potato chips and french fries, may increase the risk of heart disease. Acrylamide has been linked previously to nervous system disorders and possibly to cancer. (Credit: iStockphoto/Alexander Zhiltsov)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Feb. 26, 2009) — A new study published in the March 2009 American Journal of Clinical Nutrition by Marek Naruszewicz and colleagues from Poland suggests that acrylamide from foods may increase the risk of heart disease. Acrylamide has been linked previously to nervous system disorders and possibly to cancer.

After ingesting large amounts of potato chips providing about 157 micrograms of acrylamide daily for four weeks, the participants had adverse changes in oxidized LDL, inflammatory markers and antioxidants that help the body eliminate acrylamide—all of which may increase the risk of heart disease.

Read more ....

Sex Goes Way Back, Fossil Find Shows

The armored fish, Materpiscis attenboroughi, may have given birth to its young tail-first, similar to some sharks and rays. Credit: Museum Victoria.

From Live Science:

Remains of embryos entombed in their fish mothers' wombs for 380 million years have been found in fossils from an ancient rock outcrop in Western Australia. The finding is a big deal because it suggests that sex goes way back.

The prehistoric fish, called placoderms, are found at the base of the vertebrate evolutionary tree (in a large group we humans also belong to), so it now looks like sexual intercourse, and the mating behaviors that go along with it, were more widespread in these ancient animals than previously thought, said the scientists who made the discovery.

Read more ....

The Weirdest New Source of Alternative Energy: Underwater Vibrations

A prototype underwater generator shows the fluid dynamics that will produce power from slow-moving currents using metal rods suspending near the ocean or river floor. Image courtesy of NOAA

From Discover Magazine:

Researchers say this longtime bane of offshore drilling is more cost-efficient than wind and solar.

The latest frontier for renewable energy is the ocean floor. A novel method of generating power uses a network of metal rods to tap into the currents that flow along the bottom of the ocean (and along riverbeds as well). Water swirls as it flows past the rods, making them vibrate. This phenomenon is painfully familiar to oil companies, which spend large sums of money minimizing such vibrations in order to stabilize offshore drilling equipment. “Everyone was obsessed with suppressing this motion,” says Michael Bernitsas, the University of Michigan engineer who developed the technology. “At some point it dawned on me that maybe we can do the opposite: Enhance it and harness the energy.”

Read more ....

Ice Ages and Sea Level

Figure 1: Orbital Parameters: Eccentricity, Precession and Obliquity- click for larger image
(Image from Watts Up With That)

From Watts Up With That?

The Earth is currently in an interglacial period of an ice age that started about two and a half million years ago. The Earth’s current ice age is primarily caused by Antarctica drifting over the South Pole 30 million years ago. This meant that a large area of the Earth’s surface changed from being very low-albedo ocean to highly reflective ice and snow. The first small glaciers were formed in Antarctica perhaps as long ago as 40 million years. They expanded gradually until, about 20 million years ago, a permanent ice sheet covered the whole Antarctic continent. About 10 million years later, glaciers appeared on the high mountains of Alaska, and about 3 million years ago, ice sheets developed on lower ground in high northerly latitudes.

Read more ....

Galaxy May Be Full Of 'Earths,' Alien Life

Photo: An artist's impression shows a planet passing in front of its parent star. Such events are called transits.

From CNN:

(CNN) -- As NASA prepares to hunt for Earth-like planets in our corner of the Milky Way galaxy, there's new buzz that "Star Trek's" vision of a universe full of life may not be that far-fetched.

Pointy-eared aliens traveling at light speed are staying firmly in science fiction, but scientists are offering fresh insights into the possible existence of inhabited worlds and intelligent civilizations in space.

There may be 100 billion Earth-like planets in the Milky Way, or one for every sun-type star in the galaxy, said Alan Boss, an astronomer with the Carnegie Institution and author of the new book "The Crowded Universe: The Search for Living Planets."

Read more ....

How To Make Your Computer Boot Faster

(Photograph by Kyoko Hamada)

From Popular Mechanics:

Why can’t a computers start up like a television? In short, it is all about the operating system. And contrary to common sense, the newer the operating system the longer it can take. But you can do something about it. Here are tips to get your tortoise-like boot time to hop like a bunny.

Why can’t a computer be more like a television? When you push the power button on a TV, it just turns on. Computers, on the other hand, boot—as in, they take so long to get started that you want to stick your boot into them.

You would think that the march of technological progress would have reduced boot times over the years, but newer operating systems can take longer—Microsoft Vista actually tends to boot more slowly than its predecessor, Windows XP. (Microsoft claims its next-generation operating system, Windows 7, should provide drastic improvements in boot time.)

Read more ....

The Evolution of Human Aggression

From Live Science:

Everyone has experienced anger at one point in their lives and some of us — males mostly, going by statistics — have channeled that anger into violence, perhaps by throwing a punch during a hockey game or after too many beers at the bar.

Then there's aggression on a much more sinister scale, in the form of murder, wars and genocide. Trying to understand what fuels the different levels of human aggression, from fisticuffs to nation-on-nation battle, has long preoccupied human biologists.

Read more ....

Genetic Discovery Could Lead To Advances In Dental Treatment

A normal mouse tooth on the left, where ameloblast cells that produce enamel are glowing in red. On the right is a tooth with the Ctip2 gene deleted, and little enamel has been able to form. (Credit: Image courtesy of Oregon State University)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Feb. 24, 2009) — Researchers have identified the gene that ultimately controls the production of tooth enamel, a significant advance that could some day lead to the repair of damaged enamel, a new concept in cavity prevention, and restoration or even the production of replacement teeth.

The gene, called Ctip2, is a "transcription factor" that was already known to have several functions - in immune response, and the development of skin and the nervous system. Scientists can now add tooth development to that list.

The findings were just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Read more ....

Prosecution Alters Pirate Bay Charges in Bid to Win Conviction

From Wired News:

STOCKHOLM – The Pirate Bay prosecutor altered the copyright-infringement charges Tuesday to make it easier to convict the four defendants who co-founded the world's most notorious BitTorrent tracker.

Moments later, Hollywood investigators testified about the ease with which they obtained copyright works using the 5-year-old site.

But at the outset of Tuesday's proceedings, the prosecutor, Håkan Roswall, announced a alteration of the charges, which legal scholars suggested would make it more likely to win a conviction.

Read more ....

Top 10 Ig Nobels: The Best of Science's Strangest Prize

From Popular Mechanics:

A large portion of scientific research remains forever off the public radar. A select few studies deliver results that reverberate in the scientific community and make their way to textbooks. Then there are those research efforts that, as one group puts it, represent "achievements that cannot or should not be reproduced." Every year the Annals of Improbable Research highlights this last group with the Ig Nobel, an award for the top engineering solutions, science products and peer-reviewed papers that, according to the editors, "make you laugh, then make you think." We looked back at 18 years of the prizes to bring you our 10 favorite Ig Nobels of all time.

Read more ....

On the Trail of Osama bin Laden: Scientists Use Biological Tracking Models to Pursue America's Most Wanted

Regional analysis of city islands within a 20-km radius
of bin Laden’s last known location (red dot).

From Popular Mechanics:

The United States military's attempts to track down Osama bin Laden in the seven-plus years since the World Trade Center attacks have been notoriously fruitless. But a new study suggests the way to find America's most wanted criminal is to treat him like an endangered species. In the study, released in MIT International Review, University of California-Los Angeles geographers Thomas Gillespie and John Agnew modeled the terrorist leader's possible whereabouts by using the same techniques conservationists use to track the dispersal of animals and likely migration patterns. Using a variety of criteria specific to Osama bin Laden's needs—electricity, room for his entourage, health problems—the study isolates three buildings in the remote Pakistani town of Parachinar in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas as the most likely hideout. (The paper was submitted to the FBI before it went to the MIT journal and, according the FBI, it was forwarded to the appropriate personnel and is part of an active investigation.)

Read more ....

Just How Fat Are We?

Big Little Kids: Obesity rates in Americans ages 12 to 19 have more than tripled since 1980.

From Popsci.com:

Headlines fret about the growing obesity epidemic, but what does it mean? How did it happen? And what are the costs?

Obesity, defined as a body-mass index (BMI) of 30 or higher, is not equally distributed across the U.S. Check out this map to find out which state is the fattest (hint: it's the namesake of mud pie), which is the thinnest (think Coors Light), and which spends the most money on obesity-related health care (its governor pumps iron).

Read on, after the break, for more of America's (and the world's) fat facts.

Read more ....

Why Women Cannot Read Maps

Are we lost? Women tend to describe directions as 'right of' and 'left of' landmarks, while men are better at reading maps, a study found

Are We Lost? Why Women Are Worse At Reading Maps But Can Find Those Misplaced Keys -- Daily Mail

Women are worse at reading maps but better at finding lost items, research into how the sexes perceive beauty has revealed.

U.S Scientists asked 10 men and 10 women to view a series of unfamiliar pictures. The participants were told to give their impressions of the images and whether or not they found them beautiful.

The scientists also used a technique called magnetoencephalography (MEG) to measure changes in the magnetic fields generated by active neurons in the brain.

Read more ....

Black Hole Destroying A Star (Video)

Hat Tip: Geek Press.

When Dreaming Is Believing: Dreams Affect People's Judgment, Behavior

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Feb. 22, 2009) — While science tries to understand the stuff dreams are made of, humans, from cultures all over the world, continue to believe that dreams contain important hidden truths, according to newly published research.

In six different studies, researchers surveyed nearly 1,100 people about their dreams. "Psychologists' interpretations of the meaning of dreams vary widely," said Carey Morewedge, an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University and the study's lead author. "But our research shows that people believe their dreams provide meaningful insight into themselves and their world."

Read more ....

Is The Internet Warping Our Brains?

Image from Esther's Space

From Live Science:

The Internet is no doubt changing modern society. It has profoundly altered how we gather information, consume news, carry out war, and create and foster social bonds. But is it altering our brains? A growing number of scientists think so, and studies are providing data to show it.

What remains to be seen is whether the changes are good or bad, and whether the brain is, as one neuroscientist believes, undergoing unprecedented evolution.

Read more ....

My Comment: I do not know about my brain .... but my hands suffer from carpel syndrome.

Stargazers Hope For Glimpse Of Green Comet

The comet contains the gases cyanogen and diatomic carbon, which give it its green colour. (Paolo Candy/Cimini Astronomical Observatory)

From The Independent:

It's green, about 300,000 miles wide and some 38 million miles away, and tonight a comet called Lulin could be visible to the naked eye.

At around midnight, UK space scientists and amateur stargazers will be looking due south for a glimpse of the unusual celestial body as it reaches its nearest point to Earth.

Discovered only a year ago, the comet gets its green colour from a poisonous, cyanide-like gas in its atmosphere.

Read more ....

More News On Lulin

Comet Lulin making nearest approach toward earth, one-time only -- China View
Best chance to view Comet Lulin is here! -- Scientific American
Green light for a close encounter: 'Jupiter-sized' comet to streak past Earth tonight -- Daily Mail Online
How To See Comet Lulin As It Passes Earth -- Space Daily

Google’s Gmail Service Crashes Across World

Google?s Gmail service has suffered a worldwide crash
preventing millions of users from accessing their mail

From The Telegraph:

Google’s web-based email service, Gmail, has crashed this morning, leaving millions of users from Britain to Australia unable to send and receive messages.

The email service went offline at around 10.25am GMT, and the outage appears to have affected users throughout the UK as well as across Europe, and even as far afield as Australia and India.

It appears that only web-based Gmail access is affected, and users can continue to send and receive messages using other devices, such as mobile phones and third-party mail clients.

Read more ....

More News On Today's Gmail Interruption

Google apologizes for Gmail outage -- CNET
Gmail Struck With Service Outage -- PC World
Google mail users hit by global outage -- Times Online
Gmail breakdown affects users worldwide -- AFP
Four Hours Without Gmail -- New York Times
Gmail Experiences Worldwide Crash -- FOX News

NASA Says Climate Satellite Fails To Launch

From Yahoo News/Reuters:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A mission carrying a climate satellite into orbit failed on Tuesday when the satellite was not able to separate from the rocket, NASA said.

"The vehicle ... landed just sort of Antarctica in the ocean," John Brunschwyler of Virginia-based Orbital Sciences Corp, which made the rocket told a news conference.

The $278 million Orbiting Carbon Observatory was going to measure carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and to determine what happens to the climate-changing pollutant.

Read more ....

Update: Nasa's first CO2 satellite crashes into ocean after launch failure -- Times Online

Most Detailed Lunar Map Suggests Little Water Inside Moon

An international team of researchers has created the most detailed map of the Moon yet, using the laser altimeter (LALT) instrument on board the Japanese Selenological and Engineering Explorer satellite. C.K. Shum, professor of earth sciences at Ohio State University, is a member of the LALT science team and a co-author of a paper appearing in the February 13 issue of the journal Science. (Credit: Image copyright Science/AAAS)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Feb. 23, 2009) — The most detailed map of the Moon ever created has revealed never-before-seen craters at the lunar poles.

The map is also revealing secrets about the Moon's interior -- and hinting about Mars's interior as well.

C.K. Shum, professor of earth sciences at Ohio State University, is part of the international research team that published the map in the February 13 issue of the journal Science.

"The surface can tell us a lot about what's happening inside the Moon, but until now mapping has been very limited," Shum said. "For instance, with this new high-resolution map, we can confirm that there is very little water on the Moon today, even deep in the interior. And we can use that information to think about water on other planets, including Mars."

Read more ....

Unlike Diamonds, Most Minerals Not Forever

From Live Science:

Diamonds may be forever, but that's not true of most minerals. In fact, about two-thirds of the 4,300 known minerals on Earth today owe their existence to biological processes, and thus evolved fairly recently in geological terms. So says Robert M. Hazen of the Carnegie Institution in Washington, D.C., who with seven colleagues identified three phases of mineral evolution.

The first phase began more than 4.55 billion years ago, as the solar system started developing. Chemical elements came together, forming about 250 simple minerals that in turn coalesced into planets. On Earth, the second phase stretched from 4.55 billion to 2.5 billion years ago, starting with the violent collision that formed the Moon. Earth's temperature and pressure varied wildly; plate tectonics began churning the planet's surface; and volatiles appeared, such as water and carbon dioxide, helping to redistribute the elements. Those changes enabled the evolution of some 1,250 new minerals.

Read more ....

Scientists Expect To Create Life In Next 10 years

This photo, provided by ProtoLife, shows vesicles, artificial membranes for cells, made from scratch. Teams around the world, including ProtoLife, are trying to create synthetic life in a lab. Martin Hanczyc / AP

From MSNBC/AP:

First cell of synthetic life can only be seen under a microscope.

WASHINGTON - Around the world, a handful of scientists are trying to create life from scratch and they’re getting closer.

Experts expect an announcement within three to 10 years from someone in the now little-known field of “wet artificial life.”

“It’s going to be a big deal and everybody’s going to know about it,” said Mark Bedau, chief operating officer of ProtoLife of Venice, Italy, one of those in the race. “We’re talking about a technology that could change our world in pretty fundamental ways — in fact, in ways that are impossible to predict.”

Read more ....

250 DVDs In A Quarter-Sized Device -- Coming Soon?

"I expect that the new method we developed will transform the microelectronic and storage industries, and open up vistas for entirely new applications," said co-lead investigator Thomas Russell.

From NBC Bay Area News:

A new technique developed by scientists at UC Berkeley and University of Massachusetts Amherst may drastically increase the ability of devices to store things.

Cal officials called the technique "innovative and easily implemented," on Thursday.

The method lets microscopic nanoscale elements precisely assemble themselves over large surfaces.

Scientists said the technique could soon open doors to dramatic improvements in the data storage capacity of electronic media.

Read more ....

Six Ways to Boost Brainpower

Image Composition By Scientific American Mind; Julie Felton Istockphoto (barina); Dean Turner Istockphoto (background)

From Scientific American:

Key Concepts

* Scientists are finding that the adult human brain is far more malleable than they once thought. Your behavior and environment can cause substantial rewiring of your brain or a reorganization of its functions.
* Studies have shown that exercise can improve the brain’s executive skills, which include planning, organizing and multitasking. What you eat can also influence how effectively your brain operates.
* Activities such as listening to music, playing video games and meditating may boost cognitive performance as well.

Amputees sometimes experience phantom limb sensations, feeling pain, itching or other impulses coming from limbs that no longer exist. Neuroscientist Vilayanur S. Ramachandran worked with patients who had so-called phantom limbs, including Tom, a man who had lost one of his arms.

Ramachandran discovered that if he stroked Tom’s face, Tom felt like his missing fingers were also being touched. Each part of the body is represented by a different region of the somatosensory cortex, and, as it happens, the region for the hand is adjacent to the region for the face. The neuroscientist deduced that a remarkable change had taken place in Tom’s somatosensory cortex.

Read more ....

Asia's Space Program Is Heating Up

Photo: An Indian spacecraft takes off carrying the country's first lunar probe, Chandrayaan-1 last autumn

India Approves £1.7bn Plan To Launch Astronauts As Asian Space Race Heats Up -- Times Online

India has approved a £1.7 billion plan to launch its first astronauts into space by 2015, in its latest bid to close the gap with China in what many see as a 21st Century Asian version of the Cold War race for the Moon.

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will attempt to put two people into orbit 172 miles (275 km) above the Earth for seven days, according to a proposal approved by the Planning Commission at a meeting on Friday.

"ISRO needs to be supported as it has done marvellous job in the field of Space Science. That's why Planning Commission will support it," Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission, told reporters.

"An unmanned flight will be launched in 2013-2014 and manned mission likely to launch by 2014-2015," he said.

Read more ....

The Race for Bosons

Fermilab's Tevatron: Reidar Hahn/Fermilab

From Pop Science:

Competitor takes advantage of LHC's accident.

Particle accelerator smackdown! Scientists working on Fermilab's Tevatron have been talking some smack (in the politest of terms), saying they have a good shot at finding the elusive Higgs boson before the currently out-of-commission Large Hadron Collider does.

Also in today's links: a map of emissions, why not to keep chimps as pets (besides the now-obvious), and more.

Read more ....

Aging Mars Rover Gets A Power Boost

Mars rover Spirit

From Yahoo News/Space:

NASA's aging Mars rover Spirit has a bit more power under its hood thanks to some Martian winds that cleaned dust from its vital solar panels.

The handy cleaning occurred earlier this month and was discovered by engineers scanning data from Spirit's power subsystem.

"We will be able to use this energy to do significantly more driving," said Colette Lohr, a rover mission manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif. "Our drives have been averaging about 50 minutes, and energy has usually been the limiting factor. We may be able to increase that to drives of an hour and a half."

Read more ....

Our Grid: Powering Our 21st Century Lives With a 19th Century Design

Transformer TRP: FearChild on WikiMedia

From Pop Science:

PopSci.com welcomes Dr. Bill Chameides, dean of Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment. Dr. Chameides blogs at The Green Grok to spark lively discussions about environmental science, keeping you in the know on what the scientific world is discovering and how it affects you – all in plain language and, hopefully, with a bit of fun. Now, PopSci.com partners with The Green Grok to bring you exclusive new blog posts a week before they hit the Grok's blog. Give it a read and get in on the discussion!

Can you hear it? The buzz on smart grids is getting louder. News reports on green jobs are peppered with talk of a “smart grid.” Google returns 929,000 pages for the term. Even Congress is in the swim, greening the stimulus package with $11 billion for a smart grid. So is Congress wise to fund it? Or are we buying an electrical bridge to nowhere? In this and a post to follow, we’ll look at why smart grids are a smart move.

Read more ....

Scientists Close In On 'Universal' Vaccine For Flu: Study

From Breitbart/AFP:

Scientists on Sunday unveiled lab-made human antibodies that can disable several types of influenza, including highly-lethal H5N1 bird flu and the "Spanish Flu" strain that killed tens of millions in 1918.

Tested in mice, the antibodies work by binding to a previously obscure structure in the flu virus which, when blocked, sabotages the pathogen's ability to enter the cell it is trying to infect, according to the study.

Because this structure -- described by one scientist as a "viral Achilles' heel" -- is genetically stable and has resisted mutation over time, the antibodies are effective against many different strains.

Read more ....

Top 10 Science Fiction Books, Movies And TV Shows

The 10 Most Influential UFO-Inspired Books, Movies and TV Shows -- Popular Mechanics

UFO culture began in the late 40’s, when a pilot’s account of a midair encounter with mysterious aircraft triggered similar reports across the United States. Authors, movie producers and a few hack journalists were quick to respond. By the late 1950s, pop culture was completely preoccupied with aliens, and the clichés it created then have been repeated and reinvented ever since. Here are the books, TV shows and movies that helped create the mythology of UFOs in America. They aren’t the best, or the worst, but the ones that made the most impact on the prevailing American superstition of our time.

Read more ....

2009 Oscars: PM Predicts Winners for Sci/Tech Categories

From Popular Mechanics:

PM takes to the red carpet to find out who movie industry experts expect to win for audio and visual achievement at the 81st annual Academy Awards, airing Feb. 22 at 8 pm on ABC. Check back Feb. 23 to see how our experts fared—and to get their assessment of why they might have been wrong.

Read more ....

NASA Delays Space Shuttle Launch A Fourth Time

NASA workers watch as the space shuttle Discovery is moved to the launch site at the Kennedy Space Center in January. NASA has postponed the launch of the space shuttle Discovery for a fourth time, but without setting a new target date to send the orbiter to the International Space Station (ISS). (AFP/Getty Images/File/Matt Stroshane)

From Yahoo News/AP:

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – NASA delayed the launch of space shuttle Discovery for a fourth time on Friday amid valve concerns, and managers are uncertain when the flight will take place.

Following a 13-hour meeting at Kennedy Space Center, shuttle managers decided against launching next week. The launch had been targeted for no sooner than Feb. 27; no new date was set.

Officials said they believe they have a realistic shot at launching Discovery to the international space station before mid-March. After that, the shuttle would have to get in line behind a Russian Soyuz launch with a new space station crew, and the next opportunity for Discovery would be after April 6.

Read more ....

More News On The Space Shuttle

NASA Defers Setting Next Shuttle Launch Date -- FOX News
Launch of space shuttle Discovery delayed indefinitely -- Wikinews
NASA launch remains uncertain -- Red Orbit
NASA Making Agonizing Decision Over Discovery Launch -- MSNBC
NASA delays Discovery launch a fourth time -- AFP
NASA postpones space shuttle Discovery's launch for fourth time -- China View
NASA delays space shuttle launch a fourth time -- AP

Is Genius Born or Can It Be Learned?

Albert Einstein. Photo from Corbis

From Time Magazine:

Is it possible to cultivate genius? Could we somehow structure our educational and social life to produce more Einsteins and Mozarts — or, more urgently these days, another Adam Smith or John Maynard Keynes?

How to produce genius is a very old question, one that has occupied philosophers since antiquity. In the modern era, Immanuel Kant and Darwin's cousin Francis Galton wrote extensively about how genius occurs. Last year, pop-sociologist Malcolm Gladwell addressed the subject in his book Outliers: The Story of Success.

Read more ....

Single-celled Algae Took The Leap To Multicellularity 200 Million Years Ago

Pleodorina starrii has an incomplete division of labor. Although the 12 small cells near the top of this colony only swim, the 20 larger cells both swim and reproduce. (Credit: Copyright 2008 Matthew Herron)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Feb. 22, 2009) — Some algae have been hanging together rather than going it alone much longer than previously thought, according to new research.

Ancestors of Volvox algae made the transition from being a single-celled organism to becoming a multicellular colony at least 200 million years ago, during the Triassic Period.

At that time, Earth was a hot-house world whose inhabitants included tree ferns, dinosaurs and early mammals. Previous estimates had suggested Volvox's ancestors arose only 50 million years ago.

Read more..

What's An Oscar Really Made Of?

From Live Science:

On Sunday, nominated movie stars will show up at Hollywood’s Kodak Theatre hoping to walk away clutching one of those glowing statuettes. But there's more to that golden guy than meets the eye.

When they pick up their trophies, the winning celebs are toting around 8.5 pounds of metal. Oscar is 13.5 inches (34 centimeters) tall.

The Oscar statuettes, officially dubbed the Academy Award of Merit, have a 24-karat gold plating on their surface.

Beneath the gold, the statuette's interior is a metal mixture called Britannium, also called Britannia metal. It is an alloy of tin (93 percent), antimony (5 percent), and copper (2 percent). It's known for its smooth texture and silvery appearance.

Read more ....

Scientists Make Advances On 'Nano' Electronics

Axial quadrupole nanostructures in an illustration courtesy of the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Two U.S. teams have developed new materials that may pave the way for ever smaller, faster and more powerful electronics as current semiconductor technology begins to reach the limits of miniaturization. Photo: REUTERS/Handout

From Wired Science/Reuters:

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Two U.S. teams have developed new materials that may pave the way for ever smaller, faster and more powerful electronics as current semiconductor technology begins to reach the limits of miniaturization.

One team has made tiny transistors -- the building block of computer processors -- a fraction of the size of those used on advanced silicon chips.

Another has made a film material capable of storing data from 250 DVDs onto a surface the size of a coin.

Read more ....

As The World's Languages Disappear, Basque Revives

From McClatchy:

ST. JEAN DE LUZ, France — The world is losing languages at an alarming rate, a United Nations agency reported Thursday, with thousands of tongues expected to disappear by the end of this century.

Yet amid the losses, one community — the Basque people, who live in the mountainous region of southern France and northern Spain — is reviving a language that many once feared would die out.

In St. Jean de Luz, a seaside town near the Spanish border at the western edge of the Pyrenees, efforts are under way to revitalize the Basque language, which 30 years ago was rarely heard outside mountain villages. Among a population of about 3 million in the Basque region, which comprises seven provinces in Spain and France, an estimated 700,000 people speak Basque today.

Bilingual signs dot the roads and mark storefronts, and an annual festival celebrates the Basque language, music and culture. Public and private schools full of children and adults learn Basque.

Read more ....

It's All Systems Go For Europa

Europa, dwarfed by Jupiter, is in the center of this image taken by the Cassini spacecraft on Dec. 7, 2000. "Europa is tremendously exciting," a NASA official said. NASA

From The L.A. Times:

NASA unveils plans for a 20-year project to send a spacecraft to Jupiter's ice-covered moon in a search for life.

NASA announced plans Wednesday to embark on a mammoth 20-year project to send a spacecraft to Jupiter's ice-covered moon Europa as its next flagship mission to search for life elsewhere in the solar system.

The mission, which could cost as much as $3 billion, will be managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge. It will focus on the possibility that in the gigantic ocean thought to be hidden under the moon's thick cover of ice is a habitable zone where rudimentary forms of life could exist.

Read more ....

Arctic Sea Ice Underestimated For Weeks Due To Faulty Sensor

From Bloomberg:

A glitch in satellite sensors caused scientists to underestimate the extent of Arctic sea ice by 500,000 square kilometers (193,000 square miles), a California- size area, the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center said.

The error, due to a problem called “sensor drift,” began in early January and caused a slowly growing underestimation of sea ice extent until mid-February. That’s when “puzzled readers” alerted the NSIDC about data showing ice-covered areas as stretches of open ocean, the Boulder, Colorado-based group said on its Web site.

Read more ....

Update: Sea Ice Sensor Degradation Hits Cryosphere Today -- Watts Up With That?

Cosmic Stage Set for Comet Lulin's Fly-By

Comet Lulin as photographed by amateur astronomer Jack Newton in Arizona.
Jack Newton/NASA

From FOX News/Space.com:

A recently discovered comet is making its closest approach to Earth in the next few days and offers anyone with binoculars or a small telescope a chance to see some frozen leftovers of our solar system's making.

Comet Lulin has, as expected, crossed the threshold to naked-eye visibility for people with dark, rural skies. It hovers just inside that envelope of visibility, however, and is not likely visible from cities, where the glare of urban lights can drown out all but the brightest night-sky objects.

Read more ....

Atlantis Revealed At Last... Or Just A Load Of Old Googles?

False hopes: Google said the grid-like markings, thought to reveal the location of mythical underwater city Atlantis, are an artifact of its map making process

From The Daily Mail:

For centuries the story of Atlantis has captured the imagination - a fabled city of great beauty, culture and wealth that was suddenly swallowed up by the ocean.

Its location - or at least the source of the legend - remained a tantalising mystery. Was it really in the Mediterranean and not in the Atlantic at all?

Some claim its ruins lie beneath the waves off the coast of Cornwall. Others say they've been found in the Black Sea.

Read more ....

NASA's Kepler Mission To Seek Other Earths

Artist's concept of Kepler in space. (Credit: NASA/JPL)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Feb. 20, 2009) — NASA's Kepler spacecraft is ready to be moved to the launch pad today and will soon begin a journey to search for worlds that could potentially host life.

Kepler is scheduled to blast into space from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla., aboard a Delta II rocket on March 5 at 7:48 p.m. Pacific Time (10:48 p.m. Eastern Time). It is the first mission with the ability to find planets like Earth -- rocky planets that orbit sun-like stars in a warm zone where liquid water could be maintained on the surface. Liquid water is believed to be essential for the formation of life.

Read more ....

Most Wars Occur in Biodiversity Hotspots

Photo from My Daily Clarity

From Live Science:

More than 80 percent of the world's major armed conflicts from 1950-2000 occurred in regions identified as the most biologically diverse and threatened places on Earth.

Scientists compared major conflict zones with the Earth's 34 biodiversity hotspots identified by Conservation International (CI). The hotspots are considered top conservation priorities because they contain the entire populations of more than half of all plant species and at least 42 percent of all vertebrates, and are highly threatened.

Read more ....

Pentagon Official: U.S. Is Not Developing Space Weapons

The USS Lake Erie launches a Standard Missile-3 at a non-functioning National Reconnaissance Office satellite as it traveled in space at more than 17,000 mph over the Pacific Ocean on Feb. 20, 2008. Credit: Defense Dept. photo by U.S. Navy

From Live Science:

STRASBOURG, France - The United States is not developing space weapons and could not afford to do so even if it wanted to, an official with the Pentagon's National Security Space Office said Thursday.

Pete Hays, a senior policy analyst at the space office who is also associate director of the Eisenhower Center for Space and Defense Studies, said U.S. policy on space weaponry has remained pretty much the same over the last 30 years despite the occasionally heated debate on the subject during the administration of former U.S. President George W. Bush.

Read more ....

Lessons In Survival

Illustration by Josh Cochran for Newsweek

From Newsweek:

The science that explains why elite military forces bounce back faster than the rest of us.

In a laboratory, it's extremely difficult to study why some people are better at bouncing back than others because it's so hard to simulate the real stresses and strains of life. Scientists can show people scary pictures or movies to trigger their reactions and measure how they recover, but it's hardly the same as a mugger in an alley or a grizzly bear on a hiking trail. Dr. Andy Morgan of Yale Medical School set out to find a real-world laboratory where he could watch people under incredible stress in reasonably controlled conditions.

He ended up in southeastern North Carolina at Fort Bragg, home of the Army's elite Airborne and Special Forces. This is where the Army's renowned survival school is located. It's also where they believe in something called stress inoculation. Like vaccines, a small challenge or dose of a virus in your system prepares and defends you against a bigger challenge. In other words, they expose you to pressure and suffering in training so you'll build up your immunity. It's a kind of classic psychological conditioning: the more shocks to your system, the more you're able to withstand.

Read more ....

Why Would A Chimpanzee Attack A Human?

A DANGEROUS COUSIN: This chimp from the Knoxville Zoo bears its teeth to visitors, who observe from behind glass. Chimpanzees have been known to bite off fingers from behind bars. FLICKR/THE GUT

From Scientific American:

After a chimp mutilated a Connecticut woman's face, some are questioning the wisdom of keeping wild animals as pets

Earlier this week, a 14-year-old, 200-pound (90-kilogram) pet chimpanzee in Stamford, Conn., left a woman in critical condition after attacking her—mutilating her face and hands. The owner, Sandra Herold, who tried to stop the attack, was also injured and briefly hospitalized. The victim remains in critical condition.

The chimp, Travis, who was shot and killed by police officers at the scene, was apparently a friendly fixture around the neighborhood. He appeared in television commercials and had a sapiens-level CV that included using a computer, bathing and sipping wine from a stemmed glass, according to The New York Times. Reports, however, are starting to surface that Travis might have bitten another woman in 1996 and that Herold had been warned by animal control that her pet could be dangerous.

Read more ....

Telescope Spies Cataclysmic Blast

Photo: Main facts of the Fermi Mission:
Spacecraft was launched in June 2008 on a five-year mission
It is looking at the Universe in the highest-energy form of light
Fermi is 2.8m (9.2ft) high and 2.4m (8.2ft) in diameter
The spacecraft orbits at an altitude of 565km (350 miles)
It could pick up about 200 cosmic explosions each year

From The BBC:

Astronomers have recorded the most powerful radiation blast from deep space yet detected.

The event was observed by Nasa's recently launched Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope and reported in the online edition of the journal Science.

The source of the blast is assumed to be the catastrophic implosion of a star, to create a black hole.

Scientists say the spectacle's energy release was equivalent to thousands of ordinary exploding stars.

Read more ....

Lost In Space: 8 Weird Pieces Of Space Junk

From Wired:

Humans have ventured into space over the last 50 years, and all manner of junk has been left behind. From tiny bolts to whole space stations, people have discarded lots of stuff up there. Much of it eventually dies a fiery death as it falls through Earth's atmosphere, but some larger debris poses risks for astronauts and spacecraft that could collide with it. Here are some of the quirkier items left in space:

1. Spatula
While spreading some goo as a test of heat-shield repair materials, spacewalking astronaut Piers Sellers accidentally lost a spatula he had been using. The mishap took place during the space shuttle Discovery's 2006 STS-121 flight to the International Space Station, on a mission to test new safety techniques after the 2003 Columbia disaster. "That was my favorite spatch," Sellers reportedly said. "Don’t tell the other spatulas."

Read more ....