Why Dreams Are So Difficult To Remember: Precise Communication Discovered Across Brain Areas During Sleep

New research points to how memories are formed, transferred, and ultimately stored in the brain--and how that process varies throughout the various stages of sleep. (Credit: iStockphoto/Diane Diederich)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Mar. 9, 2009) — By listening in on the chatter between neurons in various parts of the brain, researchers from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have taken steps toward fully understanding just how memories are formed, transferred, and ultimately stored in the brain--and how that process varies throughout the various stages of sleep.

Their findings may someday even help scientists understand why dreams are so difficult to remember.

Scientists have long known that memories are formed in the brain's hippocampus, but are stored elsewhere--most likely in the neocortex, the outer layer of the brain. Transferring memories from one part of the brain to the other requires changing the strength of the connections between neurons and is thought to depend on the precise timing of the firing of brain cells.

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Hot Weather 'Can Trigger A Migraine'

Many migraine sufferers find that their pain can be triggered
by changes in the weather Photo: GETTY

From The Telegraph:

Hot weather can trigger migraines and other debilitating types of head pain, a new study suggests.

Researchers have also found that changes in air pressure can increase the chance of developing a painful headache.

Many migraine sufferers find that their pain can be triggered by changes in the weather, but previously there was little scientific evidence that that was the case.

The study looked at 7,054 patients who went to their hospital's casualty department complaining of severe head pain over a period of seven years.

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Not So Sweet: Over-Consumption Of Sugar Linked To Aging

Three-dimensional model of a glucose molecule.
(Credit: Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Mar. 9, 2009) — We know that lifespan can be extended in animals by restricting calories such as sugar intake. Now, according to a study published in the journal PLoS Genetics, Université de Montréal scientists have discovered that it's not sugar itself that is important in this process but the ability of cells to sense its presence.

Aging is a complex phenomenon and the mechanisms underlying aging are yet to be explained. What researchers do know is that there is a clear relationship between aging and calorie intake. For example, mice fed with half the calories they usually eat can live 40 percent longer. How does this work?

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The 300-Year History of Internet Dating

From Live Science:

Almost everyone these days can name a couple they know that met on the Internet, though it wasn't so long ago that skimming the online personals for love was considered strange, even a bit desperate.

Taboo or not, the practice certainly isn't new. Personal ads have a history going back at least 300 years, according to a new book on the subject entitled "Classified: The Secret History of the Personal Column" (Random House Books, 2009).

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Man Who Co-Discovered HIV Virus Accused Of Stealing Rights To Aids Cure

From The Telegraph:

A Nobel prize-winning French researcher who co-discovered the virus that leads to Aids but sparked controversy after his colleague said he had claimed all the glory, has now been accused of stealing the rights to a revolutionary invention that may provide a cure to the disease, it emerged yesterday.

Prof Luc Montagnier is locked in a legal battle with inventor Bruno Robert over the intellectual property rights to a technique whereby the Aids virus and other serious ailments, including Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease, can be pinpointed by their electromagnetic "signatures".

The hope is that once identified, the diseases can be blocked or neutralised with an opposite electromagnetic signal.

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The Secret Of Long Life? It's All Down To How Fast You React

Live long and prosper - if you have a speedy response time

From The Daily Mail:

People's reaction times are a far better indicator of their chances of living a long life than their blood pressure, exercise levels or weight, researchers have discovered.

Men and women with the most sluggish response times are more than twice as likely to die prematurely.

Edinburgh University and the Medical Research Council in Glasgow tracked 7,414 people nationwide over 20 years in a study which appears to confirm the adage that a healthy mind means a healthy body.

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How Scientifically Accurate Is Watchmen?

WHY SO BLUE? Dr. Manhattan's color and (some of) his powers can be explained by quantum mechanics, thanks to your (self-proclaimed) "friendly neighborhood physics professor," Jim Kakalios. WARNER BROS. ENTERTAINMENT

From Scientific American:

The anticipated film Watchmen, based on the 1980s DC Comics 12-part comic book series (later adapted as a graphic novel), hits theaters tomorrow. Die-hard fans of the original publication may fret over its faithfulness to the series, but studio execs also worried about their movie's faithfulness to science. To set their minds at ease, they placed a call to Jim Kakalios, a physics professor at the University of Minnesota.

Kakalios, 50, began advising the film's makers in the summer of 2007 on everything from the quantum mechanics of Dr. Manhattan (one of the superheroes of the story) down to the details in the laboratories. "They wanted to know what was around the corner at the end of the long corridor, even if the audience wasn't going to see it," he says.

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Could Technology Repair Earth’s Climate?

Color dark-field micrograph of green algae, which absorbs carbon dioxide.
(RoLand Birke/NEWSCOM)

From The Christian Science Monitor:

EarthTalk: Scientists study ways to pull greenhouse gases out of our atmosphere, but the idea is controversial.

Q: What are some of the leading proposed technological fixes for staving off global warming, and how feasible are they?
– James Harris, Columbus, Ohio

A: While most of the world fixates on how to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases we emit into the atmosphere, scientists and engineers worldwide are working on various geoengineering technologies – many of which are highly theoretical – to mitigate global warming and its effects. Many scientists oppose using new technology to fix problems created by old technology, but others view it as a quick and relatively inexpensive way to help solve our most vexing environmental problem.

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Boston Globe Asks: Where’s The Global Warming?

From Watts Up With That?

For those too young to remember (such as Jim Hansen’s coal protesters in Washington this past week), Clara Peller, pictured above, started a national catchphrase with “Where’s the beef?” that even made it into the 1984 presidential campaign. Today, the Boston Globe asks: where’s the global warming?

Watch the original commercial that started the catchphrase. It seems applicable today. - Anthony

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Geeks May Be Chic, But Negative Nerd Stereotype Still Exists, Professor Says

Lori Kendall, a professor in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science, says despite the increased popularity of geek culture and the ubiquity of computers, the geek’s close cousin, the nerd, still suffers from a negative stereotype in popular culture. Kendall holds a familiar tool of the nerd: a slide rule. (Credit: Photo by L. Brian Stauffer)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Mar. 8, 2009) — Despite the increased popularity of geek culture – movies based on comic books, videogames, virtual worlds – and the ubiquity of computers, the geek’s close cousin, the nerd, still suffers from a negative stereotype in popular culture.

This may help explain why women and minorities are increasingly shying away from careers in information technology, says Lori Kendall, a professor in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

The popular stereotype of the nerd as the sartorially challenged, anti-social white male hasn’t faded from our collective cultural consciousness, and is more prevalent than ever as a stock character in television shows, movies and advertisements.

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NASA: Wednesday Night Shuttle Launch Is Official

The STS-119 Shuttle Discovery crew members gather on Launch Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida in January 2009 before beginning their emergency egress training. After four launch delays, NASA says it now believes the space shuttle Discovery could be sent on a mission to the orbiting International Space Station (ISS) by mid-March. (AFP/NASA-HO)

From Yahoo News/AP:

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – It's official: NASA has finally settled on a Wednesday night launch for space shuttle Discovery.

The flight to the international space station was originally set for mid-February, but was delayed four times because of concern over critical shuttle valves. On Friday, senior NASA managers meeting at Kennedy Space Center put the valve issue to rest for Discovery and cleared the shuttle for flight.

Seven astronauts will ride Discovery into orbit, taking with them one final set of solar wings for the space station.

Launch director Mike Leinbach said spirits are much higher now than they were when the flight kept being put off.

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Bad Marriages Strain Women's Hearts, But Not Men's

From Live Science:

An unhappy marriage can weigh heavily on anyone's heart, but apparently women may suffer the most ill health effects related to heart disease, stroke and diabetes.

Women who felt depressed in strained marriages faced a boosted risk of hypertension, waistline obesity, high blood sugar, high triglycerides and low levels of "good cholesterol" HDL – five factors of metabolic syndrome. Male spouses who felt similarly down in the dumps did not see similar risks.

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My Comment: As a male .... I disagree.

Drug Blocks Two Of World's Deadliest Emerging Viruses

Image: Hendra virus has a growing family tree. Pic courtesy CSIRO.

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Mar. 8, 2009) — Two highly lethal viruses that have emerged in recent outbreaks are susceptible to chloroquine, an established drug used to prevent and treat malaria, according to a new basic science study by researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College in the Journal of Virology.*

The two henipaviruses that are the subject of the study -- Hendra Virus (HeV) and Nipah Virus (NiV) -- emerged during the 1990s in Australia and Southeast Asia. Harbored by fruit bats, they cause potentially fatal encephalitis and respiratory disease in humans, with a devastating 75 percent fatality rate. More recently, NiV outbreaks in Bangladesh involving human-to-human transmission have focused attention on NiV as a global health concern.

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Horse Domestication Traced To Ancient Central Asian Culture

A horse's tooth found at an ancient settlement in Kazakhstan displays parallel bands of wear (at left) typically produced by bits held in the mouths of bridled animals, researchers say. Credit: Science/AAAS

From Science News:

Bone and chemical analyses indicate horses were harnessed and even milked more than 5,000 years ago in central Asia

Central Asia’s vast grasslands hosted a prehistoric revolution in transportation, communication and warfare, thanks to the humble horse. Remains from Kazakhstan’s more than 5,000-year-old Botai culture have yielded the earliest direct evidence for domestication of these versatile beasts, scientists report.

The Botai people were hunter-gatherers who lived in large settlements for months or years. Their culture lasted from 5,600 to 5,100 years ago. Researchers have long suspected that the Botai rode domesticated horses while hunting for wild horses to eat but did not domesticate other animals or cultivate crops.

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Daylight Saving Time Facts

Electric Time Company employee Walter Rodriguez cleans the face of an 84-inch (213-centimeter) Wegman clock at the firm's plant in Medfield, Massachusetts, on October 30, 2008. For most people in the United States, daylight saving time begins in the wee hours of March 8, 2009, with clocks turned forward one hour. Photograph courtesy AP Photo/Elise Amendola

From The National Geographic:

Daylight saving time in most of the United States starts this year in the early hours of March 8. The "spring forward" marks the second time the country has observed the switch in March rather than April since changes to the system were adopted in 2007.

Contrary to popular belief, no federal rule mandates that states or territories observe daylight saving time.

Most U.S. residents set their clocks one hour forward in spring and one hour back in fall. But people in Hawaii and most of Arizona—along with the U.S. territories of Puerto Rico, American Samoa, and the Virgin Islands—will do nothing. Those locales never deviate from standard time within their particular time zones.

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The World's Hardest-Working Telescope

Dinoj Surendran, Microsoft Research, and Mark Subbarao, Adler
Planetarium/KICP/University of Chicago

From Discover:

By precisely mapping a volume of space 5 billion light-years in diameter, the Sloan telescope is answering some of the universe's biggest questions.

Located 9,200 feet above sea level, atop the Apache Point Observatory in Sunspot, New Mexico, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey telescope cannot match the incredibly sharp vision of the Hubble Space Telescope, which orbits above Earth’s blurring atmosphere. And, at a modest 2.5 meters (8 feet) across, the Sloan telescope’s main mirror cannot see the incredibly dim objects that the 10-meter (33-foot) Keck telescopes in Hawaii can. What the Sloan telescope does have in spades is a voracious appetite for sky—an appetite that is producing some of the most amazing discoveries in astronomy.

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'Vampire' Discovered In Mass Grave

To stop the "vampires" supposedly chewing shrouds and spreading disease, grave-diggers put bricks in the mouths of plague victims (Image: Matteo Borrini)

From New Scientist:

A SKELETON exhumed from a grave in Venice is being claimed as the first known example of the "vampires" widely referred to in contemporary documents.

Matteo Borrini of the University of Florence in Italy found the skeleton of a woman with a small brick in her mouth (see right) while excavating mass graves of plague victims from the Middle Ages on Lazzaretto Nuovo Island in Venice (see second image here).

At the time the woman died, many people believed that the plague was spread by "vampires" which, rather than drinking people's blood, spread disease by chewing on their shrouds after dying. Grave-diggers put bricks in the mouths of suspected vampires to stop them doing this, Borrini says.

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First Successful Attempt To Breed Night Blooming And Day Blooming Flower

Electric Indigo is a cross between the Egyptian White Water Lily that blooms at night and a blue Australian lily Nympaea Barre Hellquist that flowers during the day

From The Telegraph:

The world's first cross between a day-blooming and night-blooming flower has been produced at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew.

The new hybrid called Electric Indigo is a cross between the Egyptian White Water Lily that blooms at night and a blue Australian lily Nympaea Barre Hellquist that flowers during the day.

The new water lily with bright blue petals is the first successful attempt at breeding day blooming and night blooming species since attempts began in 1852.

Lilies bloom during the night to take advantage of insects that will only come out night and pollinate the plant.

Propagator Carlos Magdalena, a horticulturalist who works at the gardens' tropical nursery, took pollen from the white night bloomer and placed it on the stigma of the day bloomer.

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Shall We Dance? Astronomers Spot Two Black Holes Performing Cosmic Minuet

An artist's conception of the two supermassive black holes that orbit each other every 100 years. The findings were published in the journal Nature

From The Daily Mail:

Two colossal black holes appear to be orbiting one another in sort of a cosmic minuet at the centre of a faraway galaxy formed when two separate galaxies collided, U.S. astronomers said.

These two so-called supermassive black holes, which are celestial objects with enormous gravitational pull, are locked in orbit about 5 billion light years away from Earth, the scientists said. A light year is about 6 trillion miles, or the distance light travels in a year.

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Lake Superior Is Freezing Over

From Watts Up With That?

Lake Superior last froze over in 2003. It has now, again, frozen over. The frequency of freeze overs has historically been around once every 20 years. Now, in the last decade, we have seen two freeze overs.

The picture below is a beautiful satellite photo of Lake Superior from yesterday. With the well below freezing temperatures seen over the region Thursday night (-20 F), any isolated open water could have frozen.

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Kepler Blasts Off In Search Of Earth-Like Planets

In a timed exposure, spectators watch from Cocoa Beach as the Kepler satellite launches from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla. March 6. Malcolm Denemark / Associated Press

From The L.A. Times:

The $590-million mission, jointly managed by JPL and NASA, will examine a star-rich stretch of sky for a planet where water could exist in liquid form.

NASA's Kepler spacecraft blasted off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Friday on a three-year mission to find Earth's twin, a Goldilocks planet where it's neither too hot nor too cold, but just right for life to take hold.

The Delta II rocket, carrying the widest-field telescope ever put in space, lifted off the launch pad at Cape Canaveral at 10:49 p.m. Eastern time.

The launch vehicle headed downrange, gathering speed as its three stages ignited, one after the other, passing over the Caribbean island of Antigua and tracking stations in Australia before climbing into orbit.

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More News On The Kepler Telescope

After Launch, Kepler Prepares To Carry Out Its Mission -- Red Orbit
Nasa launches Earth hunter probe -- BBC
CU leads historic voyage to find other Earths -- AP
Guide To Exoplanets -- MSNBC
Kepler Mission Sets Out to Find Planets Using CCD Cameras -- Daily Tech

Naked Mole Rats May Hold Clues To Successful Aging

A naked mole rat in a toilet paper roll.
(Credit: Image courtesy of University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Mar. 6, 2009) — Naked mole rats resemble pink, wrinkly, saber-toothed sausages and would never win a beauty contest, even among other rodents. But these natives of East Africa are the champs for longevity among rodents, living nine times longer than similar-sized mice. Not only do they have an extraordinarily long lifespan, but they maintain good health for most of it and show remarkable resistance to cancer.

Researchers at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio are studying mechanisms that enable the prolonged good health and slowed aging of naked mole rats in their large colony at the university’s Barshop Institute for Longevity and Aging Studies. In the March 3 print edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the scientists report on another unusual feature of the animals — tissues of the naked mole rat are remarkably efficient at discarding damaged proteins and thereby maintaining stable, high-quality proteins.

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Wine and Beer May be Good for Your Bones

From Live Science:

A glass of wine or a bottle or two of beer a day may strengthen the bones of older men and women, but drinking more than that could actually weaken bones, according to new research from the Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University in Boston.

The research, on men and post-menopausal women over 60 years of age, found that regular moderate alcohol intake was associated with greater bone mineral density (BMD).

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Facebook To Launch Redesigned Home Page - News Feed Going “Live” Next Wednesday (Updated With Screenshots)

(Click The Above Image To Enlarge)

From Inside Facebook:

Today, Facebook announced that the News Feed, which has long been the most powerful way for users to discover updates from their friend on the site, is going “Live.” In addition, users will be able to filter the changes, most prominently according to friend lists.

The new home page consists of 4 primary elements: the Stream, Publisher, Filters, and Highlights.

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The Lost World Beneath The Antarctic Ice

Scientists start explorations in the two-mile-thick ice sheet
above Lake Ellsworth in Antarctica. Press Handout

From The Independent:

British scientists search for life forms hidden more than 400,000 years ago beneath Antarctic ice.

British scientists are about to mount one of the boldest-ever missions, to search for life forms that have survived for possibly millions of years in a frozen "lost world" beneath an ancient ice sheet.

This week, a team of Antarctic scientists has been given the go-ahead to drill through a two-mile-thick sheet of ice that has sealed a sub-glacial lake from the rest of the biosphere for at least as long as Homo sapiens has walked the Earth.

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Q&A: Mitchell Baker On The Future Of Firefox

Browsing The Future -- Newsweek

Mozilla's Firefox gave Microsoft a run for its money. What's next?

At least 18 percent of you already know what Firefox is, because you're using it to read this interview. (Or so says the statistics engine behind Newsweek.com, which tracks things like that.) For the unfamiliar, Firefox is a free Web browser that is built by coders around the world whose open-source work is organized by the Mozilla Corp. and its nonprofit parent, the Mozilla Foundation. Introduced in 2004 as an alternative to Microsoft's ubiquitous, but buggy, Internet Explorer, Firefox has been a force for innovation in the browser category, with improvements such as tabbed browsing and plug-ins that work on any operating system. Commissions from search engines appear to keep Mozilla awash in revenue for now ($75 million in 2007; the foundation has not released 2008 data), although the vast majority of that comes from a company, Google, that now has its own competing browser, Chrome. Mozilla's plans for 2009 include a new version of Firefox, which will focus on user-interface polish; an overhaul of Thunderbird, its e-mail client; and taking Firefox mobile. Mitchell Baker, the Mozilla Foundation's chairwoman, spoke to NEWSWEEK's Nick Summers and Barrett Sheridan about the challenges of making a browser for mobile phones, adapting to a socially networked universe and what she really thinks of Chrome and Internet Explorer. Excerpts:

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Bionic Eye Lets The Blind See

Ron who has a bionic eye as featured on BBC's Inside Out.

From The Telegraph:

A bionic eye has allowed a blind patient to see well enough to sort his socks and work the washing machine after one of the first operations of its kind in the UK.

Ron, 73, is one of just three patients in the UK to be fitted with a bionic eye and after 30 years of being completely blind he can now see well enough to do the laundry.

The operation was carried out at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London seven months ago and Ron's sight has steadily improved since then.

He lost his sight in his 40s after suffering from a disease called retinitis pigmentosa but now thanks to the operations he is regaining some of his independence.

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Telescope 'Cousins' Meet At Last

Scheduled to launch in April 2009, the Herschel and Planck space telescopes bring capabilities never before available to study the origins of stars, galaxies and the universe. The expected data might revolutionize both astrophysics and philosophy. Image from Environmental Graffitti.

From The BBC:

Europe's Herschel and Planck space telescopes have finally come together.

The satellites now share a common cleanroom at the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana, from where they will be despatched into orbit on 16 April.

The observatories have been produced as part of a joint programme that has taken more than 10 years to develop and which is worth some 1.9bn euros.

Their arrival in the S1 preparation hall at Kourou marks the first time the pair have come face to face.

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Update: Europe expects busy year in space -- BBC News

Yucca No Longer Option For Waste Site

In this June 25, 2002, photo, the view from the summit ridge of the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump near Mercury, looking west toward California. For two decades, a ridge of volcanic rock 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas known as Yucca Mountain has been the sole focus of government plans to store highly radioactive nuclear waste. Associated Press file photo

From Nevada Appeal:

WASHINGTON — For two decades, a ridge of volcanic rock 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas known as Yucca Mountain has been the sole focus of government plans to store highly radioactive nuclear waste.

Not anymore.

Despite the $13.5 billion that has been spent on the project, the Obama administration says it’s going in a different direction.

It slashed funding for Yucca Mountain in its recently announced budget.

And on Thursday, Energy Secretary Steven Chu told a Senate hearing that the Yucca Mountain site no longer was viewed as an option for storing reactor waste, brushing aside criticism from several Republican lawmakers.

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The Kepler Telescope: Taking A Census Of The Galaxy

At the Astrotech payload processing facility in Titusville, Florida, workers from Ball Aerospace check the star trackers on NASA's Kepler spacecraft before testing. NASA

From Time Magazine:

Think you could stare at a single spot without blinking for three and a half years? Then be glad you're not NASA's Kepler telescope, which is set to blast into space from Cape Canaveral this Friday night. Kepler's job may sound boring to you, but what the spacecraft accomplishes could be extraordinary: the discovery of the first Earth-like planets orbiting sun-like stars. Those kinds of places might well be brewing Earth-like forms of life.

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How Are People Lost at Sea Found?

SHIPWRECKED: The U.S. Coast Guard found boating accident survivor Nick Schuyler yesterday on the overturned vessel in the Gulf of Mexico. COAST GUARD/ADAM CAMPBELL

From Scientific American:

How does the U.S. Coast Guard conduct searches for people stranded in bodies of water, including two National Football League players and their friend missing off the Florida coast?

The U.S. Coast Guard today announced that it had suspended its search at 6:30 P.M. EST for three boaters, including two pro football players, missing in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Clearwater, Fla. The trio was part of a group of four men who left from Clearwater on a fishing trip Saturday and were reported missing early Sunday after failing to return. In calling off the hunt, Coast Guard Capt. Timothy Close said that "We're extremely confident that if there are any survivors on the surface of the water that we would have found them," the Associated Press reports.

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Otzi The Prehistoric Iceman Goes Online Allowing Users To Virtually Tour His Body

Otzi has been photographed using 12 different angle-shots

From the Daily Mail:

A Stone Age warrior frozen in an icy tomb for 5,300 years can now be viewed in astonishing detail thanks to a new website.

The Iceman photoscan project took 150,000 high definition images of the perfectly preserved mummy from 12 different angles, which the researchers loaded onto the new website www.icemanphotoscan.eu.

This allows users to zoom into details that are just millimetres wide from the comfort of their living room. They can also view the mummy in 3D and see its distinctive tattoos in both white and UV light.

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Schizophrenia Could Be Caused By Faulty Signaling In Brain

Schizophrenia has been linked to signaling problems, according to a new brain study. (Credit: iStockphoto/Vasiliy Yakobchuk)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Mar. 5, 2009) — Schizophrenia could be caused by faulty signalling in the brain, according to new research published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry. In the biggest study of its kind, scientists looking in detail at brain samples donated by people with the condition have identified 49 genes that work differently in the brains of schizophrenia patients compared to controls.

Many of these genes are involved in controlling cell-to-cell signalling in the brain. The study, which was carried out by researchers at Imperial College London and GlaxoSmithKline, supports the theory that abnormalities in the way in which cells 'talk' to each other are involved in the disease.

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Exercise: The Best Medicine

New studies find exercise makes for better eye health, less chronic pain, stronger bones and can even help prevent some cancer. Image credit: Dreamstime

From Live Science:

It just seems too good to be true. Study after research study consistently promoting the endless benefits of exercise. Couch potatoes everywhere are waiting for the other shoe to drop, telling us that all of those scientists were wrong and we should remain as sedentary as possible.

Yet four additional studies released recently each give the same prescription for improving some aspect of your health: exercise.

They add to recent evidence that regular workouts can improve old brains, raise kids' academic performance and give a brain boost to everyone in between.

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9 Big NASA Projects Over Budget

From MSNBC:

Auditors cite projects such as asteroid explorer, Earth-like planet hunter.

The Government Accountability Office, the congressional budget watchdog, found cost overruns in at least nine big NASA projects:

Mars Science Laboratory. Price: $2.3 billion, up $657.4 million since October 2007. Launch delayed 25 months to October 2011.

NPOESS Preparatory Project a satellite to study atmosphere and sea temperatures. Price: $794.6 million, up $121.8 million since October 2006. Launch delayed 26 months to June 2010.

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Asteroid's Near Miss A Cosmic Close Call

An asteroid named 2009 DD45 came within 48,800 miles
from Earth, March 3, 2009. (AP / CBS)

From CBS News:

(AP) An asteroid about the size of one that blasted Siberia a century ago just buzzed the Earth.

The asteroid named 2009 DD45 was about 48,800 miles from Earth when it zipped past early Monday, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory reported.

That is just twice as high as the orbits of some telecommunications satellites and about a fifth of the distance to the Moon.

"This was pretty darn close," astronomer Timothy Spahr of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics said Wednesday.

But not as close as the tiny meteoroid 2004 FU162, which came within 4,000 miles in 2004.

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Before Google Became Google: The Original Setup At Stanford University

From Pingdom:

Since it launched in 1998, Google has become one of the true giants of the Internet. These days, Google has data centers all around the world and hundreds of thousands of servers. The sheer size of Google today makes it very interesting to look back at its humble beginnings as a small research project called Backrub at Stanford University.

Back in early 1998, the entire search engine and website ran on this setup:

Closeups and hardware descriptions available here. Note the homemade Lego disk box…

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Flexible Screens Get Touchy-Feely

Photo: Touch and feel: Bendable, touch-sensitive screens could lead to a new generation of more rugged and easy to use portable displays. Credit: Flexible Display Center

From Technology Review:

The first bendable, touch-screen display will be used by the military.

Researchers have developed the first computer display that is both flexible and touch sensitive. They say that the breakthrough could lead to more practical and easier-to-use portable devices.

Over the past few years, there has been a drive to develop displays that more closely mimic the properties of paper.

E Ink, based in Cambridge, MA, already supplies displays that are easy to read in direct sunlight and require little power for both the Amazon Kindle and the Sony Reader, compared to LCDs and plasma screens. E Ink's technology uses a layer of microcapsules filled with submicrometer black and white particles to create a low-power, reflective screen.

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5 Huge Green-Tech Projects in the Developing World

From Wired News:

Any solution to global climate change will eventually have to involve the whole globe, not just the richest countries.

That's why deals like the one announced Tuesday between Pasadena's eSolar and the Indian conglomerate Acme Group are essential to any truly green global future. ESolar will sell Acme 1,000 megawatts worth of solar thermal technology, so that the latter can build a network of solar power plants in India's northern state of Haryana.

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Mould Problem At France's Lascaux Cave

Paleolithic handywork: Discovered in 1940, France's Lascaux Cave has some of the world's most spectacular prehistoric cave art.

From Cosmos Magazine:

PARIS: The problem of black fungus threatening world-famous prehistoric paintings at the Lascaux Cave in southwestern France is stable, a scientist said last week.

France, criticised for its management of Lascaux, applied fungicide to the cave's walls in January 2008 in a bid to roll back patches of mould imperilling the legendary art.

Dubbed "the Sistine Chapel of prehistory," Lascaux, listed as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO, includes stunning pictures of horses, extinct bulls and ibexes, painted by unknown hands some 17,000 years ago.

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Newfound Moon May Be Source Of Outer Saturn Ring

This sequence of three images, obtained by NASA's Cassini spacecraft over the course of about 10 minutes, shows the path of a newly found moonlet in a bright arc of Saturn's faint G ring. (Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Mar. 4, 2009) — NASA's Cassini spacecraft has found within Saturn's G ring an embedded moonlet that appears as a faint, moving pinprick of light. Scientists believe it is a main source of the G ring and its single ring arc.

Cassini imaging scientists analyzing images acquired over the course of about 600 days found the tiny moonlet, half a kilometer (about a third of a mile) across, embedded within a partial ring, or ring arc, previously found by Cassini in Saturn's tenuous G ring.

"Before Cassini, the G ring was the only dusty ring that was not clearly associated with a known moon, which made it odd," said Matthew Hedman, a Cassini imaging team associate at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. "The discovery of this moonlet, together with other Cassini data, should help us make sense of this previously mysterious ring."

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Earth Seen 'Healing' After Big Quake

Three-dimensional perspective view of vertical displacement of the land surface south of Bam, Iran during the three and a half years after the December 26, 2003 earthquake derived from analysis of radar images. The model below shows the zone of rock damage that contracted or healed after the earthquake, with the green colors showing the strongest contraction. Credit: E. Fielding et al

From Live Science:

For the first time, scientists have watched as the Earth’s surface “heals” itself following the disruptive jolt of an earthquake, in this case, the 2003 temblor that devastated Bam, Iran.

The fault under the city erupted in a 6.6-magnitude quake on Dec. 26 that year, leveling the town and killing more than 26,000 people. But though devastation was evident, there was no clear fault mark at the surface.

"The fault slipped maybe 2 or 3 meters [6.5 to 10 feet] at depth, but at the surface, when colleagues of mine went out, they found some cracks, but the motion on those cracks is only about up to 25 centimeters [10 inches] or less," said one of the scientists who studied the quake, Eric Fielding of Caltech. "We have some layer of material near the surface that's behaving differently from the fault at depth."

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Revealed: The Headset That Will Mimic All Five Senses And Make The Virtual World As Convincing As Real Life

The virtual reality helmet titillates all five body senses while viewers sit at home on their sofas

From The Daily Mail:

A virtual reality helmet that recreates the sights, smells, sounds and even tastes of far-flung holiday destinations has been devised by British scientists.

Armchair travellers wearing the device will be able to hear the roar of lions on safari, smell the flowers of an Alpine meadow or feel the heat of the Caribbean sun on their face - all from the comfort of their sitting room.

The device will also allow people to greet friends and family on the other side of the world as if they were in same room, and to immerse themselves in fantasy worlds.

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China Planning Military Outpost in Orbit

The first public appearance of China's military space station concept.
(Image from Spaceflight.now)

From Discovery News/Space:

China is speeding up plans to launch and operate a space station in Earth orbit and turning over the project to military control, according to reports from the official Chinese news agency Xinhua and SpaceflightNow.com.

The 8.5-ton laboratory, called Tiangong -- Chinese for "heavenly palace" -- is slated for launch before the end of next year. Its first crew would arrive in 2011.

"The People's Liberation Army's General Armament Department aims to finish systems for the Tiangong-1 mission this year," the Chinese government said in an official statement.

The design was unveiled during a nationally televised Chinese New Year broadcast, writes Spaceflightnow's Craig Covault.

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My Comment: So much for not militarizing space. This is an acceleration of a program that many thought was years from fruition.

Surprise, it is happening sooner than what was expected.

Mobile Phone Use Explodes As 60% Of The World's Population Signs Up For A Handset

The United Kingdom was ranked 10th most advanced country in using information and communications technology. It was judged on criteria including infrastructure, broadband coverage and literacy levels

From The Daily Mail:

Mobile phone use has exploded in the last seven years, according to a U.N report.

The number of global subscriptions quadrupled from around 1billion in 2002 to 4.1billion at the end of last year.

The sudden surge in uptake of mobile phones is most marked in developing countries where they are now an invaluable tool among the world's poor.

In Africa 28 per cent of the population now has a mobile phone, compared to just two per cent in 2000.

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Hubble Captures Cosmic Tug-Of-War Between Three Turbulent Galaxies

The three tussling galaxies are part of the Hickson Compact Group 90,
which is 100million light years away

From The Daily Mail:

A dramatic Hubble image has captured three galaxies locked in a gravitational tug-of-war that may lead to one of them being ripped apart.

It is likely the outcome has long since been decided, as the epic life or death battle is in the constellation of Piscis Austrinus, or Southern Fish, 100 million light-years away.

The new picture from the Advanced Camera for Surveys on the Hubble Space Telescope allows astronomers to view the movement of gases from galaxy to galaxy, revealing the intricate interplay among them.

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Small Robots Can Prepare Lunar Surface For NASA Outpost

Small excavation robots, such as these conceptual vehicles, would be capable of preparing lunar landing sites for a future outpost, a new study shows. (Credit: Astrobotic Technology Inc)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Mar. 2, 2009) — Small robots the size of riding mowers could prepare a safe landing site for NASA’s Moon outpost, according to a NASA-sponsored study prepared by Astrobotic Technology Inc. with technical assistance from Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute.

Astrobotic Technology and Carnegie Mellon researchers analyzed mission requirements and developed the design for an innovative new type of small lunar robot under contract from NASA’s Lunar Surface Systems group.

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How Good Are You At Internet Search?

Image from Maximum PC

From The Wall Street Journal:

Microsoft’s efforts to catch Google in Internet search may not just hinge on its ability to build a better search engine. It may depend on how good people are at using search engines.

In an internal memo published on All Things D, a Microsoft search executive wrote that the company is ready to test a new search engine, codenamed “kumo.” He then outlined the problem that the new search engine is supposed to address:

“In spite of the progress made by search engines, 40% of queries go unanswered; half of queries are about searchers returning to previous tasks; and 46% of search sessions are longer than 20 minutes. These and many other learnings suggest that customers often don’t find what they need from search today.”

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Here's What Killed Your 401K

From Wired News:

A year ago, it was hardly unthinkable that a math wizard like David X. Li might someday earn a Nobel Prize. After all, financial economists—even Wall Street quants—have received the Nobel in economics before, and Li's work on measuring risk has had more impact, more quickly, than previous Nobel Prize-winning contributions to the field. Today, though, as dazed bankers, politicians, regulators, and investors survey the wreckage of the biggest financial meltdown since the Great Depression, Li is probably thankful he still has a job in finance at all. Not that his achievement should be dismissed. He took a notoriously tough nut—determining correlation, or how seemingly disparate events are related—and cracked it wide open with a simple and elegant mathematical formula, one that would become ubiquitous in finance worldwide.

For five years, Li's formula, known as a Gaussian copula function, looked like an unambiguously positive breakthrough, a piece of financial technology that allowed hugely complex risks to be modeled with more ease and accuracy than ever before. With his brilliant spark of mathematical legerdemain, Li made it possible for traders to sell vast quantities of new securities, expanding financial markets to unimaginable levels.

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Square Root Day Revelers To Party Like It's 3/3/09

From CNET:

Count on Tuesday's alignment of the calendar to add some excitement to the lives of at least a few math geeks.

Tuesday is Square Root Day, a rare holiday that occurs when the day and the month are both the square root of the last two digits of the current year. Numerically, March 3, 2009, can be expressed as 3/3/09, or mathematically as √9 = 3, or 3² = 3 × 3 = 9.

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Dolphin-Inspired Man-Made Fin Works Swimmingly

SWIM FIN INSPIRED BY DOLPHINS: Lunocet users have already hit about eight miles (13 kilometers) per hour, nearly twice as fast as Olympic Gold Medal swimmer Michael Phelps at his speediest. COURTESY OF LOMERANGER

From Scientific American:

Lunocet swimmers have already hit about eight miles per hour, almost twice the speed of Michael Phelps at his fastest.

The human body does many things well, but swimming isn't one of them. We're embarrassingly inefficient in the water, able to convert just 3 or 4 percent of our energy into forward motion. (Even with swim fins, we're only 10 to 15 percent more efficient.) But a new, dolphin-inspired fin promises to fuel the biggest change in human-powered swimming in decades, putting beyond-Olympian speeds within reach of just about anyone.

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