NOAA Sees Average 2009 Atlantic Hurricane Season

From Yahoo News/Reuters:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The 2009 Atlantic hurricane season will be fairly average with as many as seven hurricanes expected to form, U.S. government forecasters predicted on Thursday.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration forecast nine to 14 named storms this season, with four to seven developing into hurricanes. One to three could be major ones of Category 3 or higher with winds above 110 miles per hour (177 km per hour), the agency said in its annual forecast.

Last year was one of the most active seasons on record, with 16 tropical storms and eight hurricanes.

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In Chile, The Birds Are Dying, And No One Knows Why

Photo: Millions of dead sardines washed up on a beach in southern Chile. The cause of their death is under investigation. PATRICIO OLIVARES/FOR THE MIAMI HERALD

From The Miami Herald:

A series of environmental disasters in Chile have puzzled scientists. Some are blaming global warming.

SANTIAGO, Chile -- Chilean scientists are investigating three mysterious ecological disasters that have caused the deaths of hundreds of penguins, millions of sardines and about 2,000 baby flamingos in the past few months.

The events started to unfold in March, when the remains of about 1,200 penguins were found on a remote beach in southern Chile. Then came the sardines -- tons of them -- dead and washed up on a nearby stretch of coastline. The stench forced nearby schools to close, and the army was called in to shovel piles of rotting fish off the sand.

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Why Reliance On Sniffer Dog Evidence May Throw Us Off The Scent In Trials

From The Guardian:

The role of sniffer dogs in the treatment of Kate and Gerry McCann as suspects in their daughter's disappearance drew sharp criticism. Research casts doubt on sniffer dogs' reliability and how much weight should be attributed to their evidence

Almost a decade ago, a man was convicted and imprisoned solely on the basis of sniffer dog evidence, but could it have been a miscarriage of justice?

On the night on 11 January 1999, the occupier of a house in Stoney Barton, Westleigh, Devon, discovered an intruder in his house and telephoned the police.

A police dog handler who attended the scene later gave evidence in court stating that the animal had gone straight from the house and stopped beside a car parked half a mile away.

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Massive Asteroid Bombardment May Have Helped Life To THRIVE On Earth

Asteroids bombarded Earth 3.9billion years ago but may not have wiped out all life. In fact some bacteria may have thrived

From The Daily Mail:

A heavy bombardment by asteroids the size of Ireland actually helped life to THRIVE on Earth 3.9billion years ago, scientists have suggested.

Many experts had thought the violent pelting by massive asteroids during the period known as the Late Heavy Bombardment would have melted the Earth's crust and vaporized any life on the planet.

But new three-dimensional computer models developed by a team at the University of Colorado at Boulder shows much of Earth's crust, and the microbes living on it, could have survived and may have even flourished in the harsh conditions.

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A Look Inside NASA's Custom Hubble Repair Toolkit

Hubble Drill: A high-speed, low-torque drill for removing Hubble's many screws during spacewalks. Michael Soluri/NPR

From Popsci.com:

Fixing the most advanced telescope in space requires more than a trip to Home Depot

Earlier today, astronauts aboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis released the Hubble Space Telescope back into orbit after a successful mission to repair and upgrade NASA's famous orbiting observatory.

The mission was intensive, especially considering almost all of the repairs that were performed during a series of TK spacewalks were on parts that were never intended to be serviced by astronauts in space. Equally intense (and beautiful) are the 180 tools NASA employed for the job--with 116 of them created specifically for this mission.

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Europe's HIV Followed Holiday Routes

This map depicts the spread of HIV in Europe
(Image: Dimitrios Paraskevis et al., Retrovirology, 2009)

From New Scientist:

HIV's European tour may have begun in the Mediterranean. A new genetic map plotted from viruses in hundreds of people suggests that many European strains of HIV trace their ancestry to Greece, Portugal, Serbia and Spain.

Sun-seeking tourists from northern and central Europe might account for the pattern, the study's authors say.

The vast majority of the study's participants said they acquired their infections in their home country, so the patterns could be a vestige of HIV's emergence and early spread through Europe in the early 1980s, probably after arriving from the US.

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New Way Of Treating The Flu

Dr. Robert Linhardt's new compound (green spheres) blocks both the N (pink spikes) and H (blue spikes) portion of the flu virus. The compound prevents the infection of the cell and the spread of the flu to other cell like no other compound before. (Credit: Melissa Kemp/Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (May 20, 2009) — What happens if the next big influenza mutation proves resistant to the available anti-viral drugs? This question is presenting itself right now to scientists and health officials this week at the World Health Assembly in Geneva, Switzerland, as they continue to do battle with H1N1, the so-called swine flu, and prepare for the next iteration of the ever-changing flu virus.

Promising new research announced by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute could provide an entirely new tool to combat the flu. The discovery is a one-two punch against the illness that targets the illness on two fronts, going one critical step further than any currently available flu drug.

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Why 'Terminator' Is So Creepy

The movie "Terminator Salvation" tells of the human resistance struggling to defeat Skynet and its robot army. Credit: Warner Bros.

From Live Science:

Hollywood and robotics researchers have long struggled with the "uncanny valley," where a movie character or robot falls into the unsettling gap between human and not-quite-human. One psychologist likes to demonstrate this by holding up a plastic baby doll and asking audiences if they think it's alive. They say no.

Then she takes out a saw and starts cutting the doll's head off, but quickly stops upon seeing the uncomfortable audience reactions.

"I think that part of their brain is thinking the doll is alive, and you can't shut that off," said Thalia Wheatley, a psychologist at Dartmouth College.

Similar sensations abound in the movie "Terminator Salvation," which tells the story of the artificial intelligence Skynet and its army of robots threatening to wipe out humanity in 2018. The uncanny twist comes when Skynet begins disturbing experiments that combine human flesh with robotic strength.

Scientists have begun to understand what happens in the human brain when it encounters the uncanny valley. And like the post-apocalyptic future of "Terminator," it's not pretty — a murky landscape where conflict rages upon confronting a challenge to our human identity.

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Hubble's Troubles Surprised Shuttle Crew

This NASA image shows the Hubble Space Telescope following grapple of the giant observatory by the shuttle's Canadian-built remote manipulator system on May 13. US astronauts aboard the shuttle Atlantis bid the Hubble telescope a wistful farewell Tuesday, ending a grueling revamp to equip the aging stargazer to explore the cosmos for years to come. (AFP/NASA/File)

From Yahoo News/Reuters:

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) – Years of training didn't prepare the shuttle Atlantis astronauts for the problems encountered during NASA's final servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope, the crew said on Wednesday.

With the refurbished telescope back in orbit, the seven shuttle astronauts took some time off and began preparing for Friday's homecoming at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

"It's amazing looking back at how hard things looked a couple of times -- more difficult than I ever expected -- and then to overcome and wind up with everything done in the way that it was. We were very successful," Atlantis commander Scott Altman told reporters during an in-flight news conference on Wednesday.

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Unlikely Suns Reveal Improbable Planets

Brown Dwarf is a star so small—some are hardly more massive than a large planet—that it never lit up. Astronomers scarcely even bothered to look for planets around such runts. Yet they have now seen hints of mini solar systems forming around brown dwarfs and similarly unlikely objects. Ron Miller

From Scientific American:

Among the most poignant sights in the heavens are white dwarfs. Although they have a mass comparable to our sun’s, they are among the dimmest of all stars and becoming ever dimmer; they do not follow the usual pattern relating stellar mass to brightness. Astronomers think white dwarfs must not be stars so much as the corpses of stars. Each white dwarf was once much like our sun and shone with the same brilliance. But then it began to run out of fuel and entered its stormy death throes, swelling to 100 times its previous size and brightening 10,000-fold, before shedding its outer layers and shriveling to a glowing cinder the size of Earth. For the rest of eternity, it will sit inertly, slowly fading to blackness.

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This Is A WOMAN'S World: Men Face Mass Extinction Because Male Genes Are Dying Out

The future? How an all female society may look like if scientists
predictions that men will die out are correct

From The Daily Mail:

Men are on the road to extinction as their genes shrink and slowly fade away, a genetic expert warned today.

The researcher in human sex chromosomes said the male Y chromosome was dying and could one day run out.

However readers shouldn't worry just yet - the change is not due to take place for another five million years.

Professor Jennifer Graves revealed the bleak future to medical students at a public lecture at the Royal College of Surgeons (RCSI) in Ireland.

But all is not lost. She said men may follow the path of a type of rodent which still manages to reproduce despite not having the vital genes that make up the Y chromosome.

'You need a Y chromosome to be male,' said Prof Graves.

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Stone Age Superglue Found -- Hints at Unknown Smarts?

Ancient people in what is now South Africa whipped up a glue of powdered red ochre and acacia-tree gum to keep their tools (above, a replicated tool with adhesive made by scientists) intact, a May 2009 study says. The ancient people's understanding of chemistry may have required more smarts than we give our ancestors credit for, researchers added. Photograph courtesy Lyn Wadley

From The National Geographic:

Stone Age humans were adept chemists who whipped up a sophisticated kind of natural glue, a new study says.

They knowingly tweaked the chemical and physical properties of an iron-containing pigment known as red ochre with the gum of acacia trees to create adhesives for their shafted tools.

Archaeologists had believed the blood-red pigment—used by people in what is now South Africa about 70,000 years ago—served a decorative or symbolic purpose.

But the scientists had also suspected that the pigment may have been purposely added to improve glue that held the peoples' tools together.

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Preparing To Peer Into A Black Hole

The Sagittarius A* supermassive black hole, as seen by the Chandra X-ray Observatory. Nobody has yet seen the black hole directly (Image: NASA)

From New Scientist:

LIKE a giant pale blue eye, the Earth stares at the centre of our galaxy. Through the glare and the fog it is trying to catch a glimpse of an indistinct something 30,000 light years away. Over there, within the sparkling starscape of the galaxy's core... no, not those giant suns or those colliding gas clouds; not the gamma-ray glow of annihilating antimatter. No, right there in the very centre, inside that swirling nebula of doomed matter, could that be just a hint of a shadow?

The shadow we're straining to see is that of a monstrous black hole, a place where gravity rules supreme, swallowing light and stretching the fabric of space to breaking point. Black holes are perhaps the most outrageous prediction of science, and even though we can paint fine theoretical pictures of them and point to evidence for many objects that seem to be black hole-ish, nobody has ever actually seen one.

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EarthTalk: The Risks of Nanotech

Are There Nanoparticles on Your Lips?: Getty Images

From Popsci.com:

The tiniest tech is growing fast, and largely unregulated.

Nanotechnology makes use of minuscule objects -- 10,000 times narrower than a human hair -- known as nanoparticles. Upwards of 600 products on store shelves today contain them, including transparent sunscreen, lipsticks, anti-aging creams, and even food products.

Global nanotechnology sales have grown substantially in recent years, according to Lux Research, author of the annual Nanotech Report. The final tally isn't in yet, but analysts have predicted 2008 sales to be $150 billion. The National Science Foundation says the industry could be worth $1 trillion by 2015, and directly employ two million workers.

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Insight Into Evolution Of First Flowers

This flower from an avocado tree (Persea americana) shows the characteristics of ancient flowering-plant lineages. Its petals (colorful in most flowers) and sepals (usually a green outer layer) are combined into one organ. A new study led by University of Florida researchers provides insight into how the first flowering plants emerged from non-flowering plants and began evolving about 130 million years ago. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of Florida)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (May 19, 2009) — Charles Darwin described the sudden origin of flowering plants about 130 million years ago as an abominable mystery, one that scientists have yet to solve.

But a new University of Florida study, set to appear in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is helping shed light on the mystery with information about what the first flowers looked like and how they evolved from nonflowering plants.

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From Live Science:

Real robot names such as Roomba and Asimo don't evoke as much fear as the fictional "Terminator." But consider that Roomba, the automated vacuum cleaner, is manufactured by iRobot, creator also of armed robot warriors for the U.S. military. And Asimo represents just the first wave of an incoming tsunami of robots that strive to look and act eerily human.

It goes beyond automated vacuums and mildly entertaining dance-bots. Japan and Korea plan to deploy humanoid robots to care for the elderly, while the United States already fields thousands of robot warriors on the modern battlefield. Meanwhile, plenty of people have enhanced their bodies technologically in ways that bring them closer to their robotic brethren.

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GPS System 'Close To Breakdown'

From The Guardian:

Network of satellites could begin to fail as early as 2010

It has become one of the staples of modern, hi-tech life: using satellite navigation tools built into your car or mobile phone to find your way from A to B. But experts have warned that the system may be close to breakdown.

US government officials are concerned that the quality of the Global Positioning System (GPS) could begin to deteriorate as early as next year, resulting in regular blackouts and failures – or even dishing out inaccurate directions to millions of people worldwide.

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Fossil Discovery Is Heralded

Image: A fossil discovery suggests humans may be descended from an animal that resembles present-day lemurs like this one. AP Photo/Karen Tam

From The Wall Street Journal:

In what could prove to be a landmark discovery, a leading paleontologist said scientists have dug up the 47 million-year-old fossil of an ancient primate whose features suggest it could be the common ancestor of all later monkeys, apes and humans.

Anthropologists have long believed that humans evolved from ancient ape-like ancestors. Some 50 million years ago, two ape-like groups walked the Earth. One is known as the tarsidae, a precursor of the tarsier, a tiny, large-eyed creature that lives in Asia. Another group is known as the adapidae, a precursor of today's lemurs in Madagascar.

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Little Search Engines That Could

From Christian Science Monitor:

Four alternatives to Google for finding answers online.

All hail Google, the undisputed king of search. It’s hard to imagine other sites toppling the online giant – and few have the hubris to try.

Jimmy Wales, the mind behind Wikipedia, announced in late March that he was pulling the plug on Wikia Search, his attempt at a user-generated search engine. The project couldn’t attract enough users and money.

But Google isn’t perfect. While some call it simple, quick, and effective, others describe the site as incomplete, dull, and a lowest common denominator.

Here are four search alternatives to cut through the Web and find what you’re looking for.

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Astronauts Finish Repairs On Hubble Space Telescope

In this image from NASA TV astronauts John Grunsfeld, left, and Andrew Feustel work to upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope during a spacewalk, Monday, May 18, 2009. This is the fifth and final repair mission for the 19-year-old telescope. (AP Photo/NASA TV)

From Yahoo News/AP:

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – Spacewalking astronauts completed repairs to the Hubble Space Telescope on Monday, leaving it more powerful than ever and able to peer even deeper into the cosmos — almost to the brink of creation. The last humans to lay hands on Hubble outfitted the observatory with another set of fresh batteries, a new sensor for precise pointing and protective covers.

That equipment, along with other improvements made over the last five days, should allow the telescope to provide dazzling views of the universe for another five to 10 years.

"This is a very important moment in human history," Hubble senior project scientist David Leckrone said in Houston. "We will rewrite the textbooks at least one more time."

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Nine Games Computers Are Ruining For Humanity

From New Scientist:

If we ever manage to build a working quantum computer, the first killer app might be online poker. Thanks to the counter-intuitive rules of quantum mechanics, players will be able to use mind-boggling strategies like betting and folding simultaneously (see Quantum poker: Are the chips down or not?).

Poker wouldn't be the first game to have been revolutionised by computers. Artificial intelligence researchers have taught computers to play a wide range of strategic games well enough to compete with skilful human players – and in a few cases, they've beaten them convincingly...

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Weird New NASA Rovers Really Get Around

From Wired Science:

At some point on their five-year journey, Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity have both gotten their feet stuck in the soil, and NASA is taking notes for the design of the next generation of rovers.

In 2005, Opportunity spent five weeks spinning her wheels in a dune later dubbed “Purgatory.” Last week, Spirit sank into a sandpit scientists are calling “Troy,” and could stay there for weeks — or forever.

But rovers of the future may have an easier time of it. NASA scientists are building an army of prototypes with new and ever weirder ways to rove.

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Future Of Personalized Cancer Treatment: New System Delivers RNA Into Cells

Photo: This is a PTD-DRBD fusion protein. (Credit: Dowdy Lab/UC San Diego)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (May 18, 2009) — In technology that promises to one day allow drug delivery to be tailored to an individual patient and a particular cancer tumor, researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, have developed an efficient system for delivering siRNA into primary cells. The work is published in the May 17 in the advance online edition of Nature Biotechnology.

"RNAi has an unbelievable potential to manage cancer and treat it," said Steven Dowdy, PhD, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and professor of cellular and molecular medicine at UC San Diego School of Medicine. "While there's still a long way to go, we have successfully developed a technology that allows for siRNA drug delivery into the entire population of cells, both primary and tumor-causing, without being toxic to the cells."

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Happiness Is ... Being Old, Male and Republican

Cindy McCain, wife of Republican presidential hopeful, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., looks on as he speaks at a news conference in Toledo, Ohio. Thursday. AP Photo

From Live Science:

Americans grow happier as they age, surveys find. And a new Pew Research Center survey shows the tendency is holding up as the economy tanks.

Happiness is a complex thing. Past studies have found that happiness is partly inherited, that Republicans are happier than Democrats, and that old men tend to be happier than old women.

And even before the economy got nasty, seniors were found to be generally happier than Baby Boomers. Some of that owes to the American Dream being lived by past generations, while Boomers work two jobs and watch the dream wither.

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Brain's Organization Switches As Children Become Adults

The organizational structures in the human brain undergo a major shift during the transition from childhood to adulthood. Brain regions are represented by circles, with the outer color of the circle symbolizing where in the brain each region is physically located while the inner color represents the region's function. (Credit: Image courtesy of Washington University School of Medicine)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (May 17, 2009) — Any child confronting an outraged parent demanding to know "What were you thinking?" now has a new response: "Scientists have discovered that my brain is organized differently from yours."

But all is not well for errant kids. The same new study also provides parents with a rejoinder: While the overarching organization scheme differs, one of the most important core principals of adult brain organization is present in the brains of children as young as 7.

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Cyber Millenials: High-tech And Highly Educated Young Adults Who Drink Way Too Much

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (May 17, 2009) — "Audience segmentation" refers to categorizing people by their behaviors, attitudes, opinions, or lifestyles. It is widely used in social-marketing efforts. A new study uses this method to find high-risk drinkers in the US, leading researchers to a group dubbed the Cyber Millenials: "the nation's tech-savvy singles and couples living in fashionable neighborhoods on the urban fringe."

"Marketing research provides a unique window on individuals as consumers that has rarely been used in alcohol-prevention efforts," explained Howard B. Moss, associate director for Clinical and Translational Research at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) and corresponding author for the study.

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Why We Mourn For Strangers

From Live Science:

In Tracy, California, several thousand people recently gathered in memory of 8-year-old Sandra Cantu, who was abducted on March 27. Police and volunteers combed the area looking for clues, while psychics offered information that was both contradictory and completely worthless.

Tragically, Cantu was found ten days later by farmworkers draining an irrigation pond near her home. She had been raped, killed, and stuffed in a suitcase. Melissa Huckaby, a local Sunday school teacher, has been arrested and charged with the girl's sexual assault and murder.

Strangers from around the world sent gifts, poems, and prayers to the Cantu family. They held candlelight vigils and signed online memorial pages. Tracy Police Chief Janet Thiessen commented at a memorial that "Sandra Cantu became our little girl, a child whose spirits touched us."

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Venus figurine sheds light on origins of art by early humans

The figurine, found in 2008 in a cave in Schelklingen, southern Germany is thought to be the world's oldest reproduction of a human. Daniel Maurer / Associated Press

From The L.A. Times:

The 40,000-year-old carved figure of a voluptuous woman was excavated in Germany. It 'radically changes our views of the context and meaning of the earliest Paleolithic art,' its discoverer says.

A 40,000-year-old figurine of a voluptuous woman carved from mammoth ivory and excavated from a cave in southwestern Germany is the oldest known example of three-dimensional or figurative representation of humans and sheds new light on the origins of art, researchers reported Wednesday.

The intricately carved headless figure is at least 5,000 years older than previous examples and dates from shortly after the arrival of modern humans in Europe. It exhibits many of the characteristics of fertility, or Venus, figurines carved millenniums later.

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My Comment: It is hard to believe that such a small carving is 45,000 years old. How did it survive? Was it carved by Homo Sapien or Neanderthal?

Growing Old With Autism

Noah Greenfeld, 42, who spent 15 years in a state mental facility, is now in an assisted living home near his parents in Los Angeles. Max S. Gerber for TIME

From Time Magazine:

Noah, my younger brother, does not talk. Nor can he dress himself, prepare a meal for himself or wipe himself. He is a 42-year-old man, balding, gaunt, angry and, literally, crazy. And having spent 15 years at the Fairview Developmental Center in Costa Mesa, Calif., a state facility, Noah has picked up the con's trick of lashing out before anyone could take a shot at him.

Noah's autism has been marked by "three identified high priority maladaptive behaviors that interfere with his adaptive programming. These include banging his head against solid surfaces, pinching himself and grabbing others," according to his 2004 California Department of Developmental Services individual program plan (IPP). Remarkably, that clinical language actually portrays Noah more favorably than the impression one would get from a face-to-face meeting.

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Space Station Module Handed Over

From The BBC:

Europe has rolled out its last major module for the space station.

The cylindrical Node 3 - to be known as "Tranquility" - was constructed by Thales Alenia Space in Turin, Italy.

Once attached to the station, it will house life support gear as well as being home to the Cupola, a giant "bay" window that was also built in Europe.

Node 3 will be shipped shortly to the Kennedy Space Center in the US, from where it will catch a ride to the station in the back of a shuttle.

The Endeavour orbiter flight, which will take up the Cupola as a co-passenger, is currently scheduled to lift-off in February 2010.

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Scientists Put Psychic's Paranormal Claims To The Test

Arch-sceptic, conjuror and debunker James Randi first offered a cash prize in the 1960s to anyone who could prove a paranormal claim under controlled conditions. Photograph: Public Domain

From The Guardian:

The young female volunteer in front of me could not suppress an embarrassed giggle as she sat there wearing a ski mask, wraparound sunglasses, an oversized graduation gown and a pair of white socks, a large laminated sheet hung around her neck displaying her participant number.

Then things got even weirder. Professor Richard Wiseman knocked on the door to collect our volunteer. He accompanied her into a large room where she was instructed to sit in a chair facing the wall and do nothing for 15 minutes or so. Professional medium Mrs Patricia Putt was then brought into the room and sat down at a small table around 12 feet away. Sometimes Mrs Putt would request that a volunteer read a pre-specified short passage, as she had found from past experience that often "the Spirit enters and makes contact through the sound of the sitter's voice". After that, no talking was allowed whatsoever as our medium wrote down a "reading" describing the volunteer using her alleged paranormal abilities. At the end of the reading, Mrs Putt left the room and the volunteer was allowed to change back into somewhat more conventional garb and given a reminder to return later in the day for the all-important judging phase.

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17 Steps To The Moon And Back: Anatomy Of A Moonshot

Buzz Aldrin explores the lunar surface.

From Popular Mechanics:

The most remarkable thing about Apollo 11—considering the uncertainties of manned spaceflight and the mishaps that bedeviled NASA on previous and subsequent missions—was its nearly flawless execution, from liftoff to splashdown. “I had the sense that surely something would go awry sooner or later,” flight director Glynn Lunney says. “It was pretty much by the book.” Here are the critical events that had to go right, and what would have happened had they gone wrong.

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Deep-Sea Eruption, Odd Animals Seen

© 2009 National Geographic; Video © Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

From National Geographic:

May 7, 2009—Scientists have caught a fast-growing, 12-story underwater volcano erupting—along with odd creatures evolved to survive its toxic emissions.

Scientists, witnessing and videotaping for the first time the eruption of an undersea volcano in the Pacific Ocean in the Northern Mariana Islands near Guam.

(onscreen: Video: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

The researchers, using the remotely operated vehicle, Jason, recorded the video in April, and sampled the eruption plume with an intake in one of its manipulator arms.

The deep-sea volcano, called NW Rota-1, was first observed erupting in 2004. Its been continuously spewing lava and highly acidic molten sulfur.

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Inexpensive Plastic Used In CDs Could Improve Aircraft, Computer Electronics

CDs. The inexpensive plastic now used to manufacture CDs and DVDs may one day soon be put to use in improving the integrity of electronics in aircraft, computers and iPhones. (Credit: iStockphoto/José Luis Gutiérrez)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (May 17, 2009) — If one University of Houston professor has his way, the inexpensive plastic now used to manufacture CDs and DVDs will one day soon be put to use in improving the integrity of electronics in aircraft, computers and iPhones.

Thanks to a pair of grants from the U.S. Air Force, Shay Curran, associate professor of physics at UH, and his research team have demonstrated ultra-high electrical conductive properties in plastics, called polycarbonates, by mixing them with just the right amount and type of carbon nanotubes.

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Is Wind The Next Ethanol? -- A Commentary

A picture taken in May 2001 shows the world's largest offshore windmill farm, Middelgrunden Windmill Farm, located in the Oeresund, three km from Copenhagen harbour. (AFP/Getty Images)

From The Washington Times:

Subsidizing this source could mandate a hefty consumer cost.

Repeating past mistakes has long been a part of Washington's energy policy, but Congress used to wait a while before making the same blunder again. Not anymore. New legislation requiring wind energy closely resembles the ethanol mandate that sparked a backlash just last year.

For many years, wind has benefited from generous tax credits and subsidies, but it still provides less than 2 percent of the nation's electricity. By comparison, coal supplies around 50 percent (and with considerably fewer federal incentives). Natural gas and nuclear, meanwhile, account for about 20 percent each.

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How Sand Dunes Grow Huge

Giant dunes in Grand Erg Oriental, Algeria. Credit: Bruno Andreotti

From Live Science:

Anyone who has seen giant sand dunes, the tall ones stretching many hundreds, even thousands, of feet across the desert floor, has surely wondered how they get to be so big. Scientists, too, have deliberated the question for years.

The sandy behemoths form in China, the Sahara, Namibia, and Iran, among other desert areas, and they come in ridge, star, or crescent shapes.

Bruno Andreotti and Philippe Claudin of the Laboratory of the Physics and Mechanics of Heterogeneous Media in Paris and colleagues now have some answers. The team studied giant-dune fields on-site, analyzed aerial and satellite photos and meteorological data, and ran aerodynamic models to investigate dune growth.

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The First 43 Years And Next 43 Years Of Star Trek And Our World

From The Next Big Future:

The First 43 Years from 1966 to 2009

We start just a little before 1966 (when the first show of the TV series was aired, which would technically be the first 45 years) to get a sense of technology and the world while the Star Trek show was in its development phase through to today.

In 1964, Roddenberry secured a three-year development deal with leading independent TV production company Desilu (founded by comedy stars Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz). In Roddenberry's original concept, the protagonist was named Captain Robert April of the "S.S. Yorktown". Eventually, this character became Captain Christopher Pike. The first pilot episode, "The Cage", was made in 1964, with actor Jeffrey Hunter in the role of Pike after Roddenberry's first choice, Lloyd Bridges had reportedly turned it down.

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The Future Of 5 Telescopes In Space

(Photograph by NASA/AFP/Getty Images)

From Popular Mechanics:

This week has been an active one for earthlings' quest to understand the universe. Here is the big news on five telescopes in the sky.

On what is supposed to be the last space shuttle visit ever to the Hubble Space Telescope, astronauts successfully installed a new camera.

Mission specialists John Grunsfeld and Drew Feustel installed the Wide Field Camera 3, an upgraded system that will produce larger, more detailed photos over a wide range of colors, according to NASA. The old camera, responsible for some of the most images of the cosmos since its installation in 1993, will be brought down for display at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum.

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Is David Attenborough Set To Reveal The Missing Link In Human Evolution?

From The Daily Mail:

The BBC has made an extraordinary new documentary, presented by Sir David Attenborough, which will reveal the discovery of a fossilised skeleton that may be a vital ‘missing link’ in human evolution.

The 90-minute programme is top secret but The Mail on Sunday has learned from sources in America that the results of the study on which it is based will be revealed by a team of scientists and broadcasters in New York on May 19.

The centrepiece of the programme is the unveiling of the first-ever complete skeleton of an extinct animal called an adapid.

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Melting Threat From West Antarctic Ice Sheet May Be Less Than Expected; But U.S. Coastal Cities At Risk

Iceberg in Paradise Bay, West Antarctica. (Credit: iStockphoto/Micheal O Fiachra)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (May 15, 2009) — While a total or partial collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet as a result of warming would not raise global sea levels as high as some predict, levels on the U.S. seaboards would rise 25 percent more than the global average and threaten cities like New York, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco, according to a new study.

Long thought of as the sleeping giant with respect to sea level rise, Antarctica holds about nine times the volume of ice of Greenland. Its western ice sheet, known as WAIS, is of particular interest to scientists due to its inherent instability, a result of large areas of the continent's bedrock lying below sea level. But the ice sheet's potential contribution to sea level rise has been greatly overestimated, according to new calculations.

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Lessons From Earth's Most Murderous People

This photo and caption released by Survival International on May 29, 2008, caused a stir: Uncontacted Indians in Brazil seen from the air, May 2008 © Gleison Miranda/FUNAI

From Live Science:

Decades ago, when I was a bright-eyed undergraduate student, I saw a documentary called "Dead Birds" in my cultural anthropology class about the Dani of New Guinea, and it changed my life.

Brought up in a nice, middle-class, white American family, I had no idea that there were people in the world who still lived in huts, kept pigs, and spent their days on high, swaying platforms looking for the enemy. And when the enemy came screaming over the hill, wearing elaborate feathered headdresses and carrying spears, I was stunned into becoming an anthropologist, right then and there.

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Color E-Paper That Rivals the Real Thing

Color scheme: A prototype in-plane electrophoretic display consisting of 1,000 pixels. Credit: Philips

From Technology Review:

Turning pixels on their side may finally mean high-quality color electronic paper.

Despite Amazon's promise to reinvent the newspaper and magazine industry with its new, large-screen Kindle DX electronic reader, some people may be reluctant to embrace the technology until full-color displays are possible. A new approach developed by Philips now offers fresh hope for color e-paper displays that are so bright and clear that even traditional liquid crystal displays (LCDs) will pale in comparison.

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Wolfram Alpha Search Engine Is Now Online

The Wolfram Alpha Search Engine is now online, and can be found here.

Heavy use of the search engine has caused it to send back a message that it has exceeded its "user limits" .... but otherwise it appears to be a cool and practical search engine.

Telescopes Poised To Spot Air-Breathing Aliens

Image: The next generation of space telescopes will be capable of detecting "biosignatures" in the light from planets orbiting other stars (Image: G. Bacon STSCI / ESA / NASA)

From New Scientist:

SIGNS of life on planets beyond our own solar system may soon be in our sights. Experiments and calculations presented at an astrobiology meeting last week reveal how the coming generation of space telescopes will for the first time be capable of detecting "biosignatures" in the light from planets orbiting other stars.

Any clues about life on these exoplanets will have to come from the tiny fraction of the parent star's light that interacts with the planet on its journey towards Earth. The Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes have both detected gases such as carbon dioxide and water vapour in the atmospheres of a handful of gas-giant exoplanets as they pass in front of their parent stars. The gas molecules absorb light at characteristic wavelengths, and this shows up as dark lines in the spectrum of the starlight which has been filtered through the planet's atmosphere. But seeing evidence of life - so-called biosignatures - in the spectrum of worlds small enough to be rocky like Earth is beyond the sensitivity of these instruments.

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Sleep Can Improve Your Word Power

From The Telegraph:

Reading bedtime stories to children could help to improve their vocabulary, new research suggests.

Psychologists have discovered that a good night's sleep plays a crucial role in allowing the brain to store and remember new words learned during the day.

People who were asked to learn a set of fictitious words were better at remembering them after they had spent time asleep than if they were asked to recall the words just a few hours after being taught them.

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Melting Ice Could Cause Gravity Shift

The disintegration of the Antarctic ice sheet could cause catastrophic flooding on the east and west coasts of America. AFP

From The Independent:

The melting of one of the world's largest ice sheets would alter the Earth's field of gravity and even its rotation in space so much that it would cause sea levels along some coasts to rise faster than the global average, scientists said yesterday.

The rise in sea levels would be highest on the west and east coasts of North America where increases of 25 per cent more than the global average would cause catastrophic flooding in cities such as New York, Washington DC and San Francisco.

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Star Crust Is Ten Billion Times Stronger Than Steel

The outer crusts of so-called neutron stars (above, a neutron star in an artist's conception) are ten billion times stronger than steel—making it the strongest known material in the universe, scientists said in May 2009. Image by Casey Reed, courtesy of Penn State

From National Geographic News:

Move over, Superman.

The Man of Steel has nothing on the collapsed cores of massive snuffed-out stars, scientists say.

A new computer model suggests that the outer crusts of so-called neutron stars are the strongest known material in the universe.

To determine the breaking point of a neutron star's crust, the team modeled magnetic field stresses and crust deformation for a small region of the star's surface.

The results showed that the crust of a neutron star can withstand a breaking strain up to ten billion times the pressure it would take to snap steel.

"It sounds dramatic, but it's true," said study team member Charles Horowitz of Indiana University.

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Let The Planet Hunt Begin: Kepler Spacecraft Begins Search For Other Earth-like Worlds

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

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (May 15, 2009) — NASA's Kepler spacecraft has begun its search for other Earth-like worlds. The mission, which launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on March 6, will spend the next three-and-a-half years staring at more than 100,000 stars for telltale signs of planets. Kepler has the unique ability to find planets as small as Earth that orbit sun-like stars at distances where temperatures are right for possible lakes and oceans.

"Now the fun begins," said William Borucki, Kepler science principal investigator at NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif. "We are all really excited to start sorting through the data and discovering the planets."

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Supercomputer Helps SoCal Prep For The Big One

From Live Science:

Very few things in life are certain. If you live in Southern California, however, rest assured that some time in the next few decades you will experience an earthquake of significant magnitude.

And while the disaster itself is probably unavoidable, knowing which areas will be most affected can do a great deal to mitigate the aftermath. For example, where will the strongest ground movement occur, and how long will the shaking last?

Obviously, when it comes to new construction in an area with a high probability of an earthquake in the relatively near future, this knowledge is invaluable. Engineers crave this sort of data when they are designing the buildings of tomorrow.

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Can The Grid Handle Renewables?

Photo: LIGHTS OUT FOR THE OLD GRID? A six-month study will test the grid's ability to handle the load and fluctuation of a surge of renewable energy. FLICKR/PETER KAMINSKI

From Scientific American:

A new study aims to find out how much electricity from wind and sunshine the aging power grid can support.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission launched a six-month study today to determine how much renewable energy the electric grid can accommodate.

FERC will work with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory on the $500,000 study to validate the preliminary frequency-response tool developed by the commission to gauge the grid's reliability if large quantities of renewable energy are sent to the system.

"We need a good metric – a good yardstick, a tool – to assess how much renewable energy can be injected into the bulk power ... system," said Joseph McClelland, director of FERC's Office of Electric Reliability.

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Water Way To Travel! Super Winged Submersible That 'Flies' Through The Ocean Unveiled

Sea for two: The Super Falcon Submersible surfaces
near San Francisco following 20 years of research

From The Daily Mail:

Man has raced across the land and launched into space, but traveling underwater has proved more tricky.

Now an engineer has built a high-tech winged submersible that he says can 'fly' beneath the waves.

The Super Falcon Submersible, which resembles Thunderbird 4, can reach depths of 1,500 feet and speed through the ocean at six knots, which is nearly seven miles per hour. It has a range of around 25 nautical miles.

Created by British inventor Graham Hawkes for Hawkes Ocean Technologies, it is the newest and most advanced sub of their Deep Flight series and the culmination of four generations of experimental prototypes.

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