Canada Has A Frigid May After A Cold Winter

From Watts Up With That?

May has been frigid slowing the planting and emergence of the summer crops in Canada. Late freezes and even snows are still occurring regularly and can be expected the rest of the month.

The chart above shows the May 2009 temperature anomaly through May 24th. Parts of central Canada (Churchill, Manitoba) are running 16 degrees F below normal for the month through the 26th (map ends 24th). Every day this month has seen lows below freezing in Churchill and only 6 out of the first 26 days days had highs edge above freezing. The forecast the rest of the month is for more cold with even some snow today in Churchill and again this weekend perhaps further south.

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My Comment: I live in Quebec, Canada .... I can vouch for this report.

New Solar Cycle Prediction: Fewer Sunspots, But Not Necessarily Less Activity

This is an image of the sun from NASA's twin STEREO satellites. Credit: NASA

From Physorg.:

PhysOrg.com) -- An international panel of experts has released a new prediction for the next solar cycle, stating that Solar Cycle 24 will peak in May 2013 with a below-average number of sunspots. Led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and sponsored by NASA, the panel includes a dozen members from nine different government and academic institutions. Their forecast sets the stage for at least another year of mostly quiet conditions before solar activity resumes in earnest.

"If our prediction is correct, Solar Cycle 24 will have a peak sunspot number of 90, the lowest of any cycle since 1928 when Solar Cycle 16 peaked at 78," says panel chairman Doug Biesecker of the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center, Boulder, Colo.

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Earliest Known Case of Leprosy Unearthed

From Live Science:

A 4,000-year-old skeleton found in India bears the earliest archaeological evidence of leprosy, a new study reports.

The finding, detailed in the May 27 issue of the online journal PLoS ONE, is also the first evidence for the disease in prehistoric India and sheds light on how the disease might have been spread in early human history.

Though it is no longer a significant public health threat in most parts of the world, leprosy is still one of the least understood infectious diseases, in part because the bacteria that causes it (Mycobacterium leprae) is difficult to culture for research and has only one other animal host, the nine banded armadillo.

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Scientists Reaching Consensus On How Brain Processes Speech

Researchers are finding that both human and non-human primate studies have confirmed that speech, one important facet of language, is processed in the brain along two parallel pathways, each of which run from lower- to higher-functioning neural regions. (Credit: iStockphoto/Don Bayley)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (May 27, 2009) — Neuroscientists feel they are much closer to an accepted unified theory about how the brain processes speech and language, according to a scientist at Georgetown University Medical Center who first laid the concepts a decade ago and who has now published a review article confirming the theory.

In the June issue of Nature Neuroscience, the investigator, Josef Rauschecker, PhD, and his co-author, Sophie Scott, PhD, a neuroscientist at University College, London, say that both human and non-human primate studies have confirmed that speech, one important facet of language, is processed in the brain along two parallel pathways, each of which run from lower- to higher-functioning neural regions.

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Sub Will Explore Undersea Borders

From The BBC:

A remotely operated vehicle (ROV) designed by a team of researchers in the Irish Republic could help define the limits of nations' underwater borders.

Named after the Celtic goddess of beer and water, ROV Latis has just completed trials off Ireland's west coast.

The information it gathers could help to settle, once and for all, disputes over continental perimeters.

It uses high resolution CCTV and colour cameras capable of operating in very low light.

Simon Marr, technical market analyst at the University of Limerick, explained that it was designed to perform seabed surveys and had a fibre-optic communication channel to relay all of the information it gathered.

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Fire And Water Reveal New Archaeological Dating Method

Ancient bricks. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of Manchester)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (May 25, 2009) — Scientists at The University of Manchester have developed a new way of dating archaeological objects – using fire and water to unlock their 'internal clocks'.

The simple method promises to be as significant a technique for dating ceramic materials as radiocarbon dating has become for organic materials such as bone or wood.

A team from The University of Manchester and The University of Edinburgh has discovered a new technique which they call 'rehydroxylation dating' that can be used on fired clay ceramics like bricks, tile and pottery.

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Why Chimps, Monkeys Don't Develop Alzheimer's

This April 29, 2009 photo shows 'Jody,' a chimpanzee who was used for breeding and biomedical research at Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest in Cle Elum, Wash. As attacks and other problems with privately owned chimpanzees make the news, some chimpanzee sanctuaries are seeing an increase in inquiries from pet owners, looking for help in caring for their animals. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

From Yahoo News/Healthday:

MONDAY, May 25 (HealthDay News) -- Scientists have long noticed a curious phenomenon among primates: Humans get the devastating neurological disorder known as Alzheimer's disease, but their closest evolutionary cousins don't.

Even more inexplicable is the fact that chimpanzee and other non-human primate brains do get clogged with the same protein plaques that are believed by many to cause the disease in humans.

The answer to this puzzle could yield valuable insight into how Alzheimer's develops and progresses, and now researchers report they may have a clue. They report their finding in the latest issue of the journal Neurobiology of Aging.

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Hubble's Ten Most Significant Discoveries

Dark Energy: Courtesy of NASA

From Popsci.com:

PopSci offers up the ten most important scientific discoveries that the Hubble made possible, and the amazing images to go with them.

After astronauts fixed the lens on the Hubble space telescope, the satellite began sending back pictures of the cosmos that left all onlookers in awe. The beauty of those images often overshadowed the legitimate scientific progress the Hubble enabled.

So, in honor of the Hubble’s final servicing mission, Popsci.com and Mario Livio, a senior astrophysicist at the Space Telescope Science Institute and author of Is God A Mathematician?, look past the pretty pictures and count down the ten most important scientific discoveries that the Hubble made possible.

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Overfishing Goes Back Centuries, Log Books Reveal

One of the earliest depictions of trawling. Mosaic from the 5th century, Bizerte, Tunisia. Credit: Yacoub, M., Splendors of Tunisian Mosaics, Tunis, 1995, Fig. 115.

From Live Science:

Overfishing led to shrinking sizes of freshwater fish caught by Europeans all the way back in medieval times. And the real revolution in deep-sea fishing came not with modern day trawlers, but back in the 1600s when pairs of boats began dragging a net between them.

Those are just a few of the facts unearthed by marine historians who want to find out when ocean life populations and natural sizes began to shrink.

The evidence shows that much of the decline took place even before the modern fishing industry really got going.

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The Moment A Hummingbird Meets A Sticky End Thanks To A Hungry Praying Mantis

Struggle for survival: This hummingbird met a sticky end when feeding

From The Daily Mail:

This startling picture captures the moment a praying mantis snared a hummingbird.

The predatory insect is seen dangling from a plant with its right spiny foreleg impaling the helpless bird. Although not much bigger than its prey, the mantis was able to gorge itself before releasing the lifeless body of its victim.

Richard Walkup, from West Chester in Pennsylvania, US, told how his quick-thinking son had captured the scene.

He said: 'The other day while I was working in the yard my son urgently called to me, 'Dad, a praying mantis caught a hummingbird!'

'I came running to see for myself. By the time I arrived it was too late for the poor hummer and my scientifically minded son had already begun taking pictures and studying the scene. '

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Space Rock Yields Carbon Bounty

From The BBC:

Formic acid, a molecule implicated in the origins of life, has been found at record levels on a meteorite that fell into a Canadian lake in 2000.

Cold temperatures on Tagish Lake prevented the volatile chemical from dissipating quickly.

An analysis showed four times more formic acid in the fragments than has been recorded on previous meteorites.

The researchers told a meeting of the American Geophysical Union that the formic acid was extraterrestrial.

Formic acid is one of a group of compounds dubbed "organics", because they are rich in carbon.

"We are lucky that the meteorite was untouched by humans hands, avoiding contamination by organic compounds that we have on our fingers," said Dr Christopher Herd, the curator of the University of Alberta's meteorite collection.

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Tech-word Origins: Stranger Than Science

From Christian Science Monitor:

A lexicographer describes where science fiction struck first.

Scientists are uniquely qualified to describe the universe in numbers and equations, but sometimes it takes an imaginative novelist to distill discoveries into words.

For his book “Brave New Words,” freelance lexicographer Jeff Prucher uncovered a slew of words that many people assume came from science, but actually originated in the pulpy pages of early science fiction. Here are four of his favorites.

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Why We Stare, Even When We Don’t Want To

From Weird Science/Wired:

The stares of strangers endured by Connie Culp, recent face transplant recipient, might have little to do with cruelty or lack of empathy. These responses are likely a result of neurologic, biologic and evolutionary factors.

Prior to her operation, the center of Culp’s face was blank skin traversed by a single raw scar where she once had a nose, upper lip and cheeks. The disfigurement made her the target of something perhaps even less fixable: millions of years of evolutionary uncouth. When she went out in public, people gaped at her. After her operation, her face still looks unusual and the stares continue.

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Rising Sea Levels: Survival Tips From 5000 BC

As sea levels rise, we need to find ways to adapt. Ancient civilisations could give us some tips (Image: Paul Kay / SplashdownDirect / Rex)

From The New Scientist:

WITH rising seas lapping at coastal cities and threatening to engulf entire islands in the not-too-distant future, it's easy to assume our only option will be to abandon them and head for the hills. There may be another way, however. Archaeological sites in the Caribbean, dating back to 5000 BC, show that some ancient civilisations had it just as bad as anything we are expecting. Yet not only did they survive a changing coastline and more storm surges and hurricanes: they stayed put and successfully adapted to the changing world. Now archaeologists are working out how they managed it and finding ways that we might learn from their example.

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New Memory Material May Hold Data For One Billion Years

Scientists are reporting an advance toward a memory device capable of storing data for more than one billion years. (Credit: The American Chemical Society)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (May 26, 2009) — Packing more digital images, music, and other data onto silicon chips in USB drives and smart phones is like squeezing more strawberries into the same size supermarket carton. The denser you pack, the quicker it spoils. The 10 to 100 gigabits of data per square inch on today's memory cards has an estimated life expectancy of only 10 to 30 years. And the electronics industry needs much greater data densities for tomorrow's iPods, smart phones, and other devices.

Scientists are reporting an advance toward remedying this situation with a new computer memory device that can store thousands of times more data than conventional silicon chips with an estimated lifetime of more than one billion years. Their discovery is scheduled for publication in the June 10 issue of the American Chemical Society's Nano Letters, a monthly journal.

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Is It Safe To Exercise In Your 70s?

From Live Science:

This Week's Question: I've been told I should exercise more, but I'm afraid that at my age (73) I might damage something. Am I safer as a couch potato?

All the current scientific evidence shows that geezers should exercise, even though many older people think it could harm them. Study after study demonstrates that seniors hurt their health a lot more by being sedentary.

If you're inactive, you deteriorate. Physical activity can help restore your capacity. Most older adults, regardless of age or condition, will benefit from increasing physical activity to a moderate level.

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Russia's Dark Horse Plan to Get to Mars

Phobos, the larger of the two moons of Mars has many unknowns. For instance, what formed the grooves that run across its surface? Image: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (G. Neukum)

From Discover:

The Fobos-Grunt mission might pave the way for humanity's first permanent space base—on Phobos, Mars' bizarre moon.

Mars has been nothing but bad luck for the Russians. They have launched 20 probes to the planet since 1960, and all either failed or suffered from severe technical problems. But soon—as early as this October—Russia will attempt to reverse its fortunes with one of the most ambitious unmanned space missions ever.

Instead of aiming straight for Mars, the Russians are going after Phobos, the larger of its two little satellites and one of the oddest objects around. Their probe, called Fobos-Grunt (“Phobos soil” in Russian), will not only land on Phobos but also scoop up some samples of the surface and send them to Earth. Understanding Phobos could tell us a lot about the early history of the solar system. “It may give us clues to the formation of Earth’s moon and the moons of the other planets, and the role played by asteroid impacts in shaping the terrestrial [rocky] planets,” says Alexander Zakharov of the Moscow-based Space Research Institute and chief scientist for Fobos-Grunt. Even more important, this mission could lay the groundwork for an innovative strategy for exploring—and even colonizing—Mars itself.

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U.S. Natural Gas Boom: The Race To Tap Shale's Potential

(Photograph by Harald Sund/Getty Images)

From Popular Mechanics:

Natural gas prices are at a six-year low, but that's not slowing one unconventional—and historically costly—method for extracting gas for energy. Shale gas reserves are contributing to the 11 percent rise in natural gas production the United States has seen in the past two years. But the deposits have been known about for decades—why are these resources drawing attention now?

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Forget Plasma And LCDs: How The 3mm-thick, Eco-Friendly OLED Is The TV Of The Future

The Sony XEL-1 is currently the only OLED TV on the market and priced at £3,500.
The screen is just 3mm thick

From The Daily Mail:

Once they were a must-have for every living room. But LCD and plasma TVs could be about to go the way of the cathode ray tube.

A new generation of super-slim screens will revolutionise home entertainment, according to the makers.

The OLED sets boast the thinnest TV screen created. At its narrowest point it is the width of a pound coin. And technological advances make the image far sharper than on LCD and plasma screens.

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A Serious Search For Extraterrestrial Life

A planet probably the size of Jupiter orbits at a distance about four times that between Neptune and the sun. Many such exoplanets - all atmosphere, no solid surface - have been found since '95, when the first was confirmed.

From Philadelphia Inquirer:

Things have changed since the original Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock set off to seek out new life and new civilizations. Back in the 1960s, while the Enterprise crew was exploring a galaxy full of exotic life-forms, real astronomers were stuck in a solar system with eight desolate-looking neighbors and no signs of any planets beyond.

Now, finally, astronomers are starting to zero in on Earth-like worlds orbiting other stars. Some of the more recent finds even look potentially habitable.

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Energy Availability Is Almost Infinite

Image from Dvice.

From Watts Up With That?

A favorite excuse to push the AGW agenda is that “energy is limited, so we have to preserve it for future generations.” But nothing could be further from the truth. As that clever fellow Albert Einstein figured out ( E = Mc² ) – energy is available right here on earth in vast supplies beyond our comprehension. In fact, a primary concern of mankind over the last 65 years has been to figure out how to keep mankind from releasing some of this energy too quickly, in a catastrophic fashion.

Einstein’s equation tells us that one kilogram of matter can be converted into 90,000,000,000,000,000 (ninety million billion) joules of energy. That is roughly equivalent to saying that one liter of water contains as much potential energy as 10 million gallons of gasoline. Those who saw the movie “Angels and Demons” are familiar with the concept of combining matter and anti-matter to achieve a highly efficient matter to energy conversion. Mankind probably won’t have access to that sort of technology for some time into the future, but we already have hundreds of fission reactors generating a significant percentage of the world’s energy.

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Scientists Identify A Key Protein That May Explain The Anti-Aging And Anti-Cancer Benefits of Dietary Restriction

From The Next Big Future:

High nutrients activate HIF-1 through the TOR-S6K pathway, which leads to increased ER stress and shortened lifespan. Other regulators such as PHA-4, SKN-1, AAK-2, DAF-16 and HSF-1 may function in parallel to HIF-1 to modulate DR-induced longevity phenotypes.

A protein that plays a key role in tumor formation, oxygen metabolism and inflammation is involved in a pathway that extends lifespan by dietary restriction.

The finding, which appears in the May 22, 2009 edition of the on-line journal PLoS Genetics, provides a new understanding of how dietary restriction contributes to longevity and cancer prevention and gives scientists new targets for developing and testing drugs that could extend the healthy years of life.

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Surprising Twist To Photosynthesis: Scientists Swap Key Metal Necessary For Turning Sunlight Into Chemical Energy

The reactions that convert light to chemical energy happen in a millionth of a millionth of a second, which makes experimental observation extremely challenging. A premier ultrafast laser spectroscopic detection system established at the Biodesign Institute, with the sponsorship of the National Science Foundation, acts like a high-speed motion picture camera. It splits the light spectrum into infinitesimally discrete slivers, allowing the group to capture vast numbers of ultrafast frames from the components of these exceedingly rapid reactions. These frames are then mathematically assembled, allowing the group to make a figurative "movie" of the energy transfer events of photosynthesis. (Credit: Arizona State University Biodesign Institute)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (May 23, 2009) — Photosynthesis is a remarkable biological process that supports life on earth. Plants and photosynthetic microbes do so by harvesting light to produce their food, and in the process, also provide vital oxygen for animals and people.

Now, a large, international collaboration between Arizona State University, the University of California San Diego and the University of British Columbia, has come up with a surprising twist to photosynthesis by swapping a key metal necessary for turning sunlight into chemical energy.

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The Whole World Is Optimistic, Survey Finds

From Live Science:

Despite current economic woes, a new study based on global survey data finds optimism to be universal. Sunny outlooks are most prevalent in Ireland, Brazil, Denmark, and New Zealand.

The United States ranks No. 10.

Nearly 90 percent of people around the globe expect the next five years to be as good or better than life today, the study found. And 95 percent expect their life in five years to be as good or better than it was five years ago.

The study, from the University of Kansas and Gallup, suggests humans are optimistic by nature, the researchers conclude.

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Fundamental Mechanism For Cell Organization Discovered

Image: An embryo treated with RNA interference to delay the onset of cell polarization. At the beginning of the process, P granules (green) have already nearly completely dissolved throughout the embryo. However, when the embryo ultimately polarizes, the polarity protein PAR-2 (red) appears on the posterior cortex, and P granules reform by condensation in the vicinity of this posterior region. Credit: Clifford Brangwynne (Credit: Image courtesy of Marine Biological Laboratory)

From Science Digest:

ScienceDaily (May 22, 2009) — Scientists have discovered that cells use a very simple phase transition -- similar to water vapor condensing into dew -- to assemble and localize subcellular structures that are involved in formation of the embryo.

The discovery, which was made during the 2008 Physiology course at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL), is reported in the May 21 early online edition of Science by Clifford P. Brangwynne and Anthony A. Hyman of the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden, Germany, and their colleagues, including Frank Jülicher of the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems, also in Dresden.

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Huge Mars Region Shaped by Water, Rover Mission Finds

A false-color image shows Cape St. Vincent, a feature of Mars's massive Victoria Crater. After a dangerous descent into the crater, the Mars rover Opportunity has shown that the red planet once had a network of underground water spread across an area the size of Oklahoma, scientists announced in May 2009. Photograph courtesy Steven W. Squyres

From National Geographic:

Shifting sand dunes on ancient Mars once concealed a network of underground water spread across an area the size of Oklahoma, according to new findings from NASA's Mars rover Opportunity.

In 2004 Opportunity had spotted minerals and blueberry-shaped rocks indicative of ancient groundwater in the Martian crater Endurance.

The robotic explorer has now found similar signs of past water in Victoria, a crater some 3.5 miles (6 kilometers) away.

Opportunity also spotted unique rock layers in the sides of Victoria Crater, which are likely the petrified remnants of ancient sand dunes.

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Opposites Really Do Attract In Human Search For A Mate According To New Study

Photo: Sophie Dahl and Jamie Cullum are living proof that opposites really do attract

From The Daily Mail:

It's an age old theory but when it comes to choosing a mate, opposites really do attract, according to a Brazilian study that found people are subconsciously more likely to choose a partner whose genetic make-up is different to their own.

The study found evidence to suggest that married couples are more likely to have genetic differences in a DNA region that governs the immune system than couples who were randomly matched.

Maria da Graca Bicalho and her colleagues at the University of Parana in Brazil reported that this was likely to be an evolutionary strategy to ensure healthy reproduction because genetic variability is an advantage for offspring.

Bicalho said: 'Although it may be tempting to think that humans choose their partners because of their similarities, our research has shown clearly that it is differences that make for successful reproduction, and that the subconscious drive to have healthy children is important when choosing a mate.'

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Rumor Round-Up: Everything We’ve Heard About the Next iPhone

From Gadget Lab/Wired News:

This month, the Apple rumor volcano erupted with purported details of the next-generation iPhone. Various blogs claim receiving tips from informed sources about features in the highly anticipated handset, such as a magnetometer (digital compass), a video camera and a speedier processor.

Here, we round up every rumor that’s appeared about Apple’s next iPhone, which many are betting will be announced June 8 at the Worldwide Developer Conference in San Francisco. We’re also accompanying each rumor with a percentage rating for its probability to be true, as well as our analysis.

When WWDC arrives, we’ll present a report card showing which publications were correct and which were wrong. And of course, we’ll grade ourselves on our predictions, too.

With that said, here’s everything we’ve heard about the next iPhone:

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Power Plants: Artificial Trees That Harvest Sun And Wind To Generate Electricity

Image: GOING OUT ON A LIMB: A new company called Solar Botanic plans to build artificial trees that reap solar and wind energy. Solar Botanic

From Scientific America:

A start-up proposes forests of fake trees with "leaves" that soak up sunshine and flutter in the breeze to generate clean solar and wind power. Could it just be crazy enough to work?

While on a train ride to visit his sister in the Netherlands in 2002, where monstrous wind turbines now mar scenic views, Alex van der Beek got an idea: Instead of ruining the natural landscape with conventional technology, why not generate electricity from something that blends in—a fake tree?

Van der Beek—whose previous professional experience was teaching alternative medicine—founded Solar Botanic, Ltd., in London last year on the concept. Solar Botanic's ambitious plan involves bringing together three different energy-generation technologies—photovoltaics (aka solar power, or electricity from visible sunlight), thermoelectrics (electricity from heat) and piezoelectrics (electricity from pressure)—all in the unassuming shape of a leaf on its stem.

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Mars Robots May Have Destroyed Evidence Of Life

Photo: This image was taken by NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander's Surface Stereo Imager on June 5, 2008, the eleventh day after landing. It shows the robotic arm scoop, with a soil sample, poised over the partially open door of the lander's oven (Image: NASA / JPL-Caltech / University of Arizona / Texas A&M University)

From New Scientist:

HAVE Mars landers been destroying signs of life? Instead of identifying chemicals that could point to life, NASA's robot explorers may have been toasting them by mistake.

In 1976, many people's hopes of finding life on Mars collapsed when the twin Viking landers failed to detect even minute quantities of organic compounds - the complex, carbon-containing molecules that are central to life as we know it. "It contributed, in my opinion, to the fact that there were no additional [US lander] missions to Mars for 20 years," says Jeff Moore of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California.

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Will Obama Kill Navigation Backup System as GPS Threatens to Fail?

LORAN radio transmission tower. (Photograph by USCG/PA1 Chuck Kalnbach)

From Popular Mechanics:

Obama's budget attempts to ax LORAN-C, a navigation backup program, even as experts at the Government Accountability Office sound warnings about satellite reliability. What will happen if GPS fails?

Even as a government watchdog agency warns that GPS navigation satellites could fail, the Obama administration's proposed fiscal 2010 budget has quietly killed the nation's backup navigation system.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report last week warning, "It is uncertain whether the Air Force will be able to acquire new satellites in time to maintain current GPS service without interruption. If not, some military operations and some civilian users could be adversely affected." The report also notes that the current program is about $870 million over budget and the launch of its first satellite has been delayed to November 2009, almost three years late.

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Animals Can Tell Right From Wrong

Research suggests that it's not just humans who have a moral compass Photo: GETTY

From The Telegraph:

Animals possess a sense of morality that allows them to tell the difference between right and wrong, according to a controversial new book.

Scientists studying animal behaviour believe they have growing evidence that species ranging from mice to primates are governed by moral codes of conduct in the same way as humans.

Until recently, humans were thought to be the only species to experience complex emotions and have a sense of morality.

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Eureka Moment That Led To The Discovery Of DNA Fingerprinting

Alec Jeffreys with a copy of the first DNA fingerprint profile. Photograph: Rui Vieira/PA

From The Guardian:

Twenty-five years ago academic Alec Jeffreys stumbled on a remarkable discovery. The scientific breakthrough led to DNA fingerprinting - which has since trapped hundreds of killers, freed the innocent and revolutionised science and criminal justice.

On 10 September 1984, geneticist Alec Jeffreys wrote three words - "33 autorad off" - in his red desk diary. The phrase marked the completion of an experiment, set up that summer, to study how inherited illnesses pass through families. It failed completely.

Yet the project remains one of the most profoundly influential pieces of research ever carried out in a British laboratory, for it produced the world's first DNA fingerprint, a technology that has revolutionised crime scene investigations, led to the convictions of murderers and rapists, and transformed immigration disputes and paternity cases.

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Google Earth Maps Out Discrimination Against Burakumin Caste In Japan

The map showed how old ghettos relate to the 21st-century streets

From Times Online:

A handful of innocent-looking antique maps, one offensive word and tens of thousands of offended “untouchables” have plunged Google into an unspoken class war that has raged in Japan for centuries.

Despite its ambition to be the cartographer of the internet age, the search engine has lumbered into one of the darkest corners of Japan — the bigotry of mainstream Japanese society towards the burakumin, the “filthy mob”, whose ancestors fell outside the caste system of the 17th-century samurai era.

By allowing old maps to be overlaid on satellite images of Tokyo, Osaka and Kyoto on its Google Earth service, the search engine shows how the old ghettos relate to the 21st-century streets.

That, critics say, is perfect ammunition to hurt descendants of the people who lived there 400 years ago.

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Ancient Teeth Hint That Right-handedness Is Nothing New

From New Scientist:

Ancient bones suggest "lefties" have been coping with a right-handed world for more than half a million years. A study of Homo heidelbergensis, an ancestor of Neanderthals, seems to show that the ancient humans were predominately right-handed.

"Finding that a hominin species as old as Homo heidelbergensis is already right-handed helps to trace back the chain of modernity concerning hand laterality," says Marina Mosquera, a paleoanthropologist at Universitat Rovira i Virgili in Tarragona, Spain, who was involved in the study.

Humans are the only animal believed to show a strong preference for performing tasks with one hand or the other. Determining when right-handedness first evolved could shed light on traits linked to lateralised brains, such as language and technology, Mosquera says. Efforts to solve this mystery have looked to ancient human skulls and marks left on tools.

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Molecular Link Between Sleep And Weight Gain

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (May 23, 2009) — There appears to be a link between sleep and weight control, with some studies indicating that sleep disruption can increase weight gain and others that diet affects sleep. Victor Uebele and colleagues, at Merck Research Laboratories, West Point, have now provided further evidence to support this association by showing that T-type calcium channels regulate body weight maintenance and sleep in mice.

These data suggest that sleep and circadian treatment approaches may be of benefit in the fight against obesity.

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Race Fans Are Riskier Drivers

Kyle Petty (#42) and Dale Jarrett (#18) lead the pack as the 1993 Daytona 500, NASCAR's flagship event, gets underway. (Photo from How Stuff Works)

From Live Science:

After you finish watching the Indy 500 this Sunday, you may want to have your designated driver take you home. Not only should he be sober, but he also should have no interest in motor sports.

According to Australian researchers, being a race fan makes you more likely to not only speed in your own car but also to see little wrong with it.

Several factors have been found to influence a driver's attitude towards speeding and aggressive driving, including age, gender and what psychologists call "sensation seeking propensity." This thrill-seeking behavior may also be a result of a driver's environment.

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Bolden Is Tapped to Run NASA

Photo: Former astronaut Charles Bolden Jr., shown at Beihang University in 2005, would be the first African-American to run NASA. His past ties to two big contractors for the agency have sparked opposition to the pick. SIPA/Newscom

From The Wall Street Journal:

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama picked former astronaut and retired Marine Corps Gen. Charles Bolden Jr. to head the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, but controversy over his background and NASA's future direction could complicate his job.

Gen. Bolden's nomination caps months of political maneuvering, which has left some major agency decisions in limbo. It also has become a flash point for a broad debate over how NASA should conduct future human space-exploration programs.

Gen. Bolden was a NASA official in the early 1990s and more recently worked for two major NASA contractors. His critics contend he's too closely tied to existing NASA programs.

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Boys Have Sweeter Tooth Than Girls

Children's love of sweetness starts to wane as they hit their teens Photo: John Kernick

From The Telegraph:

Girls have a finer sense of taste than boys - but boys have a sweeter tooth, a new food study has found.

On average boys need 10 per cent more sourness and 20 per cent more sweetness in their grub to recognise how tasty it is.

However, boys prefer wild and extreme tastes compared to the muted flavours favoured by girls, the figures revealed.

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No More Shuttles, No In-Space Fixes

Astronauts Michael Good, left, and Mike Massimino participate in the mission's fourth spacewalk to repair the Hubble Space Telescope May 17, 2009 in Space. The space shuttle Atlantis' mission is to overhaul the Hubble Space Telescope in order to extend its working life. NASA via Getty Pictures

From MSNBC:

NASA's future spacecraft won't have built-in ability to repair work

When the space shuttle Atlantis lands — planned for Saturday — it will cap off a mission to Hubble and mark the end of the servicing era.

The astronauts' fifth overhaul of the Hubble Space Telescope was the last planned mission to repair the telescope, or any satellite for that matter. And if NASA retires the space shuttle fleet in 2010 as planned, the agency will lose the ability to visit orbiting spacecraft and repair them in space.

"This is the last scheduled servicing mission of Hubble with the space shuttle, and what I think it's demonstrated is the extreme utility of having people working in space and accomplishing things that are different than what was expected," said astronaut John Grunsfeld, who has helped fix Hubble on three different missions, from space Wednesday.

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Body Burners: The Forensics Of Fire

From New Scientist:

THE fire started with a match held under a cotton blanket close to the man's waist. Within 2 minutes, the flames had spread across the single bed he was lying on and were consuming his cotton sweatshirt and trousers.

Around a dozen onlookers were at the scene - including police, fire investigators and death investigators - yet all they did was watch. That was, after all, their job. The "victim" had in fact died some time ago, having previously donated his remains to medical research.

His body had reached a unique team led by Elayne Pope, a forensic scientist at the University of West Florida in Pensacola. Her group spends its time setting fire to corpses in a range of different circumstances, to work out exactly how the human body burns. They seem to be the only group carrying out such systematic studies in this area, and are certainly the only ones publishing their work.

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Queuing Up For Dinner: Dolphins Enjoy Sardine Feeding Frenzy

Working as a team common dolphins head towards a bait ball in Port St. Johns, South Africa.

From The Daily Mail:

Like workers in a canteen the dolphins line up patiently as they look forward to a rather large and tasty lunch.

The aquatic mammals head to the South African coastline each year for the Sardine Run - an underwater migration where millions of fish head eastwards from their cool spawning waters near Cape Town in search of zooplankton.

The dolphins, alongside sword fish and sharks ambush them from below, while gannets and gulls hover above the waves waiting for their chance to pick up a morsel from above.

It is one of nature's greatest phenomena which takes place in June each year. Underwater photographer Alexander Safonov is looking forward to experiencing the awesome sight again after he captured it on camera in 2008.

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The Impact of Computing : 78% More per Year, v2.0

(Click to Enlarge)

From The Futurist:

Anyone who follows technology is familar with Moore's Law and its many variations, and has come to expect the price of computing power to halve every 18 months. But many people don't see the true long-term impact of this beyond the need to upgrade their computer every three or four years. To not internalize this more deeply is to miss investment opportunities, grossly mispredict the future, and be utterly unprepared for massive, sweeping changes to human society. Hence, it is time to update the first version of this all-important article that was written on February 21, 2006.

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Blue Whales Returning To Former Waters Off Alaska

This undated photo provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration shows blue whales in the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary in California. Scientists say the whales that use to cruise the Pacific Ocean from California to Alaska until commercial whalers nearly wiped out, could be re-establishing an old migration route from California to Alaska. Photo AP

From USA Today:

ANCHORAGE — Blue whales are returning to Alaska in search of food and could be re-establishing an old migration route several decades after they were nearly wiped out by commercial whalers, scientists say.

The endangered whales, possibly the largest animals ever to live on Earth, have yet to recover from the worldwide slaughter that eliminated 99% of their number, according to the American Cetacean Society. The hunting peaked in 1931 with more than 29,000 animals killed in one season.

The animals used to cruise from Mexico and Southern California to Alaska, but they had mostly vanished from Alaskan waters.

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World's Observatories Watching 'Cool' Star

Photographed by the Hubble Telescope, the bright star inside this nebula (gas cloud) is a very young white dwarf. (Credit: Courtesy of Space Telescope Institute/NASA and the Hubble Heritage Team)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (May 20, 2009) — The Whole Earth Telescope (WET), a worldwide network of observatories coordinated by the University of Delaware, is synchronizing its lenses to provide round-the-clock coverage of a cooling star. As the star dims in the twilight of its life, scientists hope it will shed light on the workings of our own planet and other mysteries of the galaxy.

The dying star, a white dwarf identified as WDJ1524-0030, located in the constellation Ophiuchus in the southern sky, is losing its brightness as it cools, its nuclear fuel spent. It will be monitored continuously from May 15 to June 11 by WET, a global partnership of telescopes which was formed in 1986.

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Innards of H1N1 Virus Resemble 'Flu Sausage'

From Live Science:

On March 28, one month before news of the swine flu outbreak headlined worldwide, a nine-year-old girl in Imperial County, California, ran a fever of 104.3°F. She had not rolled up her sleeve for this year’s flu vaccine, but that day she opened her mouth and stuck out her tongue for a cotton swab that scooped up mucous samples from her throat. Her mucus arrived at the Naval Health Research Center in San Diego where technicians tested it and classified the virus in it as “unsubtypable” influenza A – it was something new.

She recovered.

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Cold And Wet: The Latest Theory About Mars

Rhythmic bedding in sedimentary bedrock within Becquerel crater on Mars is suggested by the patterns in this image from Nasa's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter released last December. Reuters

From The Independent:

Mars may have once been both cold and wet, researchers said today, suggesting a freezing Martian landscape could still have produced water needed to sustain life.

There has been debate over the issue because with some researchers believing water likely formed many features of the planet's landscape and others pointing to evidence indicating that early Mars was cold with temperatures well below the freezing point of water.

Using a computer model, Alberto Fairen of Universidad Autonoma in Madrid and colleagues showed that both could have been possible because fluids containing dissolved minerals would have remained liquid at temperatures well below 273 degrees Kelvin - the freezing point of pure water.

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The New Generation DVD That Can Hold All Of Your Movies On Just One Disc

Different dimensions: Scientists are creating a DVD disc that can hold thousands of hours of film - but it could take up to 10 years before it goes on sale

From The Daily Mail:

A DVD that can store up to 2,000 films could usher in an age of three-dimensional TV and ultra-high definition viewing, scientists say.

The ultra-DVD is the same size and thickness as a conventional disc, but uses nano-technology to store vast amounts of information.

Scientists believe it could be on sale in five years and say it will revolutionise the way we store films, music and data.

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Who Is Responsible For Averting An Asteroid Strike?

This NASA slide depicts the catastrophic collision of a massive comet or asteroid with earth 250 million years ago, which appears to be the reason 90 percent of all marine species and 70 percent of all land vertebrates abruptly died out. (NASA/Newscom/File)

From Christian Science Monitor:

Column: It's time to set aside political quibbles and form an international plan.

Asteroid hunters have good news – and a challenge – for the rest of us.After an extensive search for asteroids a kilometer or more across, engineer Steve Chesley says that “we can now say with confidence that no asteroids large enough to cause such a global calamity [as killing off the dinosaurs] are headed our way.”

But if one of them – or even a smaller, city-destroying rock – were detected on a collision course, would the world community be prepared to handle it? A conference of legal experts that discussed this question at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln last month answered it with a resounding “No.”

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How Old School Effects Brought Schwarzenegger's T-800 Back From 1983

From Popular Mechanics:

How the new Terminator Salvation movie used 25-year old props to recreate the T-800. Warning, spoilers ahead.

When Arnold Schwarzenegger's face appears onscreen in Terminator Salvation, it's precisely as it should be: wide, menacing and trapped in 1983. If the first three Terminator films were a flipbook portrait of an action star entering middle age, the fourth installment resets the iconic actor's cinematic clock with a climactic fight scene that blends the latest digital effects with a prosthetic prop that's been shelved for a quarter-century. The result is the resurrection of the killer robot that launched a franchise—and a feat of time travel that's worth the price of admission.

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