Ancient Climate Change: When Palm Trees Gave Way To Spruce Trees

New research reveals the demise of an ancient forest. These are dawn redwood stumps on Axel Heiberg Island, Nunavut. (Credit: Copyright David Greenwood / Used with permission)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (June 25, 2009) — For climatologists, part of the challenge in predicting the future is figuring out exactly what happened during previous periods of global climate change.

One long-standing climate puzzle relates to a sequence of events 33.5 million years ago in the Late Eocene and Early Oligocene. Profound changes were underway. Globally, carbon dioxide levels were falling and the hothouse warmth of the dinosaur age and Eocene Period was waning. In Antarctica, ice sheets had formed and covered much of the southern polar continent.

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Nanoparticles Explored for Preventing Cell Damage

Sudipta Seal, materials scientist and engineer at the University of Central Florida, holds a bottle containing billions of ultrasmall, engineered nanoceria. In the background, are jars filled with different types of nanoceria. Credit: Sudipta Seal, University of Central Florida

From Live Science:

This Behind the Scenes article was provided to LiveScience in partnership with the National Science Foundation.

Sudipta Seal is enthralled by nanoparticles, particularly those of a rare earth metal called cerium. The particles are showing potential for a wide range of applications, from medicine to energy.

Seal is a professor of materials science and engineering at the University of Central Florida (UCF), and several years ago he and his colleagues engineered nanoparticles of cerium oxide (CeO2), a material long used in ceramics, catalysts and fuel cells. The novel nanocrystalline form is non-toxic and biocompatible — ideal for medical applications.

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Dreaming Of Nonsense: The Evolutionary Enigma Of Dream Content

From Scientific American:

Friday, June 19, 2:12 a.m.: Loading up the trunk of my car with clothes hangers when approached by two transients… try to engage them in good-natured conversation about the benefits of wooden clothes hangers over metal ones, but they make me uneasy, say they want to go out to get a drink but I’ve got to go. In a city somewhere… looks like a post-apocalyptic Saint Louis.

Saturday, June 20, 4:47 a.m.: Was just now trying to return my dead grandmother’s cane to her. Took elevator to her apartment… meant to go to the 8th floor, but elevator lurched up to the 18th floor, swung around violently then shot back down. Could hear voices in the corridors outside elevator shaft…. a mother yelling at her child. Grandma then became my other grandma, also decesased, yet in a nursing home; doctors say she’s doing fine.

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FYI: Why Does My Voice Sound Different When I Hear it On A Recording?

Tone Deaf: Your voice makes
 vibrations that only you can hear iStock

From Popsci.com:

It sounds different because it is different. "When you speak, the vocal folds in your throat vibrate, which causes your skin, skull and oral cavities to also vibrate, and we perceive this as sound," explains Ben Hornsby, a professor of audiology at Vanderbilt University. The vibrations mix with the sound waves traveling from your mouth to your eardrum, giving your voice a quality — generally a deeper, more dignified sound — that no one else hears.

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How Michael Jackson's Death Shut Down Twitter, Brought Chaos To Google... And 'Killed Off' Jeff Goldblum

TMZ.com was the first to break the story that Michael Jackson had had a cardiac arrest.

From The Daily Mail:

The internet came alive like never before as people around the world logged on to follow the stunning news of Michael Jackson's death.

The story created such a surge in online traffic last night that Google returned an 'error message' for searches of the singer's name as it assumed it was under attack.

And just seconds after the story broke on the American entertainment website TMZ.com, messages or 'Tweets' about the singer on the micro-blogging site Twitter doubled, leading to a temporary shutdown of the site.

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Magnetic 'Superatoms' Promise Tuneable Materials

Designer clusters of atoms that can mimic other elements have for the first time been devised with magnetic properties (Image: Ulises Reveles, VCU)

From The New Scientist:

New "superatoms" – clusters of atoms that share electrons and can mimic the behaviour of other elements – have been devised with magnetic properties for the first time. The breakthrough provides a way to design novel nano-scale building blocks with controllable magnetic properties that could be used to make faster computer processors and denser memory storage.

Superatoms were discovered in the 1980s when Walter Knight and colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley, found that groups of sodium atoms can share electrons amongst themselves.

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The Milk Myth: What a Body Really Needs

Photo: Milk is dandy, but yogurt has more calcium and is easier to digest. Collards and other greens also have about as much or more calcium than milk by the cup. Greens, unlike milk, have the added benefit of vitamin K, also necessary for strong bones. Tofu and sesame are also very high in calcium. Image credit: stockxpert

From Live Science:

Young adults are not drinking enough milk, according to a study published in the July/August issue of the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior by researchers from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.

Well, at least that's according to the press release about the study, along with a few press reports on the matter. But according to lead author Nicole Larson, the focus on the study was on calcium.

Once again, we see the words "milk" and "calcium" used interchangeably in the popular press. Milk is a calcium source, but by no standard other than that of the National Dairy Council is it the best calcium source.

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Space Shuttle Science Shows How 1908 Tunguska Explosion Was Caused By A Comet

In 1927 Professor Leonid Kulik took the first photographs of the massive destruction of the taiga forest after the Tunguska catastrophe. (Credit: Professor Leonid Kulik)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (June 25, 2009) — The mysterious 1908 Tunguska explosion that leveled 830 square miles of Siberian forest was almost certainly caused by a comet entering the Earth's atmosphere, says new Cornell University research. The conclusion is supported by an unlikely source: the exhaust plume from the NASA space shuttle launched a century later.

The research, accepted for publication (June 24, 2009) by the journal Geophysical Research Letters, published by the American Geophysical Union, connects the two events by what followed each about a day later: brilliant, night-visible clouds, or noctilucent clouds, that are made up of ice particles and only form at very high altitudes and in extremely cold temperatures.

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Evolutionary Origins Of Your Right And Left Brain

Photoillustration by TWIST CREATIVE; MedicalRF.com Corbis (brain); Medioimages Getty Images (calculator); Joerg Steffens Corbis (faces); Westend61 Corbis (woman smiling); Dougal Waters Getty Images (ballerina); Mike Kemp Getty Images (rattlesnake); C Squared Studios Getty Images (palette); Vladimir Godnik Getty Images (paintbrushes); Carrie Boretz Corbis (girls whispering); Robert Llewellyn Corbis (calipers)

From Scientific American:

The division of labor by the two cerebral hemispheres—once thought to be uniquely human—predates us by half a billion years. Speech, right-handedness, facial recognition and the processing of spatial relations can be traced to brain asymmetries in early vertebrates.

The left hemisphere of the human brain controls language, arguably our greatest mental attribute. It also controls the remarkable dexterity of the human right hand. The right hemisphere is dominant in the control of, among other things, our sense of how objects interrelate in space. Forty years ago the broad scientific consensus held that, in addition to language, right-handedness and the specialization of just one side of the brain for processing spatial relations occur in humans alone. Other animals, it was thought, have no hemispheric specializations of any kind.

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Cloud Computing: Just Another Online Fad--or the Biggest Revolution Since the Internet?

Credit: James Gulliver Hancock

From Technology Review:

According to its advocates, cloud computing is poised to succeed where so many other attempts to deliver on-demand computing to anyone with a network connection have failed. Some skepticism is warranted. The history of the computer industry is littered with the remains of previous aspirants to this holy grail, from the time-sharing utilities envisioned in the 1960s and 1970s to the network computers of the 1990s (simple computers acting as graphical clients for software running on central servers) to the commercial grid systems of more recent years (aimed at turning clusters of servers into high-­performance computers). But cloud computing draws strength from forces that could propel it beyond the ranks of the also-rans.

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Stuck on Mars, Spirit Rover Does Science

From Yahoo News/Space:

The Mars rover Spirit is keeping scientists' spirits up by doing some science while it is stuck in soft soil on the red planet.

The rover has been immobile, trapped hub-deep since May 6. Engineers have replicated the landscape in lab back home and, using an identical rover model, tried to figure out what to do, so far to no avail.

A rock seen beneath Spirit in images from the camera on the end of the rover's arm may be touching Spirit's belly, NASA said in a statement today. It appears to be a loose rock not bearing the rover's weight.

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Buzz Aldrin To NASA: U.S. Space Policy Is On The Wrong Track

Platon photographed Buzz Aldrin for PM in Los Angeles, May 2009. “It’s mankind’s destiny to walk on another planet,” Aldrin says. “We can achieve it, but we’ve got to have the right plan.” (Photograph by Platon)

From Popular Mechanics:

Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin has a problem with NASA’s current manned space plan: Namely, the five-year gap between the shuttle’s scheduled retirement next year and the debut of the Ares I rocket and the Orion spacecraft, which will take us no further than the moon—a place we’ve already been. Aldrin thinks NASA can do better. His plan is to scrap Ares I, stretch out the remaining six shuttle flights and fast-track the Orion to fly on a Delta IV or Atlas V. Then, set our sites on colonizing Mars. Here, Buzz challenges NASA to take on his bolder mission.

I had a splendid career at NASA as an astronaut in the Gemini and Apollo programs. The capstone, of course, was my moonwalk on the Sea of Tranquility 40 years ago. I have only two regrets from my NASA days, and both were my own fault: I failed to speak out when I saw bad decisions being made. The first came in 1966, when NASA, in a fit of excessive caution, canceled the Astronaut Maneuvering Unit (AMU), the Buck Rogers–style jet backpack I was scheduled to try out on Gemini 12. Despite difficulties with the AMU on Gemini 9, I was very confident I could make it work. But like a good astronaut, I kept my mouth shut, and I’ve regretted it ever since. As it turned out, it took 18 years for NASA to develop another jet pack, the Manned Maneuvering Unit, used on three space shuttle missions in 1984.

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Oldest Musical Instrument Found

Flute: The earliest modern humans in Europe carved this 8.5-inch flute from a vulture bone more than 35,000 years ago.

From Popsci.com:

Bird-bone flute hints that Paleolithic humans banded together to the demise of Neanderthals

How’s this for classic rock? German scientists have unearthed the oldest-known musical instrument fashioned by human hands. It’s a delicate flute made from the wing bone of a vulture that dates to at least 35,000 years old—just after the first modern humans entered Europe. The team discovered the flute littered among a trove of early-human loot at a mountain cave in southwest Germany. It included a few other flute fragments and a female figurine carved from the ivory tusks of a mammoth with body proportions that are beyond Rubenesque.

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Ice On Fire: The Next Fossil Fuel

From The New Scientist:

DEEP in the Arctic Circle, in the Messoyakha gas field of western Siberia, lies a mystery. Back in 1970, Russian engineers began pumping natural gas from beneath the permafrost and piping it east across the tundra to the Norilsk metal smelter, the biggest industrial enterprise in the Arctic.

By the late 70s, they were on the brink of winding down the operation. According to their surveys, they had sapped nearly all the methane from the deposit. But despite their estimates, the gas just kept on coming. The field continues to power Norilsk today.

Where is this methane coming from? The Soviet geologists initially thought it was leaking from another deposit hidden beneath the first. But their experiments revealed the opposite - the mystery methane is seeping into the well from the icy permafrost above.

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Longer Life Linked To Specific Foods In Mediterranean Diet

Eating more vegetables, fruits, nuts, pulses and olive oil, and drinking moderate amounts of alcohol, while not consuming a lot of meat or excessive amounts of alcohol is linked to people living longer. (Credit: iStockphoto)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (June 24, 2009) — Some food groups in the Mediterranean diet are more important than others in promoting health and longer life according to new research published on the British Medical Journal website.

Eating more vegetables, fruits, nuts, pulses and olive oil, and drinking moderate amounts of alcohol, while not consuming a lot of meat or excessive amounts of alcohol is linked to people living longer.

However, the study also claims, that following a Mediterranean diet high in fish, seafood and cereals and low in dairy products were not indicators of longevity.

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Ancient Mummy's Face Recreated

Chicago artist Joshua Harker used traditional forensic methods to build layers of fat, muscle and flesh upon the skull images of a mummy made with CT scans at the University of Chicago. Credit: Joshua Harker for the University of Chicago

From Live Science:

The face of a long-dead mummy has been brought back to life through forensic science.

Based on CT-scans of the skull of the ancient Egyptian mummy Meresamun, two artists independently reconstructed her appearance and arrived at similar images of the woman.

Meresamun, a temple singer in Thebes (ancient Luxor) at about 800 B.C., died of unknown causes at about age 30. Until recently, modern viewers of the University of Chicago-owned mummy have had to guess about the woman behind the mask.

Now scientists think they have a pretty good idea of what she looked like.

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Life On Saturn? Caverns Of Salt Water May Lie Beneath Frozen Surface Of Planet's Moon

Evidence: This picture shows water vapour jets
erupting from Saturn's icy moon, Enceladus

From The Daily Mail:

Alien life could have evolved on one of Saturn's moons, scientists say.

They have found evidence that seas may lie beneath the frozen surface of Enceladus - the planet's sixth biggest moon.

It follows the discovery of a giant plume of salt water and ice spurting hundreds of miles into space from the moon's surface.

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Evolution Faster When It's Warmer

The results could help explain why the warm tropics are so species-rich

From The BBC:

Climate could have a direct effect on the speed of "molecular evolution" in mammals, according to a study.

Researchers have found that, among pairs of mammals of the same species, the DNA of those living in warmer climates changes at a faster rate.

These mutations - where one letter of the DNA code is substituted for another - are a first step in evolution.

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Can Wind Power Get Up to Speed?

The Burbo Bank Offshore Wind Farm in Liverpool Bay, England
Christopher Furlong / Getty

From Time Magazine:

Pop quiz: what source of power doesn't come out of the ground, doesn't burn and isn't radioactive? Hint: it contributed the most new electricity generation to the U.S. grid in 2008.

The answer is wind power, the technology that has become synonymous with going green. Companies that started out small, like Denmark's Vestas and India's Suzlon Energy, have become multinational giants selling steel and fiberglass wind turbines; even blue chippers like General Electric have identified wind power as a major revenue source for the future, while the construction and installation of wind turbines will employ workers here in the U.S. Investing in wind power, said President Barack Obama at a turbine factory in Iowa on Earth Day, "is a win-win. It's good for the environment; it's great for the economy."

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The First Europeans Were Cannibals: Archaeologists

Photo: Skull named Miguelon, estimated to be 400,000 years old and the most complete skull of an Homo heidelbergensis ever found, is seen at the Atapuerca archaeological site, in the Atapuerca mountains in northern Spain. In 2007 a historic discovery of the fossilised remains of the 'first european' human was made at the site. (AFP/File/Philippe Desmazes)

From Yahoo News/AP:

ATAPUERCA, Spain (AFP) – The remains of the "first Europeans" discovered at an archaeological site in northern Spain have revealed that these prehistoric men were cannibals who particularly liked the flesh of children.

"We know that they practiced cannibalism," said Jose Maria Bermudez de Castro, one of the co-directors of the Atapuerca project, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

A study of the remains revealed that they turned to cannibalism to feed themselves and not as part of a ritual, that they ate their rivals after killing them, mostly children and adolescents.

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Giant Prehistoric Kangaroos Wiped Out By Hungry Ice Age Hunters

Artist's illustration of the extinct Procoptodon goliah which roamed around Australia 45,000 years ago. (Artist Peter Trusler/Australian Postal Corporation)

From Times Online:

It stood tall at 6’5, weighed over 500lbs, had the face of a koala and the body of a sturdy kangaroo. And apparently it was delicious.

Scientists think they have discovered the reason behind the demise of the prehistoric Australian marsupial Procoptodon goliah – better known as the giant, short-snouted kangaroo. They say it was not climate change, as has always been assumed, but hungry Ice Age hunters.

The animal – about three times bigger than a modern-day kangaroo and with slightly different features - was one of many Ice-Age megafauna whose demise has long been debated among experts, but usually put down to the changing environment.

However an international team of scientists, led by Gavin Prideaux from Flinders University in South Australia, has discovered a different theory behind the reason the animal became extinct 45,000 years ago.

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My Comment: I am hungry.

The New Nuclear Revolution -- A Commentary

From The Wall Street Journal:

Safe fission power is our future -- if regulators allow it.

After the Internet, the next big thing will be cheap and clean energy. Coal, oil and gas pollute and are increasingly expensive: We need alternatives. Because nuclear energy (stored among particles inside atoms) is millions of times more dense than chemical energy (stored among atoms in molecules), nuclear reactors belong high on our long list of energy alternatives.

Nuclear energy is released during fission and fusion. During fission, large elements like uranium are split into smaller elements. During fusion, small elements like hydrogen are combined into larger elements. These two processes have occurred naturally since the beginning of time -- 13.7 billion years. The Earth is warmed naturally by its own nuclear fission reactors within and also by the sun, that big nuclear fusion reactor.

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Not Space Junk Yet: Mars Rovers Carry On Despite Age, Ailments

From McClatchy News:

WASHINGTON — In one of the most remarkable engineering feats of our time, the aging Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity are still taking orders and sending home pictures more than five years after they were supposed to turn into slabs of space junk.

Opportunity is still rolling along, but Spirit is hung up on a rock and may be reaching the end of its travels. The rovers' masters at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., hope they can nurse either or both of them through another harsh Martian winter.

"I'm very attached to them," said John Callas, the rover project manager. "They exhibit human-like qualities. They have trials and tribulations. Like aging humans, they've got arthritic joints, they forget things, their vision is not what it used to be. When something's not right, you get that sinking feeing in your stomach.''

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Girl Who Doesn't Age Baffles Doctors

Photo: Brooke Greenberg is 16 years old, but looks like a 16-month-old. (ABC America)

From Ninemsm:

A 16-year-old girl who is the size of an infant and has the mental capacity of a toddler continues to baffle doctors in the US.

Medical experts believe Brooke Greenberg suffers from some kind of genetic mutation that shapes the way she ages, leaving her with the perpetual appearance of a baby.

The exact cause of the phenomenon has not been pinpointed.

Doctors say Brooke is not growing in a coordinated way, with her body parts out of synchronisation, as if each has a mind of its own.

"Why doesn't she age?" her father, Howard Greenberg, asked on US network ABC.

"Is she the fountain of youth?"

Brooke's mother Melanie Greenberg, 48, said she was so used to people asking how old her daughter is she did not even try to explain.

"My system always has been to turn years into months," Mrs Greenberg said.

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When Wild Animals Attack: An Encounter With A Rabid Skunk

(Photograph by Tom Brakefield/Getty Images)

From Popular Mechanics:

Animal encounters on our turf are on the rise—and it's not just big animals like mountain lions, bears and alligators. Here, TheDailyGreen.com's Brian Clark Howard revisits the time a rabid skunk attacked him while he camped in a friend's yard, just 1 hour away from New York City.

I was jerked awake in my sleeping bag by a sharp, pinching pain centered on my nose. My eyes failed me, and I teetered on the edge of consciousness. I felt viscous liquid streaming down my neck. The only tangible thought I could muster was fear that my nose must have become stuck in a zipper. As a strained throat would later attest, I screamed hysterically.

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A Magnetic Machine Plucks Pathogens From Blood

Nonfatal Attraction: An electromagnet pulls out 80 percent
of an infectious pathogen Medi-mation

From Popsci.com:

A new treatment could save some of the hundreds of thousands of Americans dying sepsis-related deaths every year.

If your uncle says he's getting magnetic therapy, you might feel the urge to tell him to save his money instead for that tinfoil hat to keep the CIA from reading his mind. But if he's being hooked up to Don Ingber's magnet machine, it just might save his life.

Ingber's device magnetizes microbes and draws them out of the blood. It could save some of the 210,000 Americans—mostly newborns and the elderly—who die sepsis-related deaths every year. Sepsis sets in when bacteria or fungi invade the blood, which can cause organ failure before drugs have time to take effect. "Traditionally, you prescribe antibiotics and pray," says Ingber, a vascular biologist at Harvard Medical School and Children's Hospital. His machine operates more quickly.

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Work Begins On World's Deepest Underground Lab

From Yahoo News/AP:

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. – Far below the Black Hills of South Dakota, crews are building the world's deepest underground science lab at a depth equivalent to more than six Empire State buildings — a place uniquely suited to scientists' quest for mysterious particles known as dark matter.

Scientists, politicians and other officials gathered Monday for a groundbreaking of sorts at a lab 4,850 foot below the surface of an old gold mine that was once the site of Nobel Prize-winning physics research.

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Language May Be Key To Theory Of Mind

From New Scientist:

How blind and deaf people approach a cognitive test regarded as a milestone in human development has provided clues to how we deduce what others are thinking.

Understanding another person's perspective, and realising that it can differ from our own, is known as theory of mind. It underpins empathy, communication and the ability to deceiveMovie Camera – all of which we take for granted. Although our theory of mind is more developed than it is in other animals, we don't acquire it until around age four, and how it develops is a mystery.

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Huge Pre-Stonehenge Complex Found via "Crop Circles"

Etched into crops, the outlines of Bronze Age burial mounds surround a roughly 190-foot (57-meter) circular Stone Age temple site about 15 miles (24 kilometers) from Stonehenge in southern England in an undated aerial photo.Discovered during a routine aerial survey by English Heritage, the U.K. government's historic-preservation agency, the "crop circles" are the results of buried archaeological structures interfering with plant growth. True crop circles are vast designs created by flattening crops. The features are part of a newfound 500-acre (200-hectare) prehistoric ceremonial site which was unknown until the aerial survey, rchaeologists announced in June 2009. Photograph by Damian Grady/English Heritage

From National Geographic:

Given away by strange, crop circle-like formations seen from the air, a huge prehistoric ceremonial complex discovered in southern England has taken archaeologists by surprise.

A thousand years older than nearby Stonehenge, the site includes the remains of wooden temples and two massive, 6,000-year-old tombs that are among "Britain's first architecture," according to archaeologist Helen Wickstead, leader of the Damerham Archaeology Project.

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Social Competition May Be Reason For Bigger Brain

Professor David Geary finds that competitive ancestors may be blamed for today's big brain. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of Missouri-Columbia)

From Science Digest:

ScienceDaily (June 23, 2009) — For the past 2 million years, the size of the human brain has tripled, growing much faster than other mammals. Examining the reasons for human brain expansion, University of Missouri researchers studied three common hypotheses for brain growth: climate change, ecological demands and social competition. The team found that social competition is the major cause of increased cranial capacity.

To test the three hypotheses, MU researchers collected data from 153 hominid (humans and our ancestors) skulls from the past 2 million years. Examining the locations and global climate changes at the time the fossil was dated, the number of parasites in the region and estimated population density in the areas where the skulls were found, the researchers discovered that population density had the biggest effect on skull size and thus cranial capacity.

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Amazing Volcano Photo Reveals Shock Wave

Sarychev Peak on Matua Island is one of the most active volcanoes in the Kuril Island chain, northeast of Japan. Astronauts took this photo of an eruption on June 12. The plume appears to be a combination of brown ash and white steam. The vigorously rising plume gives the steam a bubble-like appearance; the surrounding atmosphere has been shoved up by the shock wave of the eruption. Credit: NASA/ISS/Earth Observatory

From Live Science:

An amazing new picture from space reveals a volcanic eruption in its earliest stage, with a huge plume of ash and steam billowing skyward and creating a shock wave in the atmosphere.

Sarychev Peak on Matua Island is one of the most active volcanoes in the Kuril Island chain, northeast of Japan.

The new photo was taken June 12 from the International Space Station. NASA says volcano researchers are excited about the picture "because it captures several phenomena that occur during the earliest stages of an explosive volcanic eruption."

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Amazing Footage Of Lunar Probe's Final Moments Before It Crashes Into Moon

From The Daily Mail:

Footage showing the dramatic descent of a probe minutes before it crashes into the surface of the Moon has been released by the Japanese space agency.

The final moments of the Kaguya lunar probe were caught by its on-board high-definition camera as it hurtled downwards on June 11 and as it fell the images were beamed back to Earth

As it sinks lower and lower the desolate and pockmarked landscape is seen looming ever larger as the spacecraft tumbles toward its final resting place.

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Mind-Enhancing Drugs: Are They A No-Brainer?

Scientists are debating whether stimulants are an acceptable means for people to boost their brain's performance. Alamy

From The Independent:

Advocates say they are an irresistible way of improving students' performance. Critics argue they are a dangerous fad. Jeremy Laurance explores the debate

In the middle of the exam season, the offer of a drug that could improve results might excite students but would be likely to terrify their parents. Now, a distinguished professor of bioethics says it is time to embrace the possibilities of "brain boosters" – chemical cognitive enhancement. The provocative suggestion comes from John Harris, director of the Institute for Science, Ethics and Innovation at the University of Manchester, and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Medical Ethics.

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World's First Controllable Molecular Gear At Nanoscale Created

Researchers in Singapore have invented a molecular gear of the size of 1.2nm whose rotation can be deliberately controlled. (Credit: A*STAR Institute of Materials Research and Engineering (IMRE), Singapore)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (June 22, 2009) — Scientists from A*STAR’s Institute of Materials Research and Engineering (IMRE), led by Professor Christian Joachim,* have scored a breakthrough in nanotechnology by becoming the first in the world to invent a molecular gear of the size of 1.2nm whose rotation can be deliberately controlled. This achievement marks a radical shift in the scientific progress of molecular machines and is published on 14 June 20009 in Nature Materials.

Said Prof Joachim, “Making a gear the size of a few atoms is one thing, but being able to deliberately control its motions and actions is something else altogether. What we’ve done at IMRE is to create a truly complete working gear that will be the fundamental piece in creating more complex molecular machines that are no bigger than a grain of sand.”

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The Most Lifeless Place in the Ocean Found

Oceanographers David C. Smith, Robert Pockalny and Franciszek Hasiuk prepare to remove a sediment core from the coring device. Credit: Stephanie Forschner

From Live Science:

Scientists have discovered what may be the least inhabited place in the ocean.

The seafloor sediments in the middle of the South Pacific have fewer living cells than anywhere else measured, a new study found.

Oceanographer Steven D’Hondt of the University of Rhode Island and colleagues took a boat out to the middle of the ocean and collected cores, or cylindrical samples of sediment, from the bottom of the sea about 2.5 to 3.7 miles (4 to 6 km) deep.

They found about 1,000 living cells in each cubic centimeter of sediment — a tally that is roughly 1,000 times less than in other seafloor sediments.

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Top 25 Green Energy Leaders

From Scientific American:

Forward-thinking companies, universities and municipalities are finding creative ways to run on renewable power.

It is no longer enough to just conserve energy. More and more corporations, government agencies and entire cities are making large, long-term commitments to ensure that the power they do use comes from renewable sources. To recognize these trendsetters, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency publishes a quarterly list of the top American users of green power: organizations that generate their own renewable energy, buy it from suppliers, or purchase offset credits to compensate for their traditional energy use. To put things in perspective, the average U.S. home consumes about 10,656 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity a year. That means number 25 on the list buys enough green energy to power more than 14,000 homes.

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Iceland's Geothermal Bailout Feature

The Kuwait of the North: Engineers at the Tyr drilling rig in Krafla’s snow-covered caldera hope to use a supercritical-water source two miles underground to produce 10 times as much geothermal electricity as a normal well Courtesy Sveinbjorn Holmgeirsson/Landsvirkjun Power

From Popsci.com:

October, Iceland's economy tanked. Its bailout? A two-mile geothermal well drilled into a volcano that could generate an endless supply of clean energy. Or, as Icelanders will calmly explain, it could all blow up in their faces

It's spring in Iceland, and three feet of snow covers the ground. The sky is gray and the temperature hovers just below freezing, yet Gudmundur Omar Fridleifsson is wearing only a windbreaker. Icelanders say they can spot the tourists because they wear too many clothes, but Fridleifsson seems particularly impervious. He's out here every few days to check on the Tyr geothermal drilling rig, the largest in Iceland. The rig's engines are barely audible over the cold wind, and the sole sign of activity is the slow dance of a crane as it grabs another 30-foot segment of steel pipe, attaches it to the top of the drill shaft, and slides it into the well.

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How Apple, AT&T Are Closing the Mobile Web

A growing chorus claims that Apple’s questionable approval policy for its iPhone application store raises issues with net neutrality.

From Epicenter/Wired News:

Free Press, a group that advocates the idea of an open internet — that is, one in which consumers have the right to browse the web and run internet applications without restrictions — is the latest of several organizations to call out Apple for its inconsistencies. Free Press alleges that Apple crippled SlingPlayer, a TV-streaming application for iPhone, so that it would only work on a Wi-Fi connection; the initial version worked with a 3G cellular network connection as well as Wi-Fi. The SlingPlayer restriction is inconsistent with Apple’s approval of the Major League Baseball application, which provides live-streaming of sports events on both Wi-Fi and 3G connections, the group said.

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Sunspots Revealed In Striking Detail By Supercomputers

The interface between a sunspot's umbra (dark center) and penumbra (lighter outer region) shows a complex structure with narrow, almost horizontal (lighter to white) filaments embedded in a background having a more vertical (darker to black) magnetic field. (Credit: Copyright UCAR, image courtesy Matthias Rempel, NCAR)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (June 21, 2009) — In a breakthrough that will help scientists unlock mysteries of the Sun and its impacts on Earth, an international team of scientists led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) has created the first-ever comprehensive computer model of sunspots. The resulting visuals capture both scientific detail and remarkable beauty.

The high-resolution simulations of sunspot pairs open the way for researchers to learn more about the vast mysterious dark patches on the Sun's surface. Sunspots are associated with massive ejections of charged plasma that can cause geomagnetic storms and disrupt communications and navigational systems. They also contribute to variations in overall solar output, which can affect weather on Earth and exert a subtle influence on climate patterns.

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Vinegar Might Fight Fat

From Live Science:

Ordinary vinegar used to make salad dressings and pickles just might live up to its age-old reputation in folk medicine as a promoter of health, a new study suggests.

Nobody should start guzzling vinegar, but Japanese scientists found new evidence that vinegar can help prevent accumulation of body fat and weight gain, at least in mice.

Tomoo Kondo and colleagues note that vinegar has been used as a folk medicine since ancient times. People have used it for a range of ills. Modern scientific research suggests that acetic acid, the main component of vinegar, may help control blood pressure, blood sugar levels, and fat accumulation.

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Grey Hair May Be Protecting Us From Cancer

From New Scientist:

GREY hair may be unwelcome, but the processes that produce it are now better understood and could be protecting us from cancer.

Cells called melanocytes produce the pigments that colour hair and their numbers are kept topped up by stem cells. Hair goes grey when the number of stem cells in hair follicles declines. Now Emi Nishimura of Tokyo Medical and Dental University in Japan and colleagues have found what causes this decline in mice.

When the researchers exposed mice to radiation and chemicals that harm DNA, damaged stem cells transformed permanently into melanocytes. This ultimately led to fewer melanocytes, as it meant there were fewer stem cells capable of topping up the melanocyte pool. The mice also went grey (Cell, vol 137, p 1088). Nishimura's team proposes that the same process leads to the reduction in stem cells in the follicles of older people, especially as DNA damage accumulates as we age.

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Great White Sharks Hunt Just Like Hannibal Lecter

In this undated photo released by The University of Miami, a white shark is seen successfully lunging for and capturing a juvenile fur seal at the surface in False Bay, South Africa in 2004. (AP Photo/University of Miami, Neil Hammerschlag)

From Yahoo News/AP:

WASHINGTON – Great white sharks have some things in common with human serial killers, a new study says: They don't attack at random, but stalk specific victims, lurking out of sight.

The sharks hang back and observe from a not-too-close, not-too-far base, hunt strategically, and learn from previous attempts, according to a study being published online Monday in the Journal of Zoology. Researchers used a serial killer profiling method to figure out just how the fearsome ocean predator hunts, something that's been hard to observe beneath the surface.

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Sexy Maths: When It Pays To Play The Odds

From Times Online:

Mathematicians, and the laws of probability, can tell you whether to have a flutter, or keep hold of your money.

Let’s start by playing a game. I roll a dice and pay you in pounds the number that appears on it. How much would you be prepared to pay to play? If you pay £1 you cannot lose, and if you pay £6 you cannot win but at what point do the odds tip from my advantage to yours?

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Students 'Should Be Able To Take Brain Boosting Drugs'

'Smart drugs' are increasingly being used by students to improve their exam grades

From The Telegraph:

Students should be able to take brain boosting drugs like Ritalin to get better exam results, an expert has said.

Students should be able to take brain boosting drugs like Ritalin to get better exam results, an expert has said.

John Harris, Professor of Bioethics at the University of Manchester, said that it was "not rational to be against human enhancement" and that the drugs could help people become better educated.

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Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun

This is the view inside the doughnut-shaped JET reactor, the largest fusion device on Earth. During a reaction, nuclear fuels are held away from the walls by electromagnets, and reach temperatures more than ten times hotter than the core of the sun

From The Daily Mail:

The JET fusion reactor looks more like the lair of a Bond villain than an extraordinary British experiment that might save the world.

The highly compacted core of the sun is a very hot place indeed.

In the star's burning heart, hydrogen atoms collide at immense speeds. This welds them together and turns them into helium atoms, which each release a burst of energy that escapes into the solar system as light. It is a nuclear furnace, responsible for fuelling all life on Earth, that consumes a lot of hydrogen (600 million tons every second) at very high temperatures (over 15 million degrees C). As such, it's the second-hottest place in the solar system.

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Wind Power Blues

From The Toronto Sun:

Toronto doctor warns that, if not properly controlled, the noise from wind turbines could make people sick -- literally.

Since the debate over wind turbines and whether they negatively impact on human health is heating up in Ontario, let's talk to an expert on the relationship between noise and stress.

Toronto psychiatrist Dr. Irvin Wolkoff is a recognized authority on this subject and has testified on it as an expert witness in court.

(Full disclosure: Dr. Wolkoff and I are friends, but his professional views are his own.)

Wolkoff notes there has been little independent, credible research on the specific issue of wind turbine noise and what, if any, impact it has on human health. That research should be undertaken immediately, he said.

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Toward New Drugs That Turn Genes On And Off

Scientists found a group of molecules that act like an "on-off switch" and could be used to develop medicines against various diseases. (Credit: The American Chemical Society)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (June 21, 2009) — Scientists in Michigan and California are reporting an advance toward development of a new generation of drugs that treat disease by orchestrating how genes in the body produce proteins involved in arthritis, cancer and a range of other disorders. Acting like an "on-off switch," the medications might ratchet up the production of proteins in genes working at abnormally low levels or shut off genes producing an abnormal protein linked to disease.

In the study, Anna K. Mapp and colleagues discusses molecules that cause genes to be active and churn out proteins — so-called transcriptional activators. That's because they control a key process known as transcription, in which instructions coded in genes produce proteins. Malfunctions in these activators could lead to altered transcription patterns that lead to disease. For example, variations in the tumor suppressor gene p53 are found in more than half of all human cancers.

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Sunday: The Longest Day of the Year

Each year on June 20 or 21, the sun is as far north as it can get from the celestial equator, marking the solstice. Credit: Starry Night Software

From Live Science:

If you've been waiting for the chance to get more done during the day, Sunday is your day, but only by a fraction of a second.

Like a giant timepiece, Earth and sun are configured for the summer solstice once again. This year it happens June 21, the longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. The sun will be up a fraction of a second longer than the day prior or the day after. (The length of the full day, including night, does not change, of course.)

To grasp how it works, one must understand Earth's cockeyed leanings and some celestial configurations that even the ancients knew something about.

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Swine Flu 'Could Infect Up To Half The Population'

A medical researcher working to produce a DNA test for swine flu, which is spreading more quickly in the UK. Photo AFP.

From The Independent:

Health authorities told to set up testing and drug distribution centres in case of autumn outbreak.

Primary care trusts are to set up anti-viral drug distribution centres and swine flu testing clinics amid fears that the infection could spread out of control.

The Chief Medical Officer, Sir Liam Donaldson, wrote to health authorities last week urging hospitals to test all patients who show signs of flu-like symptoms. He wrote: "Transmission from person to person in this country is increasingly common. There is evidence that sporadic cases are arising with no apparent link either to cases elsewhere in the UK or to travel abroad."

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NASA's Mission To Bomb The Moon

From Scientific American:

NASA will tomorrow launch a spectacular mission to bomb the Moon. Their LCROSS mission will blast off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, carrying a missile that will blast a hole in the lunar surface at twice the speed of a bullet. The missile, a Centaur rocket, will be steered by a shepherding spacecraft that will guide it towards its target - a crater close to the Moon's south pole. Scientists expect the blast to be so powerful that a huge plume of debris will be ejected.

Scientists expect the blast to be so powerful that a huge plume of debris will be ejected.

The attack on the Moon is not a declaration of war or act of wanton vandalism. Space scientists want to see if any water ice or vapour is revealed in the cloud of debris.

Though the Moon mostly a dry airless desert, they believe ice could be trapped in crater shadows near the south pole which never receive any sunlight. If so it could provide vital supplies for a manned moonbase.

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Solar Sleuths Tackle Mystery Of Quiet Sun

Scientists have found that slow, eastward-moving "jet streams" (depicted in yellow) move about 7000 kilometres below the sun's surface. As this plot shows, over time they migrate from near the sun's poles toward its equator. The ones corresponding to Cycle 24 took their time reaching 22° in latitude, matching the prolonged solar minimum seen in recent years. (Illustration: Frank Hill and Rachel Howe/NSO)

From New Scientist:

For the past couple of years, our sun has been at the minimum of its 11-year activity cycle. Its face has been virtually spotless for months on end, and there've been no dire alerts of titanic solar storms about to slam into Earth.

The problem is that this "quiet sun" has continued far too long – two years ago, a special task force predicted that the transition from the just-ended Cycle 23 to the upcoming Cycle 24 would come around March 2008. It didn't. (To be fair, there was sharp disagreement within the group at that time.)

Much fanfare accompanied the appearance of a tiny high-latitude sunspot in early 2008, supposedly heralding Cycle 24's arrival. Yet for months and months afterward the sun's face remained spotless.

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