Mysterious, Glowing Clouds Appear Across America’s Night Skies

From Wired Science:

Mysterious, glowing clouds previously seen almost exclusively in Earth’s polar regions have appeared in the skies over the United States and Europe over the past several days.

Photographers and other sky watchers in Omaha, Paris, Seattle, and other locations have run outside to capture images of what scientists call noctilucent (”night shining”) clouds. Formed by ice literally at the boundary where the earth’s atmosphere meets space 50 miles up, they shine because they are so high, they are lit by the sun longer than the Earth’s surface.

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Moon Landing Tapes Got Erased, NASA Admits

From Yahoo News/Reuters:

The original recordings of the first humans landing on the moon 40 years ago were erased and re-used, but newly restored copies of the original broadcast look even better, NASA officials said on Thursday.

NASA released the first glimpses of a complete digital make-over of the original landing footage that clarifies the blurry and grainy images of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walking on the surface of the moon.

The full set of recordings, being cleaned up by Burbank, California-based Lowry Digital, will be released in September. The preview is available at http://www.nasa.gov.

NASA admitted in 2006 that no one could find the original video recordings of the July 20, 1969, landing.

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Weaving The Way To The Moon

Don Eyles says getting a job on the Apollo mission was probably the greatest stroke of luck in his life (Archive footage: MIT and Nasa)

From The BBC:

As Apollo 11 sped silently on its way to landing the first men on the Moon, its safe arrival depended on the work of a long-haired maths student fresh out of college and a computer knitted together by a team of "little old ladies".

Now, 40 years after Apollo 11 landed Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the Moon, the work of these unsung heroes who designed and built the Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) is back in the spotlight.

"I wasn't so aware of the responsibility at the time - it sort of sunk in later," said Don Eyles, a 23-year-old self-described "beatnik" who had just graduated from Boston University and was set the task of programming the software for the Moon landing.

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Not Only Dogs, But Deer, Monkeys And Birds Bark To Deal With Conflict

Photo: Why do dogs bark so much? A recent paper by UMass Amherst evolutionary biologist Kathryn Lord and colleagues suggests that it has more to do with their evolutionary history as scavengers in dumps than their desire to communicate with humans. (Credit: Raymond Coppinger)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (July 15, 2009) — Biologically speaking, many animals besides dogs bark, according to Kathryn Lord at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, but the evolutionary biologist also says domestic dogs vocalize in this way much more than birds, deer, monkeys and other wild animals that use barks. The reason is related to dogs’ 10,000-year history of hanging around human food refuse dumps, she suggests.

In her recent paper in a special issue of the journal, Behavioural Processes, Lord and co-authors from nearby Hampshire College also provide the scientific literature with its first consistent, functional and acoustically precise definition of this common animal sound.

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40 Years After Moon Landing: Why Aren't People Smarter?

Being smart involves being able to understand the relationships between events, finding and questioning hidden assumptions, and so on. The fact is, most students are not taught how to think analytically and critically. Image Credit: stockxpert

From Live Science:

Editor's Note: Forty years ago this month, humans landed on the moon for the first time. We asked Benjamin Radford why, four decades later, humans have not become any smarter.

A look at old periodicals reveals something very interesting about human nature. Newspapers and magazines from the early 1900s were full of advertisements for instant weight loss gizmos, miracle cures, and all other forms of self-evident quackery. A century later, this stuff is still being advertised — and lots of people are buying.

You would think that by now people would know that you can't lose 10 pounds a week taking a "breakthrough" miracle pill, and you can't earn $50,000 a week working from home in your spare time (at least not legally).

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World's Oldest Tattoos Were Made Of Soot

Photo: Tattoo lines on the right leg of the Tyrolean iceman, Ötzi. (Image:Leopold Dorfer)

From New Scientist:

For those inclined to put ink to flesh, modern tattoo parlours offer dizzying arrays of dyes – mercury-containing reds, manganese purples, even pigments that glow in the dark.

Getting inked wasn't always quite so complicated, however. A new analysis concludes that the world's oldest tattoos were etched in soot.

Belonging to Ötzi the 5300 year old Tyrolean iceman, the simple tattoos may have served a medicinal purpose, not a decorative one, says Maria Anna Pabst, a researcher at the Medical University of Graz, Austria, who trained optical and electron microscopes on biopsies of Otzi's preserved flesh.

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What’s In Earth Orbit And How Do We Know?

Tracking all the active satellites and orbital debris around the Earth is a challenging task, even for the US Defense Department. (credit: NASA)

From Space Review:

Whenever the topic of space debris and satellites in orbit comes up a lot of numbers tend to get thrown around by a lot of different people, and it can be hard to keep all the figures straight. Compounding this is the superficial knowledge (at best) of the subject by many media commentators and the tradition of secrecy by the US military, the organization that has historically been the main keepers of the data on space debris.

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The Challenge for Green Energy: How To Store Excess Electricity

From Environment 360:

For years, the stumbling block for making renewable energy practical and dependable has been how to store electricity for days when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing. But new technologies suggest this goal may finally be within reach.

“Why are we ignoring things we know? We know that the sun doesn’t always shine and that the wind doesn’t always blow.” So wrote former U.S. Energy Secretary James Schlesinger and Robert L. Hirsch last spring in the Washington Post, suggesting that because these key renewables produce power only intermittently, “solar and wind will probably only provide a modest percentage of future U.S. power.”

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Memory Test And PET Scans Detect Early Signs Of Alzheimer's

PET scans can detect the decline in glucose metabolism associated with decreased cognitive function, particularly in the temporal and parietal lobes located on the sides and the back of the brain, the regions associated with memory formation and language. UC Berkeley researchers are finding that brain imaging shows promise as a method of detecting early signs of Alzheimer's disease. On the left is a PET scan showing normal levels of glucose metabolism, indicated in yellow and red. The levels of glucose metabolism in the brain are decreased in patients with mild cognitive impairment (middle) and with Alzheimer's disease (right). (Credit: Cindee Madison and Susan Landau, UC Berkeley)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (July 15, 2009) — A large study of patients with mild cognitive impairment revealed that results from cognitive tests and brain scans can work as an early warning system for the subsequent development of Alzheimer's disease.

The research found that among 85 participants in the study with mild cognitive impairment, those with low scores on a memory recall test and low glucose metabolism in particular brain regions, as detected through positron emission tomography (PET), had a 15-fold greater risk of developing Alzheimer's disease within two years, compared with the others in the study.

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Apollo 11 Mission Gear Up For Auction

Sample Return Bag: Lunar rocks were placed in an aluminum box for return to Earth; this Beta cloth cover went over the box, to contain the dust and any stowaways. courtesy Bonhams

From PopSci.com:

Always dreamed of using Neil Armstrong's moon rock collection bag as an overnight duffle? Now's your chance

To commemorate the 40th anniversary of man's landing on the moon, you can buy yourself a little piece of space history. On July 16, the auction house Bonhams is conducting an auction of lunar memorabilia. The sale includes a number of items that the Apollo 11 mission crew carried onto the moon's surface on the history-making trip. Lunar dust still covers some of the lots.

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President Obama's Science Czar, John Holdren: Is He An Advocate For Forced Sterializations And Abortions?

President Obama's Science Czar, John Holdren

Obama's Science Czar: Traditional Family Is Obsolete, Punish Large Families -- The Washington Examiner

President Obama's Science Czar, John Holdren, took a controversial and amoral approach to the science of population by recommending mass compulsory sterilization and even forced abortion (and/or forced marriages) under certain circumstances. His 1977 tome, Ecoscience, which he co-authored with Paul and Anne Ehrlich, also displays a revealing disregard for the institution of the traditional human family.

Holdren and the Ehrlichs write:

Radical changes in family structure and relationships are inevitable, whether population control is instituted or not. Inaction, attended by a steady deterioration in living conditions for the poor majority, will bring changes everywhere that no one could consider beneficial. Thus, it is beside the point to object to population-control measures simply on the grounds that they might change the social structure or family relationships.

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My Comment: This man is President Obama's point man on science??!!??!!. Was he ever vetted .... and if he was, does President Obama also believe in these opinions?

Read the article as well as the comments section in this Washington Examiner article .... there is enough information there to make you wonder on what is happening with this administrations science policies.

On Sixth Try, Endeavour Lifts Off -- News Updates And Roundup July 15, 2009

The space shuttle Endeavour launched from the Kennedy Space Center on Wednesday in Cape Canaveral, Fla. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

On Sixth Try, Endeavour Lifts Off -- New York Times

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. — For the space shuttle Endeavour, the sixth time proved to be the charm.

After hydrogen leaks, schedule conflicts, lightning strikes and a couple of rain delays, the Endeavour, on the sixth launch attempt, finally lifted to orbit Monday at 6:03 p.m. into the humid Florida sky.

That was one short of NASA’s record for the number of delays. Two previous missions, in 1986 and 1995, were delayed six times before launching on the seventh attempt.

The mission, scheduled to last 16 days, includes five spacewalks dedicated to the construction of the International Space Station. It is the only second time a shuttle mission has been planned for that long.

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More News on Today's Space Shuttle Launch

Space shuttle blasts off after month's delay -- AP
Space shuttle Endeavour blasts off after several postponements -- CNN
Sixth time lucky; space shuttle Endeavour blasts off -- Times Online
Endeavour launches on sixth attempt -- BBC
Debris Strikes Endeavour During Liftoff -- New York Times
FACTBOX-The crew of the U.S. space shuttle Endeavour -- Reuters
FACTBOX: Highlights of space shuttle Endeavour's mission -- Reuters

Tracking The Evolution Of A Pandemic

Photo: Birth of a bug: New research on the emergence of the 1918 influenza virus suggests that it may have evolved in a manner similar to that of the current H1N1 strain (shown here). Credit: Center for Disease Control and Prevention

From The Technology Review:

Understanding how viruses evolve could help predict the next outbreak.

A close examination of the genetic evolution of the three major influenza epidemics of the 20th century concludes that all of the viruses involved evolved slowly, through interspecies genetic exchange, and that genes from the catastrophic 1918 pandemic may have been circulating as many as seven years earlier. If true, this means that widespread genetic surveillance methods should have ample time to detect the next pandemic strain, and possibly even vaccinate against it before it gets out of control.

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DNA Is Dynamic And Has High Energy; Not Stiff Or Static As First Envisioned

New research shows that DNA is not a stiff or static as once thought.
(Credit: iStockphoto/Andrew Wood)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (July 14, 2009) — The interaction represented produced the famous explanation of the structure of DNA, but the model pictured is a stiff snapshot of idealized DNA. As researchers from Baylor College of Medicine and the University of Houston note in a report that appears online in the journal Nucleic Acids Research, DNA is not a stiff or static. It is dynamic with high energy. It exists naturally in a slightly underwound state and its status changes in waves generated by normal cell functions such as DNA replication, transcription, repair and recombination.

DNA is also accompanied by a cloud of counterions (charged particles that neutralize the genetic material's very negative charge) and, of course, the protein macromolecules that affect DNA activity.

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40 Years After Moon Landing: Why Can't We Cure Cancer?

Neil Armstrong took this picture of Buzz Aldrin, showing a reflection in Aldrin's visor of Armstrong and the Lunar Module during the Apollo 11 mission, which landing on the Moon on July 20, 1969. This is one of the few photographs showing Armstrong (who carried the camera most of the time) on the moon. Credit: NASA

From Live Science:

Richard Nixon had every reason to be optimistic when, during his 1971 State of the Union address, he called for a concerted effort to find a cure for cancer. After all, it took only three years for the Manhattan Project to produce the world's first atomic bomb. Nixon's own presidency witnessed the 1969 moon landing, a goal set forth by John F. Kennedy in 1961.

It seemed that given enough resources there was no job that Americans couldn't tackle quickly.

But with $200 billion spent and tens of millions of cancer deaths accumulated since 1971, most would say we are losing the war on cancer. Cancer is the top killer worldwide, responsible for 7.4 million or 13 percent of all deaths annually. In America cancer will soon overtake heart disease as the top killer, claiming more than half million lives annually.

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Moon Landing Anniversary: 10 Reasons The Apollo Landings Were 'Faked'

Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong on July 20, 1969 Photo: AP

From The Telegraph:

Below is a list of ten of the most popular reasons given by conspiracy theorists who believe the Apollo Moon landings that began 40 years ago were faked.

1) When the astronauts are putting up the American flag it waves. There is no wind on the Moon.

2) No stars are visible in the pictures taken by the Apollo astronauts from the surface of the Moon.

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Gravity Wells Could Provide 'Parking Lots' For Spaceships

From McClatchy News:

WASHINGTON — Nature has provided five huge rest stops far out in space for the convenience of spacecraft traveling from Earth.

Some NASA folks call them "parking lots" in space.

They're unusual locations where gravity loses its pull and a spaceship can loiter, rather like a marble at the bottom of a cup, without using a lot of fuel. Three of them are 930,000 miles outside Earth's orbit. One is between the Earth and the sun, and another is hidden on the far side of the sun.

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400-Billion-Euro Plan To Pump African Solar Power To Europe

A man pictured next to solar panels whose energy helps pump water into a water tower in a village in Niger, 2004. Twelve European companies launched a 400-billion-euro (560-billion-dollar) initiative on Monday to plant huge solar farms in Africa and the Middle East to produce energy for Europe. (AFP/File/Issouf Sanogo)

From Yahoo News/AFP:

MUNICH, Germany (AFP) – Twelve European companies launched a 400-billion-euro (560-billion-dollar) initiative Monday to plant huge solar farms in Africa and the Middle East to produce energy for Europe.

The consortium says the massive proposal could provide up to 15 percent of Europe's electricity needs by 2050.

Engineering giants ABB and Siemens, energy groups E.ON and RWE and financial institutions Deutsche Bank and Munich Re are among the companies which signed a protocol in Munich.

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NASA Aiming For Wednesday Shuttle Launch, Try 6

Space shuttle Endeavour stands on launch pad 39A moments after the launch was scrubbed due to weather conditions at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla, Monday, July 13, 2009. (AP Photo/John Raoux)

From Yahoo News/AP:

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – NASA is hoping the weather finally cooperates for its sixth launch attempt for space shuttle Endeavour.

Endeavour is poised to take off for the international space station early Wednesday evening, along with seven astronauts. Forecasters put the odds of good weather at 60 percent.

Thunderstorms have delayed the mission three times and hydrogen gas leaks have caused two delays. Endeavour holds the final piece of Japan's space lab, which should have flown last month.

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The Spacemen Who Spent Three Months On A Mission To Mars... Without Leaving Moscow

Still smiling: The six volunteers stayed in good spirits during their three-month mission, despite living in quarters just 12ft across

From The Daily Mail:

A crew of six men saw the Sun for the first time in three months today after they were released from a cramped spacecraft simulator.

The volunteers were taking part in a simulated mission to Mars, which was designed to study the psychological and medical aspects of long-duration spaceflight.

They entered voluntary confinement at the end of March when there was still snow on the ground in Moscow.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1199429/The-spacemen-spent-months-mission-Mars--leaving-Moscow.html#ixzz0LHlGzfR7&D

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Longest Insect Migration Revealed

From The BBC:

Every year, millions of dragonflies fly thousands of kilometres across the sea from southern India to Africa.

So says a biologist in the Maldives, who claims to have discovered the longest migration of any insect.

If confirmed, the mass exodus would be the first known insect migration across open ocean water.

It would also dwarf the famous trip taken each year by Monarch butterflies, which fly just half the distance across the Americas.

Biologist Charles Anderson has published details of the mass migration in the Journal of Tropical Ecology.

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H1N1 (Swine Flu) News Updates -- July 14, 2009

Swine flu experts have warned the virus could become more deadly.
Photograph: AP

New Flu "Unstoppable", WHO Says, Calls For Vaccine -- Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Saying the new H1N1 virus is "unstoppable", the World Health Organization gave drug makers a full go-ahead to manufacture vaccines against the pandemic influenza strain on Monday and said healthcare workers should be the first to get one.

Every country will need to vaccinate citizens against the swine flu virus and must choose who else would get priority after nurses, doctors and technicians, said Dr. Marie-Paule Kieny, WHO director of the Initiative for Vaccine Research.

Read more ....

More News On H1N1

New flu resembles feared 1918 virus: study -- Reuters
U.K. Aims for Broad Vaccination Program -- Wall Street Journal
WHO warns of vaccine shortfall for coming flu season -- Globe And Mail
Swine flu: health experts 'surprised' by spread of virus in the UK -- The Guardian
NHS helplines swamped as swine flu panic rises after death of six-year-old girl -- Daily Mail
67 Air Force cadets stricken with swine flu -- Denver Post/AP

El Niño Is Back, Bringing Droughts, Floods, Crop Failures And Social Unrest

A parched paddy field, blamed on Rl Nino, in Merlebau village near Kota Marudu on the Malaysian eastern state of Sabah in Borneo island. (David Loh/Reuters)

From Times Online:

El Niño, the warming of the Pacific Ocean that creates chaos in global weather patterns, is on its way back, threatening droughts, floods, crop failure and social unrest.

According to scientists at America’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), a new bout of El Niño is under way as the surface of tropical waters across the eastern Pacific has warmed roughly 1C (1.8F) above normal and is still rising.

Further down, some 150 meters (500ft) below the surface, the waters are heating up — by around 4C (7.2F).

These indications have been emerging for about the past month from satellite pictures and an array of robotic buoys strung out across the Pacific. “The persistently warm sea temperatures are important indicators of an El Niño,” Mike Halpert, of NOAA’s Climate Prediction Centre, said.

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Why It Is Easy To Encode New Memories But Hard To Hold Onto Them

Activated PAK (red) gathers at synapses (green), and might help consolidate fresh memories. (Credit: Rex, C.S., et al. 2009. J. Cell Biol. doi:10.1083/jcb.200901084)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (July 14, 2009) — Memories aren't made of actin filaments. But their assembly is crucial for long-term potentiation (LTP), an increase in synapse sensitivity that researchers think helps to lay down memories. In the July 13, 2009 issue of the Journal of Cell Biology, Rex et al. reveal that LTP's actin reorganization occurs in two stages that are controlled by different pathways, a discovery that helps explain why it is easy to encode new memories but hard to hold onto them.

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Why Are Human Brains So Big?

Human brains are about three times as large as those of our early australopithecines ancestors that lived 4 million to 2 million years ago, and for years, scientists have wondered how our brains got so big. A new study suggests social competition could be behind the increase in brain size. Credit: NIH, NIDA

From Live Science:

There are many ways to try to explain why human brains today are so big compared to those of early humans, but the major cause may be social competition, new research suggests.

But with several competing ideas, the issue remains a matter of debate.

Compared to almost all other animals, human brains are larger as a percentage of body weight. And since the emergence of the first species in our Homo genus (Homo habilis) about 2 million years ago, the human brain has doubled in size. And when compared to earlier ancestors, such as australopithecines that lived 4 million to 2 million years ago, our brains are three times as large. For years, scientists have wondered what could account for this increase.

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Web Site Recreates Apollo 11 Mission In Real Time

Apollo 11

From Yahoo News/AP:

Families crowded around black-and-white television sets in 1969 to watch Neil Armstrong take man's first steps on the moon.

Now, they'll be able to watch the Apollo 11 mission recreated in real time on the Web, follow Twitter feeds of transmissions between Mission Control and the spacecraft, and even get an e-mail alert when the lunar module touches down. Those features are part of a new Web site from the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum commemorating the moon mission and Kennedy's push to land Americans there first.

"Putting a man on the moon really did unite the globe," said Thomas Putnam, director of the JFK Library. "We hope to use the Internet to do the same thing."

The Web site — WeChooseTheMoon.org — goes live at 8:02 a.m. Thursday, 90 minutes before the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 launch from Cape Canaveral, Fla. It will track the capsule's route from the Earth to the Moon, ending with the moon landing and Armstrong's walk — in real time, but 40 years later.

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Space Station Is Near Completion, Maybe the End

The international space station, as seen from the space shuttle Discovery. The station is scheduled to be completed next year, then returned to Earth in 2016. (Courtesy Of Nasa)

From Washington Post:

Plan to 'De-Orbit' in 2016 Is Criticized.

A number of times in recent weeks a bright, unblinking light has appeared in the night sky of the nation's capital: a spaceship. Longer than a football field, weighing 654,000 pounds, the spaceship moved swiftly across the heavens and vanished.

Fortunately, it was one of ours.

The international space station is by far the largest spacecraft ever built by earthlings. Circling the Earth every 90 minutes, it often passes over North America and is visible from the ground when night has fallen but the station, up high, is still bathed in sunlight.

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Can Wine Fight Dementia?

Photo: A glass or two of wine a day -- but no more -- appears to protect older adults from developing dementia, researchers reported here at the International Conference on Alzheimer's Disease.(Riser/Getty Images)

From ABC News:

A Glass a Day in the Golden Years May Protect Against Dementia, Study Says.

A glass or two of wine a day – but no more -- appears to protect older adults from developing dementia, researchers reported here at the International Conference on Alzheimer's Disease.

"Among cognitively normal older adults, one to two alcoholic drinks a day is associated with a 37 percent decreased risk of dementia over 6 years," said Dr. Kaycee Sink, a gerontologist at Wake Forest University School of Medicine.

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Hungry Cats Trick Owners With Baby Cry Mimicry

From New Scientist:

Cat owners will know the feeling. Your pet is purring loudly, demanding to be fed, and isn't going to give up until it gets what it wants. What most doting owners won't realise is that the cat is using an acoustic ruse.

According to Karen McComb of the University of Sussex, UK, domestic cats hide a plaintive cry within their purrs that both irritates owners and appeals to their nurturing instincts.

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Mystery Mechanism Drove Global Warming 55 Million Years Ago

Photo: Close up of a melting glacier. A runaway spurt of global warming 55 million years ago turned Earth into a hothouse but how this happened remains worryingly unclear, scientists said on Monday.

From Breitbart/AFP:

A runaway spurt of global warming 55 million years ago turned Earth into a hothouse but how this happened remains worryingly unclear, scientists said on Monday.

Previous research into this period, called the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, or PETM, estimates the planet's surface temperature blasted upwards by between five and nine degrees Celsius (nine and 16.2 degrees Fahrenheit) in just a few thousand years.

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First Direct Evidence Of Substantial Fish Consumption By Early Modern Humans In China 40,000 Years Ago

Lower mandible of the 40 000 year old human skeleton, found in the Tianyuan Cave near Beijing. Analyses of collagen extracted from this bone prove that this individual was a regular consumer of fish. (Credit: Hong Shang / Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (July 13, 2009) — Freshwater fish are an important part of the diet of many peoples around the world, but it has been unclear when fish became an important part of the year-round diet for early humans.

A new study by an international team of researchers, including Erik Trinkaus, Ph.D., professor of anthropology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, shows it may have happened in China as far back as 40,000 years ago.

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This Is Why the Shuttle Launch Is Delayed

From Popsci.com:

It's hard to launch a Space Shuttle when the launch pad keeps getting struck by lighting. NASA cameras caught 11 lightning strikes, including one direct hit to the pad, near the space shuttle Endeavour's launch pad, during a thunderstorm on July 10.

The storm forced the space agency to call for a 24-hour delay to inspect the shuttle for possible damage. One spectacular strike even hit the top of the launch pad's lightning rod, which channeled the electricity harmlessly away from the shuttle through a series of metal wires.

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New Treatment Hope For Sufferers Of Cancer That Has Hit Patrick Swayze

Oncologist Dr Andrew Gaya (L) and patient Robert Ferrant are seen with the new CyberKnife system at Harley Street in London Photo: PA

From The Telegraph:

A man suffering from pancreatic cancer – one of most deadly forms of the disease and which has also struck Dirty Dancing star Patrick Swayze – has been given hope of long-term survival after being treated with an advanced form of radiotherapy.

Robert Ferrant, 62, who is one of the first in Britain to undergo the procedure, was given just a few months to live after he was diagnosed with the condition.

Only 13 per cent of people who contract it are alive a year after diagnosis and only three per cent surviving for five years.

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The First Earthling To Journey To Mars - Conan The Bacterium

Victoria crater, an impact crater at Meridiani Planum, near the equator of Mars.
Photograph: Anonymous/AP

From The Guardian:

Pictures from a Nasa mission reveal new glimpses of a world as fantastic as any imagined by a science-fiction writer.

Scientists have picked the first crew of Earthlings to fly to another planet. Those chosen for a Mars mission to be launched in October include specimens of thale cress and brewer's yeast, and a microbe known as Conan the Bacterium.

Together with several other microscopic organisms, these representatives of earthly life will be carried in a package that will be flown on a Russian robot spacecraft and are scheduled to be returned to Earth in 2012. The experiment - Living Interplanetary Flight Experiment, or Life - is designed to show if living organisms can survive unprotected in space for long periods and thus support the theory of panspermia, which argues that simple organisms can survive for years as they float through space and that life on Earth could have been wafted here from another world.

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Is Grapefruit Juice Toxic?

From Live Science:

This Week's Question: My daughter heard that grapefruit juice can be toxic for some people. Is that true?

The juice, itself, is not toxic, but you should be careful taking medicine with any grapefruit.

Grapefruit juice can raise the level of some medications in the blood. The effect of grapefruit was discovered after using juice to mask the taste of a medicine. So, be sure to ask your doctor or pharmacist if it is safe to have grapefruit with your medications.

Taking medicine can be hazardous to your health. You have to know what you're doing.

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Apollo Special: Mirrors On The Moon

Photo: Measuring the distance of the moon from Earth is one way of testing Einstein's theory of relativity (Image: Dan Long)

From New Scientist:

EACH clear night when the moon is high in the sky, a group of astronomers in New Mexico take aim at our celestial neighbour and blast it repeatedly with pulses of light from a powerful laser. They target suitcase-sized reflectors left on the lunar surface by the Apollo 11, 14 and 15 missions, as well as by two Russian landers.

Out of every 300 quadrillion (1015) photons that are sent to the moon, about five find their way back. The rest are lost to our atmosphere, or miss the lunar reflectors altogether.

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Multi-Galaxy Collision Caught in Action

From Wired Science:

Four galaxies are involved in this pile-up 280 million light years from Earth. The bright spiral galaxy at the center of the image is punching through the cluster at almost two million miles per hour.

That speeding galaxy may be what is causing the curved swath of X-rays, shown in blue near the center of the image, which were captured by NASA’s orbiting Chandra X-ray Observatory. The three other yellowish galaxies in the collision are optically visible and were imaged by the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope on the summit of the dormant Mauna Kea volcano in Hawaii.

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Top 10 Scientific Music Videos

From Wierd Science:

Music can make the driest scientific concepts entertaining, or even hilarious. Catchy tunes about DNA blend genetics with jokes. Ballads about the heart and pi bring dull facts to life. Here are some of our favorite videos that show how hard science rocks.

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Human History Written in Stone and Blood

Figure 1. Hunter-gatherer people living in southern Africa in the Middle Stone Age left behind artifacts in natural rock shelters and caves. At top is Sibudu Cave, located about 40 kilometers north of Durban. Below that is Ntloana Tsoana, a rock shelter located on the south bank of the Phuthiatsana River in the Lesotho highlands. At bottom, right of center in the photo, is Blombos Cave, located about 300 kilometers east of Cape Town. That’s where archaeologists found artifacts representing innovative behavior previously thought to have emerged in Europe much later. Improved dating of such artifacts helped the authors evaluate what contemporary factors might have contributed to the origins of modern human behavior. Top photograph courtesy of Lyn Wadley. Middle photograph courtesy of Richard Roberts. Bottom photograph courtesy of Chris Henshilwood.

From American Scientist:

Two bursts of human innovation in southern Africa during the Middle Stone Age may be linked to population growth and early migration off the continent

In the past decade it has become clear that symbolic expression associated with modern human behavior began in Africa, not Europe. And it occurred tens of thousands of years earlier than was once thought. Answering why is difficult. A first step was more reliable dating of when culturally and technologically advanced people lived during the Middle Stone Age in the south of Africa. Zenobia Jacobs and Richard G. Roberts accomplished that dating, which prompted them to reject climate change as a primary cause for the advancements. Instead, drawing on genetic research, they embrace population growth as a likely, key influence.

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Super-Slow-Motion Pictures Show Soap Bubble Bursting In Stunning Detail

After being poked the surface of the breaks up, from one side to another, turning its surface into a multitude of droplets which appear to hang in the air.

From The Daily Mail:

To the human eye the bursting of a bubble is a simple affair. One prod of a finger and - pop! - it's vanished in a split second.

But as these breathtaking pictures show, the process is spectacular - if only we could see it.

These images were taken with a slow-motion camera to show every stage of the soap bubble's disappearance.

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Herschel Shows Breadth Of Vision

Herschel-SPIRE's view of M74 (R) compared with that of Nasa's Spitzer space telescope. The larger mirror on Herschel (3.5m vs 0.85m) pays dividends, and will allow the European telescope to build on Spitzer's discoveries.

From The BBC:

Europe's Herschel space observatory is set to become one of the most powerful tools ever to study the Universe.

The "first light" data from its three instruments demonstrates a remarkable capability even though their set-up is still not complete.

Galaxy images released on Friday by the European Space Agency show detail previously unseen in the objects.

The pictures - and the thousands that will follow - should give new insights on star formation and galaxy evolution.

"We have some excellent images; they're not calibrated, but they look spectacular," said Dr Göran Pilbratt, Esa's Herschel project scientist.

"They tell you we are working; it's just fantastic," he told BBC News.

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Machines That Heal

Arms of Steel John B. Carnett

From Popsci.com:

In the movies, entrusting human life to robot helpers and sophisticated machines inevitably ends in fire, destruction and death.

But in reality, the automatons are actually saving lives. Take the devices here: the hulking robot arms that rehabilitate stroke victims, the laser beam that calms Parkinson’s tremors, and the android that can fix you toast when you’re sick. Even the scary-looking, mind-reading skullcap will one day let paralyzed people turn on the lights just by thinking about it. No fire, no destruction, no death—just eye-popping technology and better medical care.

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Getting More Out Of Crude

Image: Holey catalyst: Rive Technology is designing a zeolite catalyst with pores larger than those found in conventional zeolites, which are widely used in petroleum and petrochemical production. The larger pores allow the catalysts to handle a wide range of compounds. Credit: Rive Technology

From Technology Review:

An improved catalyst could help oil refineries get more gasoline out of a barrel of crude petroleum.

In an effort to make gasoline production cleaner and more efficient, Rive Technology of Cambridge, MA, is developing a catalyst that can help turn a greater percentage of crude petroleum into gasoline and other usable products. The company, which is testing the catalyst in its pilot plant in South Brunswick, NJ, believes that the technology will be able to process lower-grade fossil fuels and reduce the amount of energy that goes into the refining process.

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New Kind Of Astronomical Object Around Black Hole: Living Fossil Records 'Supermassive' Kick

This artist's conception shows a rogue black hole that has been kicked out from the center of two merging galaxies. The black hole is surrounded by a cluster of stars that were ripped from the galaxies. New calculations by David Merritt, from Rochester Institute of Technology, Jeremy Schnittman, from Johns Hopkins University, and Stefanie Komossa, from the Max-Planck-Institut for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany suggest that hundreds of massive black holes, left over from the epoch of galaxy formation, are waiting to be detected in the nearby universe. (Credit: Space Telescope Science Institute)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (July 10, 2009) — The tight cluster of stars surrounding a supermassive black hole after it has been violently kicked out of a galaxy represents a new kind of astronomical object and a fossil record of the kick.

A paper published in the July 10 issue of The Astrophysical Journal discusses the theoretical properties of “hypercompact stellar systems” and suggests that hundreds of these faint star clusters might be detected at optical wavelengths in our immediate cosmic environment. Some of these objects may already have been picked up in astronomical surveys, reports David Merritt, from Rochester Institute of Technology, Jeremy Schnittman, from Johns Hopkins University, and Stefanie Komossa, from the Max-Planck-Institut for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany.

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Swearing Makes Pain More Tolerable

From Live Science:

That muttered curse word that reflexively comes out when you stub your toe could actually make it easier to bear the throbbing pain, a new study suggests.

Swearing is a common response to pain, but no previous research has connected the uttering of an expletive to the actual physical experience of pain.

"Swearing has been around for centuries and is an almost universal human linguistic phenomenon," said Richard Stephens of Keele University in England and one of the authors of the new study. "It taps into emotional brain centers and appears to arise in the right brain, whereas most language production occurs in the left cerebral hemisphere of the brain."

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The Moon Walkers: Twelve Men Who Have Visited Another World

Neil Armstrong in the Eagle after his historic moonwalk. Photograph: Nasa

From The Guardian:

What did it take to become a member of the most exclusive club in human history?

The 12 members of the most exclusive club in human history had many things in common.

All came from a highly technical background and all but one studied aeronautical or astronautical engineering. Growing up, many had been Boy Scouts and even more were active members of their University fraternities. They all went on to study for further degrees – many at military test pilot schools – and almost all of them saw active service in cold war skies, often flying nuclear weapons behind enemy lines.

These high-risk professions often claimed the lives of those to the left and right of them and frequently it was only luck that kept them alive long enough to apply to Nasa.

We might expect such parallel lives in men picked through a selection process devised to seek out "the right stuff". But despite the similarities in their CVs, no two men were from the same mould, as became evident in the years after Apollo.

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Why New Chrome OS Won't Turn Google Into a Monopoly: Analysis

From Popular Mechanics:

As Google announces its intention to create a full Web-based operating system, senior technology editor Glenn Derene has a flashback to the late '90s—when the Justice Department brought an antitrust action against Microsoft. Could Google's new browser-as-operating system kill competition?

In 1998, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) brought an antitrust action against Microsoft for a variety of anti-competitive practices in the software industry—chief among them the bundling of the company's Internet Explorer browser into its dominant Windows operating system. The trial revealed plenty of bare-knuckled tactics and market manipulation on behalf of Microsoft, and stained the company's brand for years (perhaps forever, frankly) as a corporate bully. But the central argument from Microsoft was that, with the ascent of the Internet, the browser had become an integral part of the OS, and that competing stand-alone browsers such as Netscape and Opera were moribund products from a transition era. Microsoft contended that it needed to evolve the OS to adapt to the Internet-based era just to stay competitive as a company—a claim that seemed ludicrous back in the '90s, when the software giant seemed to have indomitable market power.

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When Galaxies Collide, 280 Million Light Years Away

Stephan's Quintent, Colliding: NASA

From Popsci.com:

A new image using data from NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory captures Stephan's Quintet in a new light.

130 years ago, astronomers discovered Stephan's Quintent--a compact group of galaxies 280 million light years from Earth. NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has captured the X-rays generated by the interstellar collision, as one of the galaxies is sucked through the center of the group at 2 million miles per hour.

The ridge of blue in the center represent the X-rays emitted by the collision, as shock wave heats the galaxy's gasses.

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100 Essential Skills for Geeks

From Geek Dad/Wired:

As Geeks we are expected to have a certain set of skills that the majority of the population does not possess. This list is by no means complete, but I think it is a good sample of the skills required to be a true geek. I won’t pretend to have all the skills listed here. I even had to Google a few of them.

Like all good Geeks you should be able to utilize resources to accomplish any of these things. Knowing where to look for the knowledge is as good as having it so give yourself points if you are certain that you could Google the knowledge necessary for a skill.

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U.S. Science Is Tops, But Most Americans Don't Think It Is, A New Survey Finds.

From Scientific American:

Today the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the Pew Research Center released results of a survey examining the attitudes of the general public and the scientific community as they regard to science.

The results, collected from 2,553 AAAS members and 2,001 public respondents, suggest that although average Americans hold a positive view of scientists and support the funding of research, they do not share the same perspectives as the scientific community on a variety of science issues.

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How To Ensure Lost Wallets Are Returned

Wallets containing the picture of an infant were most likely to
trigger an honest reaction from the finder Photo: GETTY

From The Telegraph:

Lost wallets which contain a snapshot of a baby are more likely to be returned to their owners, scientists have discovered.

Researchers left 240 wallets on the streets of Edinburgh last year to see how many were returned to their owners. Some of the wallets contained one of four photographs – the baby, a cute puppy, a family and a portrait of an elderly couple.

Other wallets contained a card suggesting the owner had recently made a charity donation, while a control batch contained no additional items.

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Reduced Diet Thwarts Aging, Disease In Monkeys

Rhesus monkeys, left to right, Canto, 27, and on a restricted diet, and Owen, 29, and a control subject on an unrestricted diet, are pictured at the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison on May 28, 2009. The two are among the oldest surviving subjects in a pioneering long-term study of the links between diet and aging in Rhesus macaque monkeys, which have an average life span of about 27 years in captivity. Lead researcher Richard Weindruch, a professor of medicine in the UW School of Medicine and Public Health, and co-author Ricki Colman, associate scientist at the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center, report new findings in the journal Science that a nutritious, but reduced-calorie, diet blunts aging and delays the onset of such aged-related disorders as cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and brain atrophy. (Credit: Jeff Miller)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (July 10, 2009) — The bottom-line message from a decades-long study of monkeys on a restricted diet is simple: Consuming fewer calories leads to a longer, healthier life.

Writing July 10 in the journal Science, a team of researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center and the William S. Middleton Memorial Veterans Hospital reports that a nutritious but reduced-calorie diet blunts aging and significantly delays the onset of such age-related disorders as cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and brain atrophy.

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Birds Fireproof Their Homes

Photo: This somewhat fireproof next is a courting zone of a male great bowerbird. Credit: Tomoki Okida, Japan Ethological Society and Springer Japan

From Live Science:

To beguile females, some males build mansions, others build bowers.

Male great bowerbirds (Chlamydera nuchalis) of northern Australia erect two walls of twigs partially flanking a six-foot-long passageway that they pave with conspicuous bits of bones, stones, shells, and fruits. There, the males strut their stuff, inviting females over for a tryst.

Bower construction takes a week or longer, so it's no fun when brush fire sweeps through the savanna and threatens the males' handiwork.

Yet, as a new study shows, the bowers seem strangely immune to fire.

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Rival Designs Race To Harness Ocean Energy

Photo: SeaGen was installed in the tidal currents of Strangford Lough, Northern Ireland in 2008. However, there is a suite of rival designs racing to harness ocean energy (Image: SeaGen / David Erwin)

From New Scientist:

A bout of gawky prototypes have taken to the water for the first time in recent weeks, signalling a new assault on a decades-old problem: how to generate power from the oceans.

While most wind turbines look much the same, the contest to tap that power is more like wacky races than Formula 1. A suite of varied designs are under development in an attempt to work out the most efficient way to generate juice in the harsh chemical and physical environment of the waves and tides.

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