Buzz Aldrin, First Man (To Pee) On The Moon

Apollo 11 astronaut Edwin Eugene "Buzz" Aldrin deploys a foil sheet for collecting solar particles near the Eagle lunar lander in July 1969. July 2009 marks the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing. Today Aldrin advocates a return to space targeted at Mars and other long-distance exploration missions. Apollo 11 photograph courtesy NASA

From National Geographic:

Buzz Aldrin may not have been the first man on the moon, but he's got another historic first under his belt, so to speak: first person to pee on the moon.

Marking the 40th anniversary of the first manned moon landing this month, the U.S. astronaut reflects on his moonwalk, his embrace of Twitter, his hopes for the future—and that hallowed lunar leak, accomplished on the lander's ladder, into a special bag in his space suit.

Read more ....

Update: Apollo 11 Facts: 40 Years Later -- National Geographic

Apollo Astronauts Bemoan State Of U.S. Space Program

Former astronaut Buzz Aldrin (C) speaks at the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission and his walk on the moon while at the NASA Headquarters in Washington July 20, 2009. From (L-R) David Scott (Apollo 15), Buzz Aldrin (Apollo 11) and Charles Duke (Apollo 16). REUTERS/Larry Downing

From Reuters:

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - The U.S. investment in the Apollo space program, which landed men on the moon, paid off handsomely, unlike the $100 billion plowed into the International Space Station, Apollo's pioneering astronauts said on Monday.

""We opened the door to future of exploration by touching down on another body," Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin, the second man to set foot on the moon, said at a press conference commemorating the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing.

The United States staged six successful missions to the moon between 1969 and 1972, then developed the space shuttles and later, the space station.

Read more ....

How Did Moon Travel Change Astronauts?

Photo: For some lunar astronauts, traveling to the moon led them to new spiritual and philosophical sensibilities and even new career paths. (Getty Images)

From ABC News:

For Some, Going to the Moon Became a Spiritual, Philosophical Event.

In the history of humanity, only 24 men have shared the experience.

Forty years ago today, the first of the two dozen astronauts to fly to or around the moon rocketed away from Earth to make history. Twelve had the chance to walk on the moon's surface, though only nine of those are still alive today.

When they returned to Earth, they were scientists and explorers with no peers, at the pinnacles of their careers.

But for some the adventure was so epic it changed the course of their lives. Inspired and transformed by seeing Earth shrink to the size of their thumbs, many let new philosophical and spiritual sensibilities guide them. Others chose entirely new career paths.

Read more ....

New Geothermal Heat Extraction Process To Deliver Clean Power Generation

PNNL's introduction of a metal-organic heat carrier, or MOHC, in the biphasic fluid may help improve thermodynamic efficiency of the heat recovery process. This image represents the molecular makeup of one of several MOHCs. (Credit: Image courtesy of DOE/Pacific Northwest National Laboratory)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (July 20, 2009) — A new method for capturing significantly more heat from low-temperature geothermal resources holds promise for generating virtually pollution-free electrical energy. Scientists at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory will determine if their innovative approach can safely and economically extract and convert heat from vast untapped geothermal resources.

The goal is to enable power generation from low-temperature geothermal resources at an economical cost. In addition to being a clean energy source without any greenhouse gas emissions, geothermal is also a steady and dependable source of power.

Read more ....

Apollo 11 Moon Landing: Top Quotes From The Mission That Put Man On The Moon

Buzz Aldrin faces the camera as he walks on the Moon Photo: REUTERS

From The Telegraph:

Apollo 11 reached the moon's surface 40 years ago today with Neil Armstrong and his fellow astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins on board. Here are some key quotes from the mission that put the first men on the moon.

"I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth." President John F. Kennedy announces his intention to put a man on the Moon before a joint session of Congress on May 25 1961

"No nation which expects to be the leader of other nations can expect to stay behind in this race for space...We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard." John F. Kennedy explains his lunar ambitions in a speech at Rice University on September 12, 1962

Read more ....

Laser Technology Creates New Forms Of Metal And Enhances Aircraft Performance

Photo: Dr. Chunlei Guo of the University of Rochester stands in front of his femtosecond laser. (Credit: Walter Colley Studio)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (July 20, 2009) — AFOSR-funded researchers at the University of Rochester are using laser light technology that will help the military create new forms of metal that may guide, attract and repel liquids and cool small electronic devices.

Dr. Chunlei Guo and his team of researchers for the project discovered a way to transform a shiny piece of metal into one that is pitch black, not by paint, but by using incredibly intense bursts of laser light. The black metal created, absorbs all radiation that shines upon it.

Read more ....

How Penguins & Seals Survive Deep Dives

Emperor penguins diving beneath the dive holes at the Penguin Ranch. Credit: Kathi Ponganis, Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UCSD

From Live Science:

My main research interest is physiology in extreme environments, particularly those with low levels of oxygen.

Animals that thrive in such "hypoxic" environments are ideal species to investigate for how their physiology responds. In addition, studying adaptations to hypoxia in animals at high altitude, during hibernation, or in diving environments may provide insight for understanding and treating human medical issues, such as heart attack and stroke.

Read more ....

2010: A New Space Odyssey Beckons

From The Independent:

The world is on the verge of new manned exploration of the solar system – and, this time, environmentalists are backing it.

This weekend, 40 years after man first landed on the Moon, more human beings than ever before are orbiting on a single spacecraft. In 1969, three men squeezed into Apollo 11's command module, a craft little bigger than a Mini.

Yesterday, the International Space Station, now as large as a four-storey house, yet speeding at 17,239mph, took on board the crew of the shuttle Endeavour: 12 men, one woman – seven Americans, two Russians, two Canadians, one Japanese and a Belgian. During a two-man space-walk, the crew added a four-ton porch – an outdoor shelf for experiments – to the station.

Read more ....

40 Years Later, Moon Still Giant Leap For Mankind

In this July 1969 file photo, Astronaut Edwin Aldrin walks by the footpad of the Apollo 11 Lunar Module. (AP/Photo, NASA, file)

From Yahoo News/AP:

WASHINGTON – The measure of what humanity can accomplish is a size 9 1/2 bootprint. It belongs to Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon. It will stay on the moon for millions of years with nothing to wipe it away, serving as an almost eternal testament to a can-do mankind.

Apollo 11 is the glimmering success that failures of society are contrasted against: "If we can send a man to the moon, why can't we ..."

What put man on the moon 40 years ago was an audacious and public effort that the world hasn't seen before or since. It required rocketry that hadn't been built, or even designed, in 1961 when President John F. Kennedy declared the challenge. It needed an advance in computerization that had not happened yet. NASA would have to learn how to dock separate spaceships, how to teach astronauts to walk in space, even how to keep them alive in space — all tasks so difficult experts weren't sure they were possible.

Read more ....

July Eclipse Is Best Chance To Look For Gravity Anomaly

From New Scientist:

From remote observatories on the Tibetan plateau to a cave in a Shanghai suburb, Chinese researchers are poised to conduct an audacious once-in-a-century experiment. The plan is to test a controversial theory: the possibility that gravity drops slightly during a total eclipse.

Geophysicists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences are preparing an unprecedented array of highly sensitive instruments at six sites across the country to take gravity readings during the total eclipse due to pass over southern China on 22 July. The results, which will be analysed in the coming months, could confirm once and for all that anomalous fluctuations observed during past eclipses are real.

Read more ....

Man Who Went To The Moon And Came Back An Artist

A Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum handout photo shows former astronaut Alan Bean in front of his easel at his art studio in Houston, Texas

From Yahoo News/AFP:

WASHINGTON (AFP) - - Forty years after Alan Bean became the fourth man to walk on the moon, the now 77-year-old former astronaut still likes to share his memories of space flight with a broad audience -- by painting them.

Bean decided to make the switch from astronaut to artist a dozen years after the Apollo 12 mission that took him to the moon in November 1969 and after spending two months in space in 1973 on board Skylab, and his souvenirs from both missions dominate his artwork.

When, at age 49, he dropped a bombshell on his bosses and colleagues at NASA, telling them that he was leaving to become a full-time painter, they wondered if he wasn't in the throes of lunacy.

Read more ....

Ecologist Brings Century-old Eggs To Life To Study Evolution

Daphnia neonate emerge from a dormant egg (Daphnia birth). Approximate size is 300 micrometers. (Credit: Photomicrograph by P. Spaak)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (July 19, 2009) — Suspending a life in time is a theme that normally finds itself in the pages of science fiction, but now such ideas have become a reality in the annals of science.

Cornell ecologist Nelson Hairston Jr. is a pioneer in a field known loosely as "resurrection ecology," in which researchers study the eggs of such creatures as zooplankton -- tiny, free-floating water animals -- that get buried in lake sediments and can remain viable for decades or even centuries. By hatching these eggs, Hairston and others can compare time-suspended hatchlings with their more contemporary counterparts to better understand how a species may have evolved in the meantime.

Read more ....

Arctic Mystery: Identifying The Great Blob of Alaska

An unknown blob floats in the Arctic Ocean off of
Alaska's North Slope. Ccourtesy North Slope Borough

From Time Magazine:

A group of hunters aboard a small boat out of the tiny Alaska village of Wainwright were the first to spot what would eventually be called "the blob." It was a dark, floating mass stretching for miles through the Chukchi Sea, a frigid and relatively shallow expanse of Arctic Ocean water between Alaska's northwest coast and the Russian Far East. The goo was fibrous, hairy. When it touched floating ice, it looked almost black.

But what was it? An oil slick? Some sort of immense, amorphous organism adrift in some of the planet's most remote waters? Maybe a worrisome sign of global climate change? Or, as folks wondered who followed from faraway via the internet, was it something insidious and, perhaps, even carnivorous like the man-eating jello from the old Steve McQueen movie that inspired the Alaska phenomenon's nickname?

Read more ....

'One Small Step For Man,' One Massive Rocket Project For Engineers

The historic flight lifts off July 16, 1969, from Kennedy Space Center. Engines for the massive Saturn V rocket were developed and built in Southern California. AFP / Getty Images

From L.A. Times:

The young scientists who created the Saturn V rocket that powered Aldrin and Armstrong to the moon on Apollo 11 in July 1969 were the unsung heroes in the space race with the Soviet Union.

It wasn't a young president's brash promise that enabled Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to take those first halting steps on the lunar surface 40 years ago Monday. Nor was it the courage of the astronauts themselves.

The success of America's big bet in space depended on the ability of young, unheralded engineers to build rocket engines that were both powerful enough and reliable enough to wrench the spacecraft from Earth's jealous grasp and send it winging to the lunar surface.

Read more ....

Space Station Toilet Breaks Down

From The BBC:

The main toilet has broken down on the International Space Station (ISS), currently home to a record 13 astronauts, Nasa said.

Mission Control told the crew to hang an "out of service" sign until the toilet can be fixed.

The crew of the shuttle Endeavour is confined to using the craft's loo. ISS residents are using a back-up toilet in the Russian part of the station.

If repairs fails, Apollo-era urine collection bags are on hand, Nasa said.

"We don't yet know the extent of the problem," flight director Brian Smith told reporters, adding that the toilet troubles were "not going to be an issue" for now.

Read more ....

Update: Space Station Toilet Troubled -- Space.com

Why Winning Athletes Are Getting Bigger

Pictured are Jordan Charles, left, and Adrian Bejan. (Credit: Duke University Photography)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (July 19, 2009) — While watching swimmers line up during the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, former Olympic swimmer and NBC Sports commentator Rowdy Gaines quipped that swimmers keep getting bigger, with the shortest one in the current race towering over the average spectator.

What may have been seen as an off-hand remark turns out to illustrate a trend in human development -- elite athletes are getting bigger and bigger.

Read more ....

Tough Microbe Has The Right Stuff for Mars

A micrograph of Methanosarcina barkeri cells embedded in an extracellular structure that resembles connective tissue found in bone cartilage. Credit: Kevin Sowers

From Live Science:

Biologists have found microbes that live in the hottest, coldest, driest and most unpleasant places on Earth. Many of these bugs don't adapt well to new surroundings, but one microbe is remarkable for withstanding a wide range of conditions. This quality might make this unique organism suitable for adapting to life on Mars.

This ultimate survivor is called Methanosarcina barkeri. It is found in freshwater and marine sediments, and other places where oxygen is scarce. Because it breathes out methane, researchers are interested to see if it — or some other "methanogen" — could be responsible for the methane that was detected in the martian atmosphere in 2003.

Read more ....

Expiration Dates

From Organize Your Life:

Certain items in your house practically scream “toss me” when their prime has passed. That mysterious extra white layer on the Cheddar? A sure sign it needs to be put out of its misery. Chunky milk? Down the drain it goes.

But what about that jar of olives or Maraschino cherries that has resided in your refrigerator since before the birth of your kindergartner? Or the innumerable nonedibles lurking deep within your cabinets and closets: stockpiled shampoo and toothpaste, seldom-used silver polish? How do you know when their primes have passed?

With help from experts and product manufacturers, Real Simple (http://www.realsimple.com/) has compiled a guide to expiration dates. These dates are offered as a rough guideline. The shelf lives of most products depend upon how you treat them. Edibles, unless otherwise indicated, should be stored in a cool, dry place. (With any food, of course, use common sense.) Household cleaners also do best in a dry place with a stable temperature. After the dates shown, beauty and cleaning products are probably still safe but may be less effective.

Read more ....

Hat Tip: Geek Press

19 Of The Top 20 Supercomputers In The World Are Running Some Form Of Linux

From Pingdom:

Operating systems on supercomputers used to be custom-made affairs, but this has changed. These days, Linux has become a popular choice for supercomputers. But how popular? You may be surprised.

Top500.org maintains a list of the fastest supercomputers in the world. A new list was published yesterday (it happens twice a year), so we took the opportunity to go through the list and find out what OS the top 20 supercomputers are using.

It took some work, but the results are interesting.

Read more ....

10 Stunning (And Useful) Stats About Twitter

From Information Marketing Blog:

Last month a social media analytics provider named Sysomos released a comprehensive report on Twitter usage. The problem with most analysis on Twitter, though, is that it is limited by the minimal amount of data that Twitter collects. So, to fill the gaps, most reports do things like guessing gender based on real names or pulling data from keywords in people's biographic information. This often yields some questionable results - and the Sysomos report is not immune to this (for example, they find that 65% of Twitter users are under the age of 25, but base this on only the 0.7% of users who actually disclose their age).

Read more ....

Red Sky At Night: Heavens Turn Crimson Over Britain After Russian Volcano Erupts

(Click Image to Enlarge)
Shepherd's delight: A particularly fiery red sky over fields in Leicestershire last night after an eruption at Sarychev Peak in Russia unleashed a colourful mixture of ash and sulphur. When this 'volcanic aerosol' in the stratosphere mixes with the red light of the setting sun, it produces a vivid crimson hue

From The Daily Mail:

The night skies over Britain will turn a deep shade of crimson this week as the fallout from a Russian volcano blast hits the UK.

Millions of tonnes of dust, ash and sulphur dioxide were thrown up to 30 miles into the air when Sarychev Peak on Matua Island in the Kuril Archipelago erupted last month.

The blast created what experts call a ‘volcanic aerosol’ - a colourful mixture of ash and sulphur compounds - in the stratosphere.

This scatters an invisible blue glow which, when mixed with the red light of the setting sun, produces a ‘volcanic lavender’, or vivid crimson/violet hue.

Read more ....

The Genesis Enigma: How DID the Bible describe the evolution Of Life 3,000 Years Before Darwin?

Myth or divine inspiration: Was the book of Genesis a gateway into the evolution of life?

From The Daily Mail:

The revalation came to Professor Andrew Parker during a visit to Rome. He was in the Sistine Chapel, gazing up at Michelangelo's awesome ceiling paintings, when a realisation struck him with dizzying force.

'A Biblical enigma exists that is on the one hand so cryptic it has remained camouflaged for millennia, and on the other so obvious one cannot miss it.'

The enigma is that the order of Creation as described in the Book of Genesis, and so powerfully depicted in the Sistine Chapel by the greatest artist of the Renaissance, has been precisely, eerily confirmed by modern evolutionary science.

Read more ....

Mystery Methane Belched Out By Megacities

Photo: Methane was found at surprisingly high levels in the Los Angeles atmosphere (Image: David Iliff)

From New Scientist:

The Los Angeles metropolitan area belches far more methane into its air than scientists had previously realised. If other megacities are equally profligate, urban methane emissions may represent a surprisingly important source of this potent greenhouse gas.

Atmospheric researchers have long had good estimates of global methane emissions, but less is known about exactly where these emissions come from, particularly in urban areas.

Read more ....

Ten Things You Didn't Know About The Apollo 11 Moon Landing

Camera Shy: Neil Armstrong's reflection in Buzz Aldrin's visor is one of the few photos of Armstrong on the moon NASA

From The Popsci.com:

This month marks the 40th anniversary of humankind's first steps on the moon. Auspiciously timed is Craig Nelson's new book, Rocket Men--one of the most detailed accounts of the period leading up to the first manned moon mission. Here, we have ten little-known Apollo 11 facts unearthed by Nelson during his research.

Read more ....

The 40th Anniversary of Apollo 11

On July 20, 1969, Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong became the first humans to set foot on the moon. In this image from a panorama of the landing site taken by Aldrin, Armstrong stands at the base of the lunar module.

From Scientific American:

Four decades after mankind's giant leap, a look at the harrowing first lunar landing, the Apollo missions that never flew, and how the historic event looked from the Soviet Union

Read more ....

Solar Cycle Linked To Global Climate

Scientists find link between solar cycle and global climate similar to El Nino/La Nina.
(Credit: NCAR)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (July 17, 2009) — Establishing a key link between the solar cycle and global climate, research led by scientists at the National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo., shows that maximum solar activity and its aftermath have impacts on Earth that resemble La Niña and El Niño events in the tropical Pacific Ocean.

The research may pave the way toward predictions of temperature and precipitation patterns at certain times during the approximately 11-year solar cycle.

Read more ....

5 Myths About The Male Body

From Live Science:

From rumors about feet size to sex life, there's a lot of cultural misinformation circulating about men and their physiques. And men themselves offer precious little clarification what with their tendencies toward joshing around and playing things close to the chest. So for the record, here are five classic assumptions about men's bodies that are totally false. -- Robin Nixon

Read more ....

Why Music Moves Us

From Scientific American:

New research explains music's power over human emotions and its benefits to our mental and physical well-being.

As a recreational vocalist, I have spent some of the most moving moments of my life engaged in song. As a college student, my eyes would often well up with tears during my twice-a-week choir rehearsals. I would feel relaxed and at peace yet excited and joyful, and I occasionally experienced a thrill so powerful that it sent shivers down my spine. I also felt connected with fellow musicians in a way I did not with friends who did not sing with me.

Read more ....

India Moon Probe 'Malfunctions'

From The BBC:

India's first mission to the Moon has experienced a technical problem, India's space research officials say.

A sensor of the unmanned Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft has "malfunctioned" and steps have been taken to ensure it is able to continue its work, they say.

But the possibility remains that the mission may have to be cut short.

Chandrayaan-1 was launched last October and is regarded as a major step for India as it seeks to keep pace with other space-faring nations in Asia.

Read more ....

Man And Machine The Real Legacy Of The Moon Race

From Boston.com:

For the millions who watched the grainy television feed from the moon on July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong’s small step seemed to herald a new era. Arthur C. Clarke had already predicted that the children born during the Apollo missions would one day have their passports stamped on the moon; in the lunar spectacle, we glimpsed a brighter future in which humans would conquer the vastness of space and acknowledge their brotherhood on the pale blue dot of the home planet.

And yet, 40 years on, the Apollo program looks less like the start of a new era and more like an ancient culture that flourished briefly and then vanished, leaving only ruined towers, ritual costumes, and incomprehensible glyphs. In the decades since the last towering Saturn V tore through the night sky, NASA’s astronauts have spent their time on modest missions closer to home. The age of easy space travel that Apollo seemed to promise never materialized. And for all its technological marvels, Apollo bequeathed little to our material culture besides instant orange drink, freeze-dried ice cream, and the statuettes of the MTV video music awards.

Read more ....

Inside the New Harry Potter Movie's VFX Tech

From Popular Mechanics:

The sixth Harry Potter movie, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, opens today. Recently, PM's Digital Hollywood spoke with the film's visual-effects supervisor, Tim Burke, and with Tim Alexander of Industrial Light & Magic, about some of the technical effects behind the new wizarding film.

Millennium Bridge
At the beginning of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince—the first Potter film in two years, out today—things are looking pretty grim not just for the boy wizard, but for everyone. Gray storm clouds roll ominously over London as pedestrians, eyes on the sky, hurry across the city's Millennium Bridge. Suddenly, the bridge begins to quake. Cables snapping, the bridge undulates and twists, pulling free of its piers, and crashes violently into the Thames. Voldemort has recently returned from the dead, and he isn't satisfied to wreak havoc only in the wizarding world: His Death Eaters take his campaign of violent mayhem into the Muggle realm by destroying the Millennium Bridge in the film's dramatic opening sequence.

Read more ....

Lunar Orbiter Photographs Apollo Landing Sites

The Apollo 11 landing site, photographed by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. The scene is 925 feet across. (Credit: NASA)

From CNET News:

Forty years after the Apollo 11 voyage to the moon, NASA released photographs from the new Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft Friday showing five of the six Apollo landing sites. Shadows cast by the Apollo descent stages are clearly visible and in some cases, the moon walkers' paths can be seen in the disturbed dust.

"We were very interested in getting our first peek at the lunar module descent stages just for the thrill - and to see how well the cameras had come into focus," Mark Robinson, principal investigator of the LRO's main camera, said in a statement. "Indeed, the images are fantastic and so is the focus."

Read more ....

Windpower Could Provide 40 Times Earth's Power Needs

Virgin Waters: The Hywind project aims to perfect technology for floating windmills in the deep ocean, opening up new room for wind power to breathe Stephen Toner/Getty Images

From Popsci.com:

A team at Harvard decided to reinvestigate the potential for windpower around the globe, and found their new results to be significantly different than previous studies. According to the new study, we're capable of someday producing 40 times more power via wind than we currently consume overall.

This finding corresponds with recent research suggesting that you can draw more power at higher altitudes. The Harvard study is based around the use of taller 100-meter turbines, as opposed to 50-to-80-meter turbines.

Read more ....

Apollo 11 Hoax: One In Four People Do Not Believe In Moon Landing

20 July, 1969: Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin E."Buzz" Aldrin, Jr erecting the US flag at Tranquility Base during the First Lunar walk Photo: NASA

From The Telegraph:

A quarter of Britons believe the Apollo 11 mission moon landings in 1969 were a hoax.

Eleven of the 1009 people surveyed thought Buzz Lightyear was the first person on the Moon.

The Toy Story film character was named alongside Louis Armstrong. Eight of those taking part thought the late jazz musician made the first moon walk.

Read more ....

Attack Of The Giant Squids

Photo: Marine biologist John Hyde holds a jumbo flying squid,
which have returned to the Californian coast

Terror As Hundreds Of 5ft Long Creatures Of The Deep Invade Californian Coastline -- The Daily Mail

Hundreds of aggressive jumbo flying squid have appeared off the coast of San Diego, attacking divers and washing up dead on beaches.

The 5-foot long sea monsters, which have razor-sharp beaks and toothy tentacles, have been bringing terror to scuba drivers and swimmers on the coast's tourist-packed beaches.

The carnivorous calamari, which can grow up to 100 pounds, came up from the depths last week and swarms of them have pounced on unsuspecting divers.

Read more ....

DNA Not The Same In Every Cell Of Body: Major Genetic Differences Between Blood And Tissue Cells Revealed

New research calls into question one of the most basic assumptions of human genetics: that when it comes to DNA, every cell in the body is essentially identical to every other cell. (Credit: iStockphoto)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (July 16, 2009) — Research by a group of Montreal scientists calls into question one of the most basic assumptions of human genetics: that when it comes to DNA, every cell in the body is essentially identical to every other cell. Their results appear in the July issue of the journal Human Mutation.

This discovery may undercut the rationale behind numerous large-scale genetic studies conducted over the last 15 years, studies which were supposed to isolate the causes of scores of human diseases.

Read more ....

Neanderthals Were Few And Poised For Extinction

From Live Science:

Neanderthals are of course extinct. But there never were very many of them, new research concludes.

In fact, new genetic evidence from the remains of six Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) suggests the population hovered at an average of 1,500 females of reproductive age in Europe between 38,000 and 70,000 years ago, with the maximum estimate of 3,500 such female Neanderthals.

"It seems they never really took off in Eurasia in the way modern humans did later," said study researcher Adrian Briggs of the Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany.

Read more ....

New Material Could Cool Electronics 100 Times More Efficiently

Thermal Ground Plane Conductive Material Georgia Tech

From Popsci.com:

Georgia Tech researchers are working on a new novel material for cooling high-powered military radar gear up to 100 times better than current conductive heat-dissipation technology.

Developed in conjunction with Raytheon and DARPA, the material is a composite of copper and diamond, two of the most effective heat-conducting materials. The composite would serve as part of a sandwich of cooling materials called a Thermal Ground Plane, which, combined with a liquid cooling setup, would surround the transmit/receive module in a radar system.

Read more ....

Cave Record Of Britain's Pioneers

From The BBC:

The Cheddar Gorge in Somerset was one of the first sites inhabited by humans when they returned to Britain towards the end of the last Ice Age.

New radiocarbon dates on bones from Gough's Cave show people were living there some 14,700 years ago.

The results confirm the site's great antiquity and suggest human hunters re-colonised Britain at a time of rapid climate warming.

From 24,000 years ago, an ice sheet extended over much of Britain.

Read more ....

Periodic Table Gets A New Element After The Discovery Of 'Copernicium'

Image: Astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus, after whom the new element is named

From The Daily Mail:

The periodic table - the chart studied by generations of children and chemists - is to get a little more crowded.

Scientists yesterday announced they are to add a 'super heavy' element, called copernicium, to the table.

The element - which has the symbol Cp - is named after the astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus who deduced that the planets revolved around the sun.

It was discovered 13 years ago in a German nuclear laboratory - but was only accepted as a genuine element in June. For much of the last 13 years, copernicium was known as element 112.

The discovery and naming of a new element is big news in the world of chemistry.

Read more ....

After 40 Years NASA Has Goals, But Lacks Funds

Photo: The Saturn V makes history. The launch is marked in the annals of time by a period that included two other key events: Sen. Edward Kennedy's crash at Chappaquiddick (July 18) and Woodstock (Aug. 15). Apollo 11 video here. NASA

From Houston Chronicle:

It had all come down to three men sitting atop a 363-foot Saturn V rocket.

In the eight years since President John F. Kennedy stunned the spaceflight community and issued his challenge to put a man on the moon, NASA had spent $25 billion — akin to $140 billion-plus, today — and employed more than 300,000 technicians in its race against the Russians.

The result of these labors sat on a pad at Launch Complex 39A.

At 8:32 a.m. Houston time July 16, 1969, the rocket's engines fired, and the Apollo 11 crew — Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins — shook, rattled and reached orbit 12 minutes later.

Four days hence, with the planet watching from 240,000 miles away on television signals delayed by 1.3 seconds, Armstrong guided the lunar module Eagle to the surface of the moon. Then he uttered words that would make the city of Houston famous around the world:

“Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.”

Read more ....

Apollo 11 Moon Landing Footage Enhanced Hollywood Style

From The Telegraph:

It may have been a giant leap for mankind, but it was recorded for posterity in dark, fuzzy footage that has never quite lived up to importance of the occasion.

However, now, with a little help from Hollywood, man's first steps on the moon can be seen in suitably discernible, if not pristine, quality.

To commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Apollo mission and Neil Armstrong's historic stride down from the ladder of a lunar excursion module, NASA has released an enhanced version of the television footage first broadcast to an audience of half a billion.

Read more ....

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.

Read more ....

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.

Read more ....

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.

Read more ....

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.

Read more ....

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).

Read more ....

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.

Read more ....

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.

Read more ....

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.”

Read more ....

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.

Read more ....

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.

Read more ....