A Science News Aggregator That Covers Stories in the World Of Science And Technology.
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Launch Your Own Personal Satellite
From Popular Science:
Ever wanted to launch your own satellite into low earth orbit, then track it on ham radio for a few weeks before it burns up on re-entry? Well, 52 years after the launch of Sputnik, you can. Interorbital Systems is offering YOU the chance (by the end of 2010) to send up a TubeSat Personal Satellite Kit for the low introductory price of just $8,000.
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Do Computers Make Planes Less Or More Safe?
From ABC News:
A Look at Whether Increased Automation Means that Planes Will be More Dangerous.
Ben Cave was starting to get bored. The Australian had been sitting in his seat for more than three hours, and he still had two hours left before the Qantas jet was scheduled to touch down in Perth.
The Airbus A330 was flying at a cruising altitude of 11,278 meters (37,000 feet). The calm of modern jet travel, accentuated by the monotonous drone of the engines, prevailed on board the aircraft. The flight attendants were clearing away the last of the lunch trays into their trolleys, some of the 303 passengers were waiting near the toilets, and others were passing the time with stretching exercises.
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Domestic Dog Origins Challenged
From BBC News:
The suggestion that the domestic dog originated in East Asia has been challenged.
The huge genetic diversity of dogs found in East Asia had led many scientists to conclude that domestication began there.
But new research published in the journal PNAS shows the DNA of dogs in African villages is just as varied.
An international group of researchers analysed blood samples from dogs in Egypt, Uganda and Namibia.
Today's dogs are descended from Eurasian grey wolves, domesticated between 15,000 and 40,000 years ago.
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Scientists Report Original Source Of Malaria
From Science Daily:
ScienceDaily (Aug. 4, 2009) — Researchers have identified what they believe is the original source of malignant malaria: a parasite found in chimpanzees in equatorial Africa.
UC Irvine biologist Francisco Ayala and colleagues think the deadly parasite was transmitted to humans from chimpanzees perhaps as recently as 5,000 years ago – and possibly through a single mosquito, genetic analyses indicate. Previously, malaria's origin had been unclear.
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Top 10 American Innovations
From Live Science:
With the recession seemingly on the wane, it is time to tap into that spirit of innovation that has always succeeded in moving America forward, President Obama said Aug. 1.
Pull up your bootstraps and invent stuff, in other words.
Historically, Americans have had no trouble leading the way in scientific and technological advancement, especially in the 20th century, and it's that leadership that has pulled the country out of tough economic times. Foster the innate potential with policies and education and this recession can be a thing of the past too, according to Obama.
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After The Boom, Is Wikipedia Heading For Bust?
From New Scientist:Wikipedia has rapidly become one of the most used reference sources in the world, but a new study shows that the website's explosive growth is tailing off and also suggests the community-created encyclopaedia has become less welcoming to new contributors.
Ed Chi and colleagues at the Palo Alto Research Center in California warn that the changes could compromise the encyclopaedia's quality in the long term.
"It's easy to say that Wikipedia will always be here," says Chi, a computer scientist. "This research shows that is not a given."
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Living Near A Wind Farm Can Cause Heart Disease, Panic Attacks And Migraines
From The Daily Mail:
Living close to wind farms can lead to a greater risk of heart disease, panic attacks and migraines, according to a study.
The farms can cause 'wind turbine syndrome', the symptoms of which also include tinnitus, vertigo and sleep deprivation, research to be published later this year claims.
Dr Nina Pierpoint, a leading New York paediatrician, says her five-year study of people living near wind turbines in the U.S., Britain, Italy, Ireland and Canada has led her to believe that they can also trigger nightmares in children and stop their brains developing properly.
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Trees Are 'Crucial Famine Food'
Trees can serve as a vital "famine food" to keep drought-hit communities alive when all other food crops fail, according to campaigners.
Food insecurity is a routine fact of life for many of the world's poorest people, Miranda Spitteler, chief executive of Tree Aid told BBC News.
She said the West needed to recognize the important role trees could play in reducing the need for conventional aid.
She also called for support for a local tree-based solution to food shortages.
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Scientists 'Grow Replacement Teeth In Mice'
From The Telegraph:Scientists have managed to grow replacement teeth in mice from cells in a laboratory.
The team behind the research claim that it is a crucial step towards growing fully functioning "bioengineered" organs in the human body.
The scientists grew a tooth "germ", a seed-like piece of tissue which contains the cells and instructions necessary to form a tooth, which they then transplanted into the animal's jawbones.
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Monday, August 3, 2009
Newly Discovered Faults Illuminate Earthquake Hazard Along San Andreas
From Science Daily:
ScienceDaily (Aug. 3, 2009) — New research by a team of scientists from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) offers new insight into the San Andreas Fault as it extends beneath Southern California's Salton Sea. The team discovered a series of prominent faults beneath the sea, which transfer motion away from the San Andreas Fault as it disappears beneath the Salton Sea. The study provides new understanding of the intricate earthquake faults system beneath the sea and what role it may play in the earthquake cycle along the southern San Andreas Fault.
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5 Top Galactic Bodies Anyone Can See (With a Cheap Telescope)
From Popular Mechanics:
Anthony Wesley beat NASA to the punch with help from one of his super powerful hand-modded telescopes when he observed the now famous black dot on Jupiter. But even a casual stargazer can catch some of the universe's five star views with an inexpensive telescope and a curious eye. Here are five celestial beauties you can see even with your $300, 75x zoom telescope.
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Scientists Uncork Potential Secret Of Red Wine's Health Benefits
Scientists have unraveled a mystery that has perplexed scientists since red wine was first discovered to have health benefits: how does resveratrol control inflammation? (Credit: iStockphoto/Ina Peters)From Science Daily:
ScienceDaily (Aug. 3, 2009) — Scientists from Scotland and Singapore have unraveled a mystery that has perplexed scientists since red wine was first discovered to have health benefits: how does resveratrol control inflammation? New research published in the August 2009 print issue of The FASEB Journal, not only explains resveratrol's one-two punch on inflammation, but also show how it—or a derivative—can be used to treat potentially deadly inflammatory disease, such as appendicitis, peritonitis, and systemic sepsis.
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Humans 2.0: Replacing The Mind And Body
From Live Science:
When President Barack Obama said in his weekly radio address Saturday that innovation would be a key to the future of the nation, he probably was not thinking specifically of artificial brains or replacement eyeballs.
But other researchers already have such goals in mind and are well on their way to building Humans 2.0, the real-life Steve Austin of the "Six Million Dollar Man."
Recent breakthroughs in bionics and lab-grown body parts — along with news last month that a Swiss research team aims to recreate the intricacies of the human brain within a decade — show science is rapidly creating many of the parts needed to build a fully functional human almost from scratch.
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Five Tools To Survive the Apocalypse
From Popular Science:
Swine flu, nuclear tests, global warming—signs of impending doom abound. Should the unthinkable happen, the smart survivalist has two options: flee the planet or, for those of us who aren’t Richard Branson, stock up on gear that will meet your basic needs during Armageddon. If the world doesn’t end, you can always take your new gadgets camping.
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Comet Formation Theory May Not Be Set In Stone (Or Ice)
From Scientific American:
A new model for comet production revises the theory of their origins.
A few times a year, a visitor from deep space swings by Earth's neighborhood. Usually coming in peace, these interlopers pass by close enough to be seen, then continue on their way.
The uninvited guests are comets, streaky globules of ice and dust dislodged from one of their usual haunts far from the sun and planets: the Oort cloud. Named for Dutch astronomer Jan Oort, who hypothesized its existence in 1950, the theorized cloud is thought to contain billions or even trillions of comets that range out a few thousand to tens of thousands of times as far from the sun as Earth is. Oort cloud comets are occasionally nudged onto trajectories carrying them into the inner solar system by the passing of nearby stars or other interactions with the rest of the Milky Way Galaxy.
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Dolphin Body Language 'Follows Human Verbal Communication'
From The Telegraph:
Dolphin body language follows human rules of verbal communication, scientists have discovered.
As a general rule, the most frequently used words in human languages tend to be the shortest.
The same law applies to dolphins slapping their tails, diving, flopping sideways, and performing other movements when surface swimming, according to Spanish and British researchers.
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Shake, Rattle And Roll -- Why So Few Japanese Pagodas Have Ever Fallen Down
YOUR correspondent is indebted to readers for their interesting comments about last week’s column on timber-framed buildings. He is especially grateful to Anjin-san, whose observations about Japanese pagodas reminded him of a day spent a dozen years ago with Shuzo Ishida, a structural engineer at Kyoto Institute of Technology. Mr Ishida, known to his students as “Professor Pagoda”, has a passion for the building’s unique dynamics.
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Galileo's Vision
Image: Galileo was the first to discover the moons of Jupiter. Michael Benson / Kinetikon Pictures / Corbis (Jupiter) / Scala / Art Resource, NY (Galileo)From The Smithsonium:
Four hundred years ago, the Italian scientist looked into space and changed our view of the universe.
Inside a glass case sits a plain-looking tube, worn and scuffed. Lying in the street, it would look like a length of old pipe. But as I approach it, Derrick Pitts—only half in jest—commands: "Bow down!"
The unremarkable-looking object is in fact one of the most important artifacts in the history of science: it's one of only two surviving telescopes known to have been made by Galileo Galilei, the man who helped revolutionize our conception of the universe. The telescope is the centerpiece of "Galileo, the Medici and the Age of Astronomy," an exhibition at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia (until September 7).
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Integral Disproves Dark Matter Origin For Mystery Radiation
From Space Daily:
ScienceDaily (Aug. 2, 2009) — A team of researchers working with data from ESA’s Integral gamma-ray observatory has disproved theories that some form of dark matter explains mysterious radiation in the Milky Way.
That this radiation exists has been known since the 1970s, and several theories have been proposed to explain it. Integral’s unprecedented spectral and spatial resolution showed that it strongly peaks towards the centre of the Galaxy, with an asymmetry along the Galactic disc.
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Sunday, August 2, 2009
Experts Puzzled By Spot On Venus
Astronomers are puzzled by a strange bright spot which has appeared in the clouds of Venus.
The spot was first identified by an amateur astronomer on 19 July and was later confirmed by the European Space Agency's Venus Express spacecraft.
Data from the European probe suggests the spot appeared at least four days before it was spotted from Earth.
The bright spot has since started to expand, being spread by winds in Venus's thick atmosphere.
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Hacking Threat 'Exposes Every iPhone In The World' To Takeover By Criminals
From The Daily Mail:
Criminals could take control of every iPhone in the world via text message, owners are being warned.
Hackers could exploit a newly discovered flaw in Apple's handset to control its key functions - stealing data, making calls, surfing the internet and sending texts.
Security experts warn that hackers could soon hijack any of the world's 21million iPhones for identity theft and other crimes.
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Smoothing The Way For Light
From Technology Review:
A technique makes smooth metal films for optical computing and imaging.
Researchers at the University of Minnesota have developed a cheap way to repeatedly make very smooth nanopatterned thin films. The advance could have implications for making devices--such as more efficient solar cells, higher-resolution microscopes, and optical computers--that use light in an unconventional way.
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The U.S. Army's Solar Enewrgy Program
Army Starts Solar Plant; Next Step: Care About Climate Change -- The Danger Room
The U.S. Army is about to start building a 500 megawatt solar thermal plant in the California desert. When it’s done, the facility will be one of the largest renewable energy plants in the world. Which is kind of ironic, since the Army doesn’t pay all that much attention to climate change. Turns out, sustainable energy is safer, said Dr. Kevin Geiss, the program director for the project.
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More News On the Army's Solar Program
Sun power: Army unveils giant solar project -- CNET
Army Green: Ft. Irwin Has Builders for 500 MW Solar Project -- Wall Street Journal
Clark Energy hired for Defense Department solar job -- Business Journal
Army Plans 500 MW of Solar Power at Fort Irwin by 2022 -- Treehugger
Giant Pencil Traces Achaeological Finds Fast
From New Scientist:
EVERY object unearthed by an archaeological dig must have its exact position recorded. This is normally a painstaking process involving measuring rods and string, but a device that uses technology originally developed to guide robots could speed up the process.
Gran Dolina in central Spain is a Palaeolithic site that contains important hominin remains which date from between 780,000 and 300,000 years ago. Thousands of fossils are discovered there every year, but registering them all by hand makes progress frustratingly slow. So archaeologists working on the site contacted Angélica de Antonio Jiménez and Fernando Seco at the Institute of Industrial Automation in Madrid, to see if they could come up with a better way.
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New HIV Strain Leapt To Humans From Gorillas: Study
From AFP:
PARIS — French virologists on Sunday said they had found a new subtype of the AIDS virus that appears to have jumped the species barrier to humans from gorillas.
The new strain, found in a woman from Cameroon, West Africa, is part of the HIV-1 family of microbes that account for the vast majority of cases of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), they said.
Until now, all have been linked to the chimpanzee.
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Update: New HIV strain discovered in woman from Cameroon --AP
Evidence Of Liquid Water In Comets Reveals Possible Origin Of Life
Comet Hale-Bopp. The watery environment of early comets, together with the vast quantity of organics already discovered in comets, would have provided ideal conditions for primitive bacteria to grow and multiply, experts argue. (Credit: iStockphoto/Kenneth C. Zirkel)From Science Daily:
ScienceDaily (July 31, 2009) — Comets have contained vast amounts of liquid water in their interiors during the first million years of their formation, a new study claims.
The watery environment of early comets, together with the vast quantity of organics already discovered in comets, would have provided ideal conditions for primitive bacteria to grow and multiply. So argue Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe and his colleagues at the Cardiff Centre for Astrobiology in a paper published in the International Journal of Astrobiology
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Caught On Video: Immune Cell Destroys Bacteria
From Live Science:
In a starring role for E. coli, researchers have developed a new technique to make movies of bacteria as they infect their victims and are consumed by the host's immune cells.
The movies mark the first time that scientists have been able to look at bacteria infecting living organisms in real time, according to the researchers. Most studies of bacterial infections are preformed after the host has died.
The scientists, from the University of Bath and the University of Exeter in the UK, tested out their movie-making method on developing fruit fly embryos. They injected fluorescently tagged bacteria into the embryos and observed how the microbes interacted with the insect's immune cells, called hemocytes, using time-lapse confocal microscopy, an imaging technique. They used two types of bacteria for the study Escherichia coli and Photorhabdus asymbiotica.
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Britain's Dirty Money: How theLloose Change In Our Pockets Is Costing The Earth
From The Daily Mail:
This vast hole in the ground, visible from space, is the world's biggest copper mine. It supplies the Royal Mint, but is also responsible for inflicting shocking environmental damage and poisoning the local population...
Escondida in Chile, the world's largest copper mine. A vast amount of water is being drained every day from what is already one of the driest places on earth. These mines are causing significant damage to the planet and its people. Yet the Government-owned Royal Mint continues to buy metal from them
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The Secret Life Of Sperm Is Unlocked
about half of them because the man has a problem. SPL
From The Independent:
Infertile couples may be spared years of fruitless treatment with the discovery that the human egg can read the father's genetic key and screen out failures.
Thousands of infertile couples could be spared the pain, anguish and expense of fruitless IVF treatments, thanks to the discovery of a lock-and-key mechanism between sperm and egg cells.
The research could explain why so many couples with no apparent reproductive problems are unable to conceive. Although more than 40,000 in vitro fertilisation cycles are prescribed in Britain each year, only 10,000 births result.
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The World's 18 Strangest Buildings—And Why We Love Them
From Popular Mechanics:
This July, the American Institute of Architects forecasted steep declines in nonresidential construction spending through 2010. Spending is projected to decrease by 16 percent this year and another 12 percent in 2010. With less money flowing through the industry, high-end design projects are likely to be scaled back; architects, builders and regular folk are opting for retrofits with more practical design. While the demand may be turning to minimal and frugal architecture, unusual design still holds a place for museums and other prominent locations, primarily because it is so effective at turning heads. Here are some of our favorite unusual designs for museums, offices, homes and libraries—and why they are so effective at drawing attention.
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A Biofuel Process to Replace All Fossil Fuels
From Technology Review:
A startup unveils a high-yield process for making fuel from carbon dioxide and sunlight.
A startup based in Cambridge, MA--Joule Biotechnologies--today revealed details of a process that it says can make 20,000 gallons of biofuel per acre per year. If this yield proves realistic, it could make it practical to replace all fossil fuels used for transportation with biofuels. The company also claims that the fuel can be sold for prices competitive with fossil fuels.
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Saturday, August 1, 2009
Sahara Desert Greening Due to Climate Change?
From National Geographic:
Desertification, drought, and despair—that's what global warming has in store for much of Africa. Or so we hear.
Emerging evidence is painting a very different scenario, one in which rising temperatures could benefit millions of Africans in the driest parts of the continent.
Scientists are now seeing signals that the Sahara desert and surrounding regions are greening due to increasing rainfall.
Read more ....
Honeybees Warn Of Risky Flowers
From The BBC:
Honeybees warn each other to steer clear of dangerous flowers where they might get killed by lurking predators.
Scientists made the discovery by placing dead bees upon flowers and then watching how newly arriving bees react to the danger.
Not only do the bees avoid the flowers, they then communicate the threat when they return to the hive via their well known waggle dance.
The discovery is published in the journal Animal Behaviour.
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Scientists Drill a Mile Into Active Deep Sea Fault Zone
In the first deep sea drilling expedition designed to gather seismic data, scientists have successfully drilled nearly a mile beneath the ocean floor into one of the world’s most active earthquake zones.
Researchers aboard the drilling vessel Chikyu — meaning “planet Earth” in Japanese — used a special technology called riser drilling to penetrate the upper portion of the Nankai Trough, an earthquake zone located about 36 miles southeast of Japan. By collecting rock samples and installing long-term monitoring devices, the geologists hope to understand how stress builds up in subduction zones like Nankai, where the Philippine Sea plate plate is sliding beneath the island of Japan.
Riser drilling involves encasing a deep sea drill in a giant metal tube, called a riser, that extends from the ship down to the drilling site, effectively bolting the ship to the sea floor. The researchers circulate lightly pressurized mud down through the drilling tube and back up through the riser.
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Large Hadron Collider 'Atom Smasher' Restart Delayed Yet Again
From The Independent:
Repairs to two small helium leaks in the world's largest atom smasher will delay the restart of the giant machine another month until November, a spokesman for the operator said.
James Gillies said an additional setback to the timing could result if some other problem is found, but the European Organisation for Nuclear Research is taking pains to make sure it avoids another major shutdown like the electrical failure of Sept. 19.
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Web Use Flattens As Behaviors Change
The amount of time people spend online has not increased since last year, according to a report released by Forrester on Monday. Perhaps more interesting, however, is the reason for the trend: people's online behavior has changed.
"Engagement with the online channel has deepened," writes Forrester analyst Jackie Anderson. "Web users are becoming savvier and are better multi-taskers. Many know exactly where they want to go when they log in."
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From Sand to Silicon: the Making of a Chip
From Intel:
Illustrations - Making of a Chip
View this graphic presentation offering a high-level demonstration of the process for manufacturing a central processing unit (CPU), which operates in every PC today. Here you can catch a glimpse of some of the amazingly sophisticated work going on daily inside Intel's cutting-edge silicon manufacturing fabs.
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Actions Taken Over Next Decade To Demonstrate And Deploy Key Technologies Will Determine US Energy Future
From Science Digest:ScienceDaily (Aug. 1, 2009) — With a sustained national commitment, the United States could obtain substantial energy-efficiency improvements, new sources of energy, and reductions in greenhouse gas emissions through the accelerated deployment of existing and emerging energy technologies, according to America's Energy Future: Technology And Transformation, the capstone report of the America's Energy Future project of the National Research Council.
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Mammals Beat Reptiles in Battle of Evolution
From Live Science:
Mammals, birds and fish are among evolution’s "winners," while crocodiles and other reptiles have ended up on the losing end, a new study suggests.
"Our results indicate that mammals are special," said study leader Michael Alfaro of UCLA.
The research allowed scientists to calculate for the first time which animal lineages have exceptional rates of success. The so-called "winners" have more species in their group, which means they have successfully evolved and diversified into many types of environments. The losers have diversified less, even over the course of millions of years.
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Can the World's Fisheries Survive Our Appetites?
From Time Magazine:
Boris Worm, a marine biologist at Dalhousie University in Canada, made a startling prediction in the pages of Science in 2006: if overfishing continued at then-current rates, he said, the world would essentially run out of seafood by 2048. Worm's bold analysis whipped up controversy in the usually pacific world of marine science — one colleague, Ray Hilborn of the University of Washington, called the Science study "mindbogglingly stupid." But Worm held fast to his predictions: that the oceans had limits, and that marine species were declining so fast that they would eventually disappear.
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Firefox Surpasses 1 Billion Downloads
From The L.A. Times:The free, open-source browser gets high marks for speed, efficiency, adaptability and user-friendliness. It is an achievement for a browser backed not by a corporation but a small nonprofit group.
The popular Firefox Web browser, developed by a grass-roots group, reached a major milestone Friday -- its billionth download.
The download counter rolled over the 1-billion mark early Friday, marking a feat for a browser that, unlike Microsoft's Internet Explorer or Apple's Safari, is run by a nonprofit organization, Mozilla, with fewer than 250 employees.
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Update: Firefox Hits 1 Billion Downloads -- So What's Next? -- PC World
This Year's Mild Season In Tornado Alley Frustrates Scientists

From Yahoo News/AP:
DES MOINES, Iowa – This has been an unusually mild year in Tornado Alley, which is good news, of course, for the people who live here, but a little frustrating to scientists who planned to chase twisters as part of a $10 million research project.
"You're out there to do the experiment and you're geared up every day and ready. And when there isn't anything happening, that is frustrating," said Don Burgess, a scientist at the University of Oklahoma. But he was quick to add that he is pleased the relative quiet has meant fewer injuries and less damage.
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Swiss Boat Aims To Be First To Circumnavigate The Globe Under Solar Power
From Popular Science:
In 2007, the first solar electric boat crossed the Atlantic Ocean. Now a Swiss group wants to cover that distance and keep going, circling the globe on nothing but the sun's power for the first time.
The team of engineers and scientists has embarked on the building of its 98-foot long vessel, dubbed Planet Solar, in Kiel, Germany. The boat's power will come from the 5,000 square feet of solar panels, about the size of two tennis courts, covering its broad deck. When the sun is shining bright above, they will convert 23 percent of the sun's rays to energy -- six percent more than average solar panels.
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Sharpest Ever Images Of Betelgeuse reveal How Explosive Red Supergiant Loses Mass
From The Daily Mail:
It looks like a catastrophic explosion in the latest sci-fi action thriller but this awe-inspiring image is actually based on the latest state-of-the-art space imaging.
The artist’s impression, inspired by the sharpest ever views of the supergiant star Betelgeuse, reveals an enormous plume of gas almost as big as our own Solar System blasting outwards.
The discoveries, revealed by the latest techniques on the European Space Agency’s Very Large Telescope, could help unravel why the mammoth plasma ball spews out material at such an incredible speed.
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Comet Likely Culprit In Tunguska Blast
From Science News:
Night-shining clouds created after space shuttle launches may offer clues into the cause of the Tunguska event, a mysterious blast which rocked southern Siberia more than a century ago.
Thin clouds have appeared at abnormally high altitudes over polar regions following space shuttle launches on several occasions in the past decade. These noctilucent, or night-shining, clouds typically occur in summer and lie at altitudes of about 85 kilometers, in a layer of the atmosphere called the thermosphere, says Michael C. Kelley, an atmospheric physicist at Cornell University. Kelley and his colleagues suggest in the July 28 Geophysical Research Letters that data gleaned from analyses of these high-flying clouds, as well as knowledge about the speed at which shuttle exhaust wafted to polar regions, now hint that the Tunguska blast of June 1908 (SN: 6/21/08, p. 5) resulted from a comet slamming into Earth’s atmosphere.
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Friday, July 31, 2009
Laser Propulsion: Wild Idea May Finally Shine
New laser propulsion experiments are throwing light on how to build future hypersonic aircraft and beam spacecraft into Earth orbit.
Indeed, a "Lightcraft revolution" could replace today's commercial jet travel. Passengers would be whisked from one side of the planet to the other in less than an hour - just enough time to get those impenetrable bags of peanuts open. Furthermore, beamed energy propulsion can make flight to orbit easy, instead of tenuous and dangerous.
That's the belief of Leik Myrabo an aerospace engineering professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY. He's an expert in directed energy applications, aerospace systems, space prime power, and advanced propulsion.
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Collision Course: The Need for Better Space Junk Regulations

From Popular Mechanics:
With 3000 satellites and a growing arsenal of space junk, Earth’s orbit is a crowded area. If debris continues to accumulate, low Earth orbit could eventually become too congested for safe satellite use and space travel. Unfortunately, space junk is hard to regulate and even harder to clean up. Here’s an overview of existing space junk laws and some proposals for addressing the problems with debris in space.
Close calls in orbit happen all the time—scientists estimate that launch vehicles and other objects come within striking distance of one other over 1000 times a day. So when tracking reports on Feb. 10, 2009, predicted that Iridium 33, a 12-foot-long, 1200-pound communications satellite, and a 1-ton Russian military sat, Kosmos 2251, would pass within less than half a mile of each other, no one was alarmed. It wasn’t the closest call predicted for that day, or even the closest pass for any of the 66 Iridium satellites that coming week. But at the time of the predicted approach, Iridium 33 fell silent.
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Fermi Paradox Points to Fewer Than 10 Extraterrestrial Civilizations
From Technology Review:
The absence of alien probes visiting the solar system places severe limits on the number of advanced civilizations that could be exploring the galaxy.
The Fermi paradox focuses on the existence of advanced civilizations elsewhere in the galaxy. If these civilizations are out there--and many analyses suggest the galaxy should be teeming with life--why haven't we seen evidence of them?
Today Carlos Cotta and Álvaro Morales from the University of Malaga in Spain add another angle to the discussion. One consideration is the speed at which a sufficiently advanced civilization could colonize the galaxy. Various analyses suggest that using spacecraft that travel at a tenth of the speed of light, a colonization wave could take some 50 million years to sweep the galaxy. Others have calculated that it may be closer to 13 billion years, which may explain why we have yet to spot extraterrestrials.
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Mercury Released By Dental Amalgam Fillings Are Not High Enough To Cause Harm, FDA Finds
The FDA has found that while elemental mercury has been associated with adverse health effects at high exposures, the levels released by dental amalgam fillings are not high enough to cause harm in patients. (Credit: iStockphoto)From Science Daily:
ScienceDaily (July 31, 2009) — The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today issued a final regulation classifying dental amalgam and its component parts – elemental mercury and a powder alloy—used in dental fillings. While elemental mercury has been associated with adverse health effects at high exposures, the levels released by dental amalgam fillings are not high enough to cause harm in patients.
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Skype Could Be Cut Off For Good Over Dispute
From Times Online:
Skype might have to shut down because of a dispute over the core technology used to make the internet telephone system work.
EBay, which paid $2.6 billion (£1.6 billion) for the voice-over-the-internet system in 2005, is facing a court battle with the original founders of the company who retained the rights to the technology at the heart of the system.
EBay admitted in a regulatory filing that it might have to close down the company. It said it was trying to develop alternative software but if that did not work, or if eBay lost the right to the original software: "Skype would be severely and adversely affected and the continued operation of Skype's business as currently conducted would likely not be possible."
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