DNA Evidence Can Be Fabricated, Scientists Show

From The New York Times:

Scientists in Israel have demonstrated that it is possible to fabricate DNA evidence, undermining the credibility of what has been considered the gold standard of proof in criminal cases.

The scientists fabricated blood and saliva samples containing DNA from a person other than the donor of the blood and saliva. They also showed that if they had access to a DNA profile in a database, they could construct a sample of DNA to match that profile without obtaining any tissue from that person.

“You can just engineer a crime scene,” said Dan Frumkin, lead author of the paper, which has been published online by the journal Forensic Science International: Genetics. “Any biology undergraduate could perform this.”

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The Most Exciting Cars of 2010

STAN HONDA / AFP / Getty

From Time Magazine:

The popularity of the Jeep Grand Cherokee was instrumental in launching the SUV boom of the 1990s. America's love affair with big, gas-guzzling hulks is pretty much over, but Chrysler believes there's a new chapter for this rugged classic. Jeep's engineers have shortened the vehicle, given it a more aerodynamic shape and equipped it with a more luxurious interior, featuring more expensive materials and higher-grade controls. It also comes with a more efficient V-6 engine while trying to remain faithful to Jeep's can-do heritage. The introduction of the Jeep Grand Cherokee is now scheduled for the second quarter of 2010.

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Strep Throat May Have Killed Mozart

FILE - This is an undated portrait of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. What killed Mozart so suddenly in 1791? A report in Tuesday's Annals of Internal Medicine, a medical journal published in Philadelphia, suggests it might have been something far more common: a strep infection. (AP Photo)

From Yahoo News/Reuters:

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The death of composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart at the age of 35 may have been caused by complications stemming from strep throat, according to a Dutch study published on Monday. Since the composer's death in 1791, there have been various theories about the cause of his untimely end, from intentional poisoning, to rheumatic fever, to trichinosis, a parasitic disease caused by eating raw or undercooked pork.

On his death certificate it was officially recorded that the cause of death was hitziges Frieselfieber, or "heated miliary fever," referring to a rash that looks like millet seeds.

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In The Pursuit Of Easy Money

Legal pounds Photo: CORBIS

From The Telegraph:

One in every fifty £1 coins is a fake, but the dark art of counterfeiting has been fascinating forgers for centuries.

On the morning of March 22, 1699 a prisoner in Newgate was brought to the hanging tree at Tyburn, now Marble Arch. He played to the crowd, praying loudly and then placing his own hood over his head before the executioner’s men pulled the ladder out from under him. He dangled, twitching and choking for minutes – the trapdoor gallows would not come into routine use in Britain for another 50 years – until at last he drooped.

Thus died William Chaloner, the most notorious counterfeiter of his day, brought to his death by the Warden of the Royal Mint – a former Cambridge don named Isaac Newton.

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Honey-bee Aggression Study Suggests Nurture Alters Nature

The study looked at bee aggression in European (pictured) and Africanized honey bees. (Credit: Photo by Diana Yates)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Aug. 18, 2009) — A new study reveals that changes in gene expression in the brain of the honey bee in response to an immediate threat have much in common with more long-term and even evolutionary differences in honey-bee aggression. The findings lend support to the idea that nurture (an organism's environment) may ultimately influence nature (its genetic inheritance).

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How It Works: Protecting New Orleans With The World's Largest Water Pump

Foiling the Flood Graham Murdoch

From Popular Science:

New Orleans sits smack dab between the Gulf of Mexico and Lake Pontchartrain, and when a hurricane comes rolling in, those bodies of water tend to spill into the streets. This summer, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers started construction on a barrier that can block a 16-foot swell blown in from the Gulf and a massive pumping station that will blast floodwaters back to sea.

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Internet 'Immune System' Could Block Viruses

Getting ISPs to cooperate could help in the fight against worms (Image: Thomas Northcut/Getty)

From New Scientist:

IT IS 0530 UTC, 25 January 2003. A computer worm named Slammer has just unleashed one of the most devastating attacks on the internet ever. Within minutes, it infects nearly 90 per cent of vulnerable computers. Major net links break down, ATM machines fail and airlines have to cancel flights.

What was impressive about Slammer was the overwhelming speed of infection. There was no chance to intervene. Six years on, our defences are little better.

Scott Coull of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Boleslaw Szymanski of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, want to change that. They have devised a system to combat highly virulent, malicious worms by embedding defence mechanisms in key parts of the internet - akin to endowing it with an immune system.

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The Science Behind That Fresh Seaside Smell

The smell of fresh sea air is unmistakable Photo: Getty

From The Telegraph:

A tiny molecule lurks behind the evocative smell of the seaside.

Think of the tangy smell of the sea, so evocative of summer holidays, the scream of seagulls and sand between your toes. Where does it come from? Ozone? Fresh sea air? Actually, the truth is slightly less tantalising: it's a gas released by bacteria.

Two years ago Andy Johnston, a professor of biology at the University of East Anglia, identified that the smell of the sea came from a molecule called dimethyl sulfide (DMS). Now, he has managed to crack the entire biochemical pathway by which the scent is produced. DMS turns out to be an important chemical found in many natural processes, such as cloud formation. Birds love the smell and will flock towards tiny concentrations. It's even added to processed foods to give a savoury note: small amounts can impart the flavour of cabbages, tomatoes, butter and cream – even lemons or roast chicken, according to Prof Johnston.

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Can Geoengineering Help Slow Global Warming?

From Time Magazine:

As we pump billions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, we're doing more than warming the planet and scrambling the climate. We're also conducting what climatologist James Hansen has called a "vast uncontrolled experiment." In effect, we're on our way to engineering a world very different from the one we were handed. Belatedly, we're trying to turn off the carbon spigot, hoping that by incrementally reducing the emissions we've spent a couple of centuries pouring into the air we can stop the climate slide before it's too late.

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Popcorn And Cereals – The New Superfoods?

Popcorn contains high levels of antioxidants, according to a study by US chemical experts.

From The Guardian:

Scientists discover surprisingly high levels of health-boosting antioxidants in 'junk' food.

Popcorn and breakfast cereals, frequently derided as junk food, may contain "surprisingly large" servings of healthy antioxidants, according to chemical researchers.

Any nutritional value of snack foods was previously thought to rest on their high fibre content – a virtue regularly trumpeted by manufacturers on food packaging.

But a study presented today to the American Chemical Society (ACS) suggests the benefit of grain-based foods lies in the significant presence of antioxidants known as polyphenols.

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How Fast Can Man Run?

Click Image to Enlarge

From The Daily Mail:

As Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt smashes his own world record, are there ANY limits to what the human body can achieve?.

The question is, just how fast can he go? We asked this back in August last year when he smashed his own 100metres world record at the Beijing Olympics.

Then, he did it in 9.69 seconds, but his insouciant, hands-aloft stroll over the finishing line made many suspect that there was more to go.

And on Sunday, a year to the day after setting that extraordinary record in China, Usain Bolt showed that there was - more than a tenth of a second, in fact. Now, if he could only sort out his dodgy start, he might be able to break the record once more.

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New Nanolaser Key To Future Optical Computers And Technologies

Researchers have created the tiniest laser since its invention nearly 50 years ago. Because the new device, called a "spaser," is the first of its kind to emit visible light, it represents a critical component for possible future technologies based on "nanophotonic" circuitry. The color diagram (a) shows the nanolaser's design: a gold core surrounded by a glasslike shell filled with green dye. Scanning electron microscope images (b and c) show that the gold core and the thickness of the silica shell were about 14 nanometers and 15 nanometers, respectively. A simulation of the SPASER (d) shows the device emitting visible light with a wavelength of 525 nanometers. (Credit: Birck Nanotechnology Center, Purdue University)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Aug. 17, 2009) — Researchers have created the tiniest laser since its invention nearly 50 years ago, paving the way for a host of innovations, including superfast computers that use light instead of electrons to process information, advanced sensors and imaging.

Because the new device, called a "spaser," is the first of its kind to emit visible light, it represents a critical component for possible future technologies based on "nanophotonic" circuitry, said Vladimir Shalaev, the Robert and Anne Burnett Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University.

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Cloaking Technology May Protect From Natural Disasters

Like sound or light waves, tsunamis have a wavelength, crests and troughs that could be cancelled out to effectively cloak, say, an oil rig and protect it from the waves, based on new technology. But practically pulling such complex cloaking off will require a lot more research. Credit: Stockxpert

From Live Science:

Cloaking, that perennial technology of comic books and sci-fi series, may be one step closer to reality.

Researchers have developed a new cloaking method that may someday prevent submarines and fighter jets from being detected by sonar and radar. It might also be used to shield buildings and oil rigs from the devastating effects of earthquakes and tsunamis.

As it is often depicted in sci-fi movies and books, cloaking involves making an object partly or completely invisible to incoming radiation such as light or radio waves.

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Cockroaches Future-Proofed Against Climate Change

Climate change? Not bothered (Image: Natalie Schimpf)

From New Scientist:

Hate cockroaches? Best pour yourself a stiff drink. The widely loathed insects can hold their breath to save water, a new study has found – and the trick could help them to thrive in the face of climate change.

When cockroaches are resting, they periodically stop breathing for as long as 40 minutes, though why they do so has been unclear.

To investigate the mystery, Natalie Schimpf and her colleagues at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, examined whether speckled cockroaches (Nauphoeta cinerea) change their breathing pattern in response to changes in carbon dioxide or oxygen concentration, or humidity.

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The Smallest Laser Ever Made

Tiny laser: This simulation shows the intensity of light around a new type of laser, called a spaser, when operating in a plasmon-producing mode. The concentration of plasmons is most intense at the gold sphere that makes up its core. The inner black circle indicates the position of the sphere, which is coated with a dye-embedded silica shell, marked by the outer black line. Credit: Nature

From Technology Review:

Surface-plasmon lasers could enable a new generation of computers based on nanophotonics.

Researchers have demonstrated the smallest laser ever, consisting of a nanoparticle just 44 nanometers across. The device is dubbed a "spaser" because it generates a form of radiation called surface plasmons. The technique allows light to be confined in very small spaces, and some physicists believe that spasers could form the basis of future optical computers just as transistors are the basis of today's electronics.

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IBM Sees Future Of Microchips In DNA

From Breitbart/AFP:

IBM said it was looking to DNA "origami" for a powerful new generation of ultra-tiny microchips.

The US computer giant collaborated with California Institute of Technology researchers to develop a way to design microchips that mimic how chains of DNA molecules fold, allowing for processors far smaller and denser than any seen today.

"This is a way to assemble an electronics device of the future," said Bill Hinsberg, manager of the lithography group at IBM's Almaden Research Center in California, on Monday.

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Sony Plans to Adopt Common Format for E-Books

From The New York Times:

Paper books may be low tech, but no one will tell you how and where you can read them.

For many people, the problem with electronic books is that they come loaded with just those kinds of restrictions. Digital books bought today from Amazon.com, for example, can be read only on Amazon’s Kindle device or its iPhone software.

Some restrictions on the use of e-books are likely to remain a fact of life. But some publishers and consumer electronics makers are aiming to give e-book buyers more flexibility by rallying around a single technology standard for the books. That would also help them counter Amazon, which has taken an early lead in the nascent market.

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Twitter Tweets Are 40% 'Babble'

From The BBC:

A short-term study of Twitter has found that 40% of the messages sent via it are "pointless babble."

Carried out by US market research firm Pear Analytics, the study aimed to produce a snapshot of what people do with the service.

Almost as prevalent as the babble were "conversational" tweets that used it as a surrogate instant messaging system.

The study found that only 8.7% of messages could be said to have "value" as they passed along news of interest.

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Kenya Losing 100 Lions Every Year: Conservation Group

An African Lion yawns next to a lioness in the Maasai Mara, approximately 400 kilometres southwest of Nairobi, in 2006. Kenya's lion population has been dropping by an average 100 lions each year since 2002, the Kenya Wildlife Service announced Monday, warning that the big cats could be extinct in the next two decades. (AFP/File/Tony Karumba)

From Yahoo News/AFP:

NAIROBI (AFP) – Kenya's lion population has been dropping by an average 100 lions each year since 2002, the Kenya Wildlife Service announced Monday, warning that the big cats could be extinct in the next two decades.

Cattle herders who kill the lions in retaliation for attacks on their stock have been blamed for much of the decline, the organisation's spokesman Paul Udoto told AFP.

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Internet Giants Could Slash Energy Costs 40 Percent With Smart Rerouting Algorithm

Xbox Live Lives Here Simon Norfolk via The New York Times

From Popular Science:

A routing algorithm can channel Internet data to locations where electricity prices are cheapest

Moving computing from the desktop to the 24/7 data centers of the "cloud" may be the way forward (just ask Google), but it will come with a hefty energy price. Teams at MIT and Carnegie Mellon University, however, are developing a smart algorithm that could reroute Internet traffic to where energy is cheapest at any given moment, potentially saving millions of dollars in energy usage.

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'Smell Of Death' Research Could Help Recover Bodies In Disasters And Solve Crimes

Researchers say that a chemical profile of decomposition could eventually lead to a portable device for detecting human bodies at crime scenes and disaster areas. (Credit: Adam Dylewski, American Chemical Society)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Aug. 17, 2009) — In an advance toward the first portable device for detecting human bodies buried in disasters and at crime scenes, scientists today report early results from a project to establish the chemical fingerprint of death. Speaking at the 238th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS), they said a profile of the chemicals released from decomposing bodies could also lead to a valuable new addition to the forensic toolkit: An electronic device that could determine the time elapsed since death quickly, accurately and onsite.

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Terrifying 'Sleep Paralysis' Needs More Attention

From Live Science:

Sleep paralysis can be a terrifying experience for the near 50 percent of people who have had an episode. It's the middle of the night, your eyes are open, dark shapes are gathering around you, something has grabbed your feet, and you can't move. You can't even scream.

A new article by British researchers calls for more attention to be paid in the medical community to sleep paralysis, also known as "night terrors."

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Black Hole Parasites Explain Cosmic Flashes

From New Scientist:

SOME of the brightest flashes in the universe may be the result of black holes burrowing into stars and devouring them from inside.

The flashes are known as gamma-ray bursts because most of their energy is in the form of high-energy radiation, including gamma rays and X-rays. The longer flashes, lasting at least a few seconds, have long been thought to signal the deaths of massive stars that have run out of fuel, causing them to collapse to form black holes, unleashing powerful jets of radiation in the process.

Now an alternative explanation has been given new lease of life: a black hole may instead be an external attacker that dives into the belly of a massive star and consumes it.

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DNA May Help Build Next Generation of Chips

From Gadget Lab:

In the race to keep Moore’s Law alive, researchers are turning to an unlikely ally: DNA molecules that can be positioned on wafers to create smaller, faster and more energy-efficient chips.

Researchers at IBM have made a significant breakthrough in their quest to combine DNA strands with conventional lithographic techniques to create tiny circuit boards. The breakthrough, which allows for the DNA structures to be positioned precisely on substrates, could help shrink computer chips to about a 6-nanometer scale. Intel’s latest chips, by comparison, are on a 32-nanometer scale.

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Isotope Crisis Threatens Medical Care

Domestic source-to-be?At 10 megawatts, the University of Missouri Research Reactor is the largest university research reactor in the country. Within two months, officials there will submit a proposal to the Energy Department to build a facility that would ultimately allow domestic production of a medical isotope that's currently in critically short supply.University of Missouri Research Reactor

From Science News:

Global production of the feedstock for the leading medical-imaging isotope is low and erratic, putting health care in jeopardy.

Within the next two weeks, the vast majority of radioactive-imaging medical tests could be delayed or replaced by less desirable procedures. The reason: temporary shutdowns of Canadian and Dutch reactors that together normally provide some 70 percent of the world’s supplies of the isotope molybdenum-99 and at least 80 percent of North American supplies.

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Early Farming Methods Caused Climate Change, Say Researchers

From The Guardian:

Farmers thousands of years ago cleared land by burning forests and moved to a new area once the yields declined, say scientists.

Farmers who used "slash and burn" methods of clearing forests to grow crops thousands of years ago could have increased carbon dioxide levels enough to change the climate, researchers claimed today.

The US scientists believe that small populations released carbon emissions as they cleared large tracts of land to produce relatively meagre amounts of food.

They were much less efficient than farmers using today's agricultural practices because there were no constraints on land.

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Close Encounters... UFOs Made 600 Visits To The UK In A Single Year, According To MoD 'X-Files'

An alien ship hovers over the planet in 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind'

From The Daily Mail:

Hundreds of Britons had 'close encounters' with UFOs, according to previously-classified documents
released by the Ministry of Defence today.

The sightings were made between 1981 and 1996 from observers including police officers, fighter pilots and school children. They range from lights in the sky to close contact with aliens with 'lemon-shaped heads', and include detailed analysis on some of the UK's most well-known cases.

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Warming Of Arctic Current Over 30 Years Triggers Release Of Methane Gas

Researchers in Germany have found that more than 250 plumes of bubbles of methane gas are rising from the seabed of the West Spitsbergen continental margin in the Arctic, in a depth range of 150 to 400 metres. (Credit: Image courtesy of National Oceanography Centre, Southampton)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Aug. 16, 2009) — The warming of an Arctic current over the last 30 years has triggered the release of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, from methane hydrate stored in the sediment beneath the seabed.

Scientists at the National Oceanography Centre Southampton working in collaboration with researchers from the University of Birmingham, Royal Holloway London and IFM-Geomar in Germany have found that more than 250 plumes of bubbles of methane gas are rising from the seabed of the West Spitsbergen continental margin in the Arctic, in a depth range of 150 to 400 metres.

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Most U.S. Money Laced With Cocaine

From Live Science:

Traces of cocaine taint up to 90 percent of paper money in the United States, a new study finds.

A group of scientists tested banknotes from more than 30 cities in five countries, including the United States, Canada, Brazil, China, and Japan, and found "alarming" evidence of cocaine use in many areas.

U.S. and Canadian currency had the highest levels, with an average contamination rate of between 85 and 90 percent, while Chinese and Japanese currency had the lowest, between 12 and 20 percent contamination.

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Moderate Drinking 'Boosts Bones'

From The BBC:

Women who drink moderate amounts of beer may be strengthening their bones, according to Spanish researchers.

Their study of almost 1,700 women, published in the journal Nutrition, found bone density was better in regular drinkers than non-drinkers.

But the team added that plant hormones in the beer rather than the alcohol may be responsible for the effects.

Experts urged caution, warning that drinking more than two units of alcohol a day was known to harm bone health.

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Big Tropical Storms in Atlantic Hit 1,000-Year High

From ABC News:

Study Suggests Hurricane Frequency Has Increased Dramatically; Climate Change a Potential Culprit.

The people of U.S. Gulf Coast have felt unusually battered by big storms during the past few years. Now, it turns out their instincts are right.

A new report in the scientific journal Nature indicates that the last decade has seen, on average, more frequent hurricanes than any time in the last 1,000 years. The last period of similar activity occurred during the Medieval Warm Period.

The study is not definitive, but it is a unique piece of work that combines an analysis of sediment cores from inland lakes and tidal marshes with computer modeling and finds a "striking consistency" between the two, the authors suggest.

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In Galileo’s Footsteps

Galileo

From Newsweek:

For the first time in hundreds of years, the most powerful telescopes may soon come from Europe.
Galileo has been getting a lot of press lately, and no wonder. Four centuries ago this year, the Italian genius pointed his small, primitive telescope at the night sky and saw wonders nobody had imagined. His discoveries transformed our view of the heavens, but also infected astronomers with a permanent desire to peer just a bit deeper in the universe and find a few more cosmic secrets. Which is why, less than 20 years after they put the finishing touches on a generation of telescopes so big they would have made the Renaissance stargazer swoon, the astronomers are at it again. Three teams are racing to build telescopes four times wider and with up to 16 times the light gathering power than what exists now, and to have them trained on the stars by 2018.

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Augmented Reality Reveals History to Tourists

From : Science News Service

Doing virtual reality one better, a consortium of technology companies and European Union countries have created a "visual time machine" that allows tourists equipped with a smart phone to take a picture of an ancient object and then instantly review its history and see what it originally looked like.

This new technology, dubbed the "Intelligent Tourism and Cultural Information through Ubiquitous Services" (iTacitus, after the Roman historian), brings augmented reality to museums, palaces, castles and other tourist attractions, according to its developers."[Tourists] can look at a historic site and, by taking a photo or viewing it through the camera on the mobile device, be able to access much more information about it," said Luke Speller, a scientist with the BMT engineering group based in the U.K. "They are even able to visualize, in real time, how it looked at different stages in history."

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Bookyards Editor: For more books on science go here...

Maine’s Windkeepers: From Ship Masts To Windmills

Mike Cianchette, operations manager of the Stetson Mountain wind project, scans the mountain ridge while making inspections on top of a 300-foot tall windmill, in Range 8, Township 3, Maine. (Robert F. Bukaty/AP)

From Christian Science Monitor:

Today, winds help turn on the lights, run TVs and power washers, dryers and ovens in thousands of homes all over New England.

Silent surroundings almost tease the ears as clouds skitter across the top of this eastern corner of Maine. The wind, barely audible, swishes through beech and fir trees crowding the hills of an area so remote it’s part of the state’s Unorganized Territory.

Along the rounded ridge of Stetson Mountain, wisps of wind gain a whoosh-whoosh cadence as they push into motion mammoth blades at the tops of towers reaching hundreds of feet into the air.

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Cash In On Twitter -- But Beware

From CBS News:

(CBS) Twitter was once a place for people to stay in touch with each other and spread information, but now the site's taking on the role of marketplace.

The possibility of making money in 140 characters or less on Twitter has people atwitter about making big bucks via tweets. But is it really possible?

CBS News Science and Technology Correspondent Daniel Sieberg discussed it -- and ways others may try to cash in on you -- on "The Early Show" Friday.

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Cosmos: Probably The Greatest Science Documentary In The Universe

Carl Sagan's Cosmos: A Personal Voyage provides a complete guide to life, the universe and everything.

From The Guardian:

Almost 30 years after it first aired, Carl Sagan's cosmic travel guide still educates, entertains and inspires awe.

I never got to watch Carl Sagan's epic science documentary Cosmos as a child. I was at boarding school in 1980 when it was released, so my TV watching was restricted. I've heard science journalist colleagues talk about the series almost with reverence, describing Sagan's commentary as "poetry". The 13 one-hour episodes of Cosmos: A Personal Voyage have just been re-released, digitally remastered and with updates on scientific progress in the quarter century that has passed since the series was created. Would it live up to such high expectations?

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Send ET A Text Message From Earth

From Yahoo News/Space:

Here's a truly long-distance message...one aimed more than 20 light-years away.

A new Web site in Australia is gathering text messages from around the world, all to be beamed to a distant alien planet called Gliese 581d.

The clock is ticking to submit text messages of no longer than 160 characters – perhaps a signal that extraterrestrial life may have a case of attention deficit disorder. The project - called "Hello From Earth" - (http://www.HelloFromEarth.net) ends Aug. 24.

Once the communiques are amassed, they will be transmitted from NASA's Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex at Tidbinbilla.

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What Came Before The Big Bang?

Mehau Kulyk / Science Photo Library / Corbis

From Time Magazine:

Even as a boy watching the first moon landing on TV, Brian Clegg remembers wondering, "How did it all begin?" In his latest book, Before the Big Bang, the Cambridge-educated writer examines the theories that physicists and philosophers alike have put forth to explain how we got here. TIME spoke with Clegg about science as a social network, thinking outside of the box without losing his mind, and using Buffy the Vampire Slayer to explain Einstein.

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India Launches Bhuvan, Rival To Google Earth

From Times Online:

India has launched a rival to Google Earth, the search engine's hugely popular satellite imagery service.

The online tool, dubbed Bhuvan (Sanskrit for Earth), has been developed by the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro). Its debut comes as India redoubles its efforts to reap profits from its 45-year-old state-sponsored space programme, criticised by some as a drain on a country where 700 million people live on $US2 a day or less.

The new site also follows in the slipstream of the country's first moon probe, Chandrayaan-1, which successfully reached the lunar surface last November.

Read more ....

Night-Time Photos Shed Light On Growing Economies

Bright lights, big GDP (Image: NOAA/SPL)

From New Scientist:

NIGHT-TIME images taken from kilometres above the Earth could help us better understand the economies of some of the planet's least developed countries. So say the US economists behind a method for measuring changes GDP using the intensity of street lights and other night-time lighting.

A better way of estimating GDP is badly needed, especially for poorer nations. Data collected by national governments is weak when it comes to informal sectors of the economy, such as street markets. In some countries, such as Liberia, economic information systems are so poor that meaningful data is sometimes non-existent.

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Facebook Cornering Market on E-Friends

From The Washington Post:

Fight to Own Social Media Heats Up.

Facebook just bought the rights to nearly everything you do online. And it cost them only $47.5 million.

Facebook's purchase of FriendFeed, an obscure social-media platform, is potentially momentous. To understand why, we must understand FriendFeed, a start-up that is ubiquitous among techies and unknown to everybody else. It's a sleek application that acts as a clearinghouse for all of your social-media activities. Post something to Flickr? That will show up on your FriendFeed page. Digg something? FriendFeed will know. Post to Twitter from your phone? FriendFeed will syndicate your tweets. Once you initially tell it where to look, it will collect everything and tell it to the world.

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Cave Complex Allegedly Found Under Giza Pyramids

From Discovery News:

An enormous system of caves, chambers and tunnels lies hidden beneath the Pyramids of Giza, according to a British explorer who claims to have found the lost underworld of the pharaohs.

Populated by bats and venomous spiders, the underground complex was found in the limestone bedrock beneath the pyramid field at Giza.

"There is untouched archaeology down there, as well as a delicate ecosystem that includes colonies of bats and a species of spider which we have tentatively identified as the white widow," British explorer Andrew Collins said.

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Why Flamingoes Stand On One Leg

From The BBC:

It is one of the simplest, but most enigmatic mysteries of nature: just why do flamingoes like to stand on one leg?

The question is asked by zoo visitors and biologists alike, but while numerous theories abound, no-one has yet provided a definitive explanation.

Now after conducting an exhaustive study of captive Caribbean flamingoes, two scientists believe they finally have the answer.

Flamingoes stand on one leg to regulate their body temperature, they say.

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New Class Of Astronomical Object: Super Planetary Nebulae

An optical image from the 0.6-m University of Michigan/CTIO Curtis Schmidt telescope of the brightest Radio Planetary Nebula in the Small Magellanic Cloud, JD 04. The inset box shows a portion of this image overlaid with radio contours from the Australia Telescope Compact Array. The planetary nebula is a glowing record of the final death throes of the star. (Optical images are courtesy of the Magellanic Cloud Emission Line Survey (MCELS) team). (Credit: Image courtesy of Royal Astronomical Society)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Aug. 16, 2009) — A team of scientists in Australia and the United States, led by Associate Professor Miroslav Filipović from the University of Western Sydney, has discovered a new class of object which they call “Super Planetary Nebulae.”

They report their work in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Planetary nebulae are shells of gas and dust expelled by stars near the end of their lives and are typically seen around stars comparable or smaller in size than the Sun.

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Pollution Reduces Rain Vital To Crops

From Live Science:

Air pollution in China has cut the amount of light rainfall by 23 percent over the past 50 years, a new study finds.

The cause: Particles in air pollution cause smaller drops of water to form, and smaller drops have a harder time making rain clouds.

The result: Bad air could hamper the country's ability to grow food.

It is the first such study to link pollution to altered climate that can directly affect agriculture.

Read more ....

New Data: Mega-Quake Could Strike Near Seattle

Seattle Skyline

From McClatchy News:

WASHINGTON — Using sophisticated seismometers and GPS devices, scientists have been able to track minute movements along two massive tectonic plates colliding 25 miles or so underneath Washington state's Puget Sound basin. Their early findings suggest that a mega-earthquake could strike closer to the Seattle-Tacoma area, home to some 3.6 million people, than was thought earlier.

The deep tremors, which humans can't feel, occur routinely every 15 months or so and can continue for more than two weeks before they die back to undetectable levels.

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Hubble's Deepest Look Into Space, Now Rendered In 3D

From Popular Science:

Over a period of four months in late 2003, the Hubble telescope assembled an image that represents the deepest look into space every composed. The Ultra Deep Field image captures an estimated 10,000 galaxies, some as old as 13 billion years (just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, going by most estimates), all squeezed into a sliver of sky no bigger than what you'd see behind a 1-millimeter square postage stamp held one meter away.

Here's what it looks like in 3D.

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Longer Eyelashes Without Mascara, Thanks To Scientific Breakthrough

Long and luscious eyelashes have been considered a sign of beauty and glamour Photo: GETTY

From The Telegraph:

Brushes and bottles of mascara could be consigned to the dustbin after scientists discovered a way of making eyelashes grow longer.

Since the time of the pharaohs, mascara has formed an essential part of many women's daily beauty regime.

But now researchers have developed a gel which extends the length of time individual eyelashes grow for before they fall out, leading to longer and bushier eyelashes.

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Defense Last In WH Science Goals

From DoD Buzz:

The Obama administration’s budget guidance for 2011 makes clear that basic research spending will stay flat in most areas or decline, including at the Pentagon.

Money will first go to research that can “drive economic recovery, job creation, and economic growth,” says the guidance issued in an Aug. 4 memo by White House Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag. The administration also makes clear that since they expect little new money for science and technology funding then government agencies must move dollars to what it calls four “practical challenges.”

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My Comment: Many of our greatest technological and engineering accomplishments have come from the labs of Darpa and other defense related laboratories. So much for the campaign rhetoric that the sciences will benefit from an Obama administration. In fact .... it is the science that conforms to the political agenda of the White House that will now get the funding.

Robotic Systems Help People with Disabilities

With the help of a remote human assistant, a person with disability pilots a robotic mobility and manipulation system and opens a refrigerator door to retrieve a pre-prepared meal from home. Cooperative control leaves the person with disability in command, and the ability to use the capabilities of both the local pilot and remote human assistant enable safe, effective, and efficient operation of the robotic system in natural environments. Credit: Rory Cooper, Department of Veterans Affairs/University of Pittsburgh

From Live Science:

People might be surprised to learn that about 50 million people in the world use, or could benefit from the use of, a wheelchair.

Wheelchairs are one of the most commonly used assistive devices for mobility, and they provide people with mobility within their homes and communities. While wheelchairs were once a symbol of inability and stigmatizing, they have evolved to be highly mobile forms of self-expression that are often fitted to each individual user.

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A New Superbug Found In Britain Is Major Concern: Government Scientists

From The Telegraph:

A new superbug that is resistant to all antibiotics has been brought into Britain by patients having surgery abroad, Government scientists said.

A new superbug that is resistant to all antibiotics has been brought into Britain by patients having surgery abroad, Government scientists said.

Doctors are urged to be vigilent for a new bug that has arriving in Britain with patients who have travelled to India and Pakistan for cosmetic surgery or organ transplants and is now circulating here.

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