Chevron Wants To Power Oil Fields With Solar Energy

Mirror Power: BrightSource Energy

From Popular Science:

In a move that might seem oxymoronic on the surface, Chevron has plans to install a solar steam plant which will power one of their oil fields in Central California. The 29-megawatt power source uses 7,000 mirrors spread across 100-acres to focus light on a boiler tank sitting 323-feet high.

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Why Sleep? Snoozing May Be Strategy To Increase Efficiency, Minimize Risk

New research concludes that sleep's primary function is to increase animals' efficiency and minimize their risk by regulating the duration and timing of their behavior. (Credit: iStockphoto/Justin Horrocks)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Aug. 23, 2009) — Bats, birds, box turtles, humans and many other animals share at least one thing in common: They sleep. Humans, in fact, spend roughly one-third of their lives asleep, but sleep researchers still don't know why.

According to the journal Science, the function of sleep is one of the 125 greatest unsolved mysteries in science. Theories range from brain "maintenance" — including memory consolidation and pruning — to reversing damage from oxidative stress suffered while awake, to promoting longevity. None of these theories are well established, and many are mutually exclusive.

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Powerful Ideas: Wind Turbine Blades Change Shape

A prototype morphing helicopter rotor blade. A similar device could help improve wind turbines. Credit: Paul Weaver et al.

From Live Science:

Morphing blades made of advanced composite materials that can rapidly change their shape depending on the wind could help lead to advanced wind turbines that perform better and last longer.

Wind energy is growing more and more popular worldwide. The United States is currently the world's largest generator of wind energy by total megawatts, and by 2030, the Department of Energy predicts that as much as one-fifth of the nation's power might come from wind. On a per capita basis, other nations are even further ahead of the United States — Denmark, for instance, already gets one-fifth of its power from the wind.

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New Google Doodle To Mark 400th Anniversary Of Galileo's Telescope

Google regularly changes its logo to reflect significant
moments in history or notable current events. Photo: GOOGLE

From The Telegraph:

Google has unveiled a new logo to celebrate the 400th anniversary since Galileo Galilei, the Italian astronomer, showed Venetian merchants his new creation, a telescope.

The image shows the Google logo in brown shaped as a telescope.

Clicking on the link takes web surfers through to a Google results page for searches on the influential physicist and philosopher.

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Jobs, Back At Apple, Focuses On New Tablet

Apple CEO Steve Jobs speaks during a special event in September 2008. Getty Images

From The Wall Street Journal:

Just a few months after Steve Jobs had a liver transplant, the Apple Inc. chief executive is once again managing even the smallest details of his company's products, this time focused on a new tablet device.

Since his return in late June, the 54-year-old has been pouring almost all of his attention into a new touch-screen gadget that Apple is developing, said people familiar with the situation.

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6 More Shuttle Launches Befiore The Fleet Is Retired

Countdown To Discovery Blast-Off -- The Telegraph

Only six more such flights by Nasa remain before its three shuttles are retired from service.

Nasa is counting down to the next journey to the International Space Station (ISS) by the space shuttle Discovery, which after a postponement early this morning is scheduled for another attempt in the small hours of tomorrow.

A crew of seven, including the ISS’s newest astronaut, Nicole Stott, looks 70 per cent certain to head out with 6.8 tonnes of cargo, including an exercise treadmill, with the chance of favourable weather dropping to 60 per cent on Thursday. The weather is the limiting factor.

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Space Shuttle Launch Scrubbed

The space shuttle Discovery astronauts walk out for the ride out to launch pad 39-A.
Photo AFP

From The CBC:

NASA delayed a planned night launch of the space shuttle Discovery early Tuesday because of rain and lightning near the launch site.

Discovery was scheduled to launch at 1:36 a.m. ET from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on a 13-day flight to the International Space Station.

The space agency rescheduled the launch for 1:10 a.m. ET Wednesday.

Last month's Endeavour mission, carrying Canadian astronaut Julie Payette, was postponed several times because of bad weather at the launch site.

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Update: Storms delay Discovery liftoff -- AFP

Second Robot Deployed To Help Free Stuck Mars Rover

Engineers are deploying a lightweight version of a test rover (foreground) that will better simulate Mars's gravity, which is 38% that of Earth's (Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

From New Scientist:

In the struggle to free the Mars rover Spirit from a sand trap, NASA engineers are bringing out the reserve troops. A second, lighter duplicate rover slid into a sandbox for testing this week, delaying any attempt to free Spirit by as much as three weeks, to mid-September.

Spirit has been stuck in a sandpit for nearly four months. Since late June, engineers have been trying to determine the best moves to extricate it by driving a test rover around a sandbox at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California.

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The Enduring Mystery of Saturn's Rings

From Space.com:

Saturn's rings have fascinated scientists ever since Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei first spotted them through one of his telescopes in the 17th century. But just how the icy rings came into being remains a mystery that has only deepened with each new scientific finding.

Astronomers now know that the planet hosts multiple rings that consist of roughly 35 trillion-trillion tons of ice, dust and rock. The Cassini spacecraft and its Voyager predecessors have also spotted changing ring patterns, partially formed ring arcs and even a moon spewing out icy particles to form a new ring. All of this suggests that the rings have constantly evolved over time.

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Powerful, Simple Rocket Fuel Made From Water And Aluminum

From Popular Science:

A new rocket propellant consisting of aluminum powder and water ice could point toward the future of space exploration.

Spacecraft might one day refuel on the moon or Mars using plain old ice. A small rocket flew earlier this month on an environmentally-friendly propellant consisting of aluminum powder and water ice.

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Cell Reproduction Research May Point To 'Off Switch' For Cancer

Researcher Art Alberts, left, with doctoral candidate Aaron DeWard at the Van Andel Research Institute in Grand Rapids. (Credit: VAI photo by Dykehouse Photography)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Aug. 24, 2009) — New insight into how human cells reproduce, published by cancer researchers at Michigan State University and the Van Andel Research Institute in Grand Rapids, could help scientists move closer to finding an “off switch” for cancer.

Cancer cells divide uncontrollably and can move from one part of the body to another. They undergo dramatic shifts in shape when they do so, said Aaron DeWard, an MSU cell and molecular biology doctoral candidate who published his research recently in the Journal of Biological Chemistry. He’s trying to figure out how certain proteins trigger cell movement and division and how cancer hijacks the system to create genomic instability.

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Freak Hurricane Wave Strikes Maine

This rare photo of a rogue wave was taken by first mate Philippe Lijour aboard the supertanker Esso Languedoc, during a storm off Durban in South Africa in 1980. The wave approached the ship from behind before breaking over the deck, but in this case caused only minor damage. The wave was between 16 and 33 feet (5-10 meters) tall. Credit: Philippe Lijour via ESA

From Live Science:

No matter how much warning officials give, some people flock to the shore to see waves from hurricanes. The ocean, however, is not always as predictable as people might like.

Though Hurricane Bill did not make a direct hit on the U.S. East Coast, its wave-making power was made clear Sunday when a surprisingly large wave, termed a "rogue wave" by the Portland Press Herald, struck Acadia National Park. A 7-year-old girl was killed, and three other people had to be pulled from the water.

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Study Into Sunscreen's Link To Alzheimer's

From The Independent:

Scientists are to investigate whether human-engineered nanoparticles which are found in sunscreen have any links with Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases.

Professor Vyvyan Howard, a pathologist and toxicologist, and Dr Christian Holster, an expert in Alzheimer's, have been awarded £350,000 from the European Union to carry out a three-year research project.

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Encyclopedia Of Life To Gather Every Species Into A Digital Noah's Ark

By 2017, the Encyclopedia of Life aims to have brought together information on all 1.8 million known species. Photograph: Philadelphia Museum/Corbis

From The Guardian:

The extraordinary collaborative effort has already chronicled 150,000 species. Today the Encyclopedia of Life receives a $12.5 million boost to achieve its ultimate goal.

When the American sociobiologist E. O. Wilson was awarded the TED Prize in 2007, he was given the opportunity to make a wish. His wish was that someone would fund and create a freely accessible online database of every known species, to give scientists "the tools that we need to inspire preservation of Earth's biodiversity".

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One In Five Honeybees Is Wiped Out In A Year

Dying out: Honeybees are decreasing rapidly in number, with almost a fifth of the UK's population perishing last year

From The Daily Mail:

Nearly a fifth of Britain's honeybees perished last year, increasing fears the species is in serious decline, experts warned yesterday.

Although the death toll is lower than the previous year - when nearly a third of hives did not make it through the winter - beekeepers say it is double the 'acceptable' level.

The annual survey by the British Beekeepers' Association revealed 19.2 per cent of colonies died in the winter.

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Shuttle To Deliver 'Hot And Cold'

This is the Discovery orbiter's 37th mission.

From The BBC:

The US shuttle Discovery is all set for its latest mission to the International Space Station (ISS).

The 13-day flight will deliver science equipment to the platform, including a new freezer to store biological samples and a furnace for baking materials.

The lab equipment was made in Europe, which is represented in Discovery's crew by Swede Christer Fuglesang.

The mission will be the 30th shuttle flight dedicated to station assembly and maintenance.

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FUTURE FARMS: High-Rise, Beach Pod, And Pyramid Pictures

Image courtesy Eric Ellingsen and Dickson Despommier, Vertical Farm Project

From National Geographic:

The Pyramid Farm, designed by vertical farming guru Dickson Despommier at New York's Columbia University and Eric Ellingsen of the Illinois Institute of Technology, is one way to address the needs of a swelling population on a planet with finite farmland.

Design teams around the world have been rolling out concepts for futuristic skyscrapers that house farms instead of--or in addition to--people as a means of feeding city dwellers with locally-grown crops.

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The Origin Of Computing

Holly Lindem (photoillustration); Gene Burkhardt (styling)

From Scientific American:

The information age began with the realization that machines could emulate the power of minds

In the standard story, the computer’s evolution has been brisk and short. It starts with the giant machines warehoused in World War II–era laboratories. Microchips shrink them onto desktops, Moore’s Law predicts how powerful they will become, and Microsoft capitalizes on the software. Eventually small, inexpensive devices appear that can trade stocks and beam video around the world. That is one way to approach the history of computing—the history of solid-state electronics in the past 60 years.

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Bilinguals Are Unable To 'Turn Off' A Language Completely, Study Shows

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Aug. 19, 2009) — With a vast majority of the world speaking more than one language, it is no wonder that psychologists are interested in its effect on cognitive functioning. For instance, how does the human brain switch between languages? Are we able to seamlessly activate one language and disregard knowledge of other languages completely?

According to a recent study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, it appears humans are not actually capable of "turning off" another language entirely. Psychologists Eva Van Assche, Wouter Duyck, Robert Hartsuiker and Kevin Diependaele from Ghent University found that knowledge of a second language actually has a continuous impact on native-language reading.

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Breakthrough Makes LED Lights More Versatile

From Live Science:

LEDs have started to blink on all over the place in recent years, from car taillights to roadside billboards. But design and manufacturing drawbacks have limited the ways in which the energy-efficient lights can be used.

A new study, detailed in the Aug. 21 issue of the journal Science, tackles these limitations by combining the best of two worlds of LEDs to make ultrathin, ultrasmall and flexible light-emitting diodes that may one day be used to create everything from laptop screens to biomedical imaging devices.

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Into The Mushroom Cloud

The mushroom cloud of the first test of a hydrogen bomb, "Ivy Mike", as photographed on Enewetak, an atoll in the Pacific Ocean, in 1952. Photo: Reuters

From Air & Space Smithsonian:

Most pilots would head away from a thermonuclear explosion.

He wasn’t supposed to do it, but on May 15, 1948, Lieutenant Colonel Paul H. Fackler, commanding officer of the U.S. Air Force 514th Reconnaissance Squadron Weather, flew his airplane into the seething mushroom cloud of an atomic bomb detonation.
As part of Zebra, the final shot of America’s second series of atomic tests at Enewetak atoll in the Pacific, Fackler had the job of tracking the atomic cloud from at least 10 miles away, hoping that special filters attached to the airplane would catch samples of the radioactive debris. But as he pulled away from the enormous roiling cloud in a climbing turn to the left, Fackler suddenly found his weather reconnaissance Boeing WB-29 inside a small finger-like projection of the main cloud.

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Mystery Of The Missing Mini-Galaxies

Something missing? (Image: NASA/ESA/STScI/AURA/A. Aloisi)

From New Scientist:

LIKE moths about a flame, thousands of tiny satellite galaxies flutter about our Milky Way. For astronomers this is a dream scenario, fitting perfectly with the established models of how our galaxy's cosmic neighbourhood should be. Unfortunately, it's a dream in more ways than one and the reality could hardly be more different.

As far as we can tell, barely 25 straggly satellites loiter forlornly around the outskirts of the Milky Way. "We see only about 1 per cent of the predicted number of satellite galaxies," says Pavel Kroupa of the University of Bonn in Germany. "It is the cleanest case in which we can see there is something badly wrong with our standard picture of the origin of galaxies."

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Shuttle Set For Dramatic Night Launch

From Information Week:

NASA's Discovery is ready to light up the sky in Southeast Florida early Tuesday.

NASA controllers said the space shuttle Discovery is go-for-launch for tonight's mission to the International Space Station. Discovery is set to light up the sky around Florida's Kennedy Space Center early Tuesday with a 1:36 a.m. launch.

As of late Sunday, NASA said there were no issues that would prevent an on-time liftoff.

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We DO like Mondays... But We Really Don't Like The Mid-Week Misery Of Wednesday

From The Daily Mail:

With work beckoning after a relaxing weekend, Monday has traditionally been thought of as the most miserable day of the week.
But with memories of the days off still fresh, Mondays are actually the second happiest day of the week according to researchers.

Peter Dodds and Christopher Danforth, applied mathematicians at the University of Vermont, believe they have found a way to measure collective happiness and found we are at our lowest on Wednesdays.

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Ares Managers Say October Test Flight Should Go On

Photo: The fully stacked Ares 1-X rocket stands inside the Vehicle Assembly Building last week. Credit: NASA/Jack Pfaller

From Space Flight Now:

Managers in charge of an October flight test of NASA's new Ares rocket defended the merits of the $350 million launch Sunday, telling reporters the demo provides valuable experience for engineers, no matter what booster the agency uses to replace the retiring space shuttle.

"We have a very high confidence level that Ares 1-X is germane to NASA, period," said Bob Ess, the flight's mission manager. "No caveats."

The Ares 1-X vehicle, a 327-foot-tall rocket that nearly reaches the rafters of the mammoth Vehicle Assembly Building, is undergoing final checks before its scheduled Oct. 31 launch.

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The Origin of Rubber Boots

ROASTING RUBBER: Amazonian Indians may have originated the rubber boot over a campfire. ISTOCKPHOTO/SKI88

From Scientific American:

Galoshes seem to have come from a little fire, Amazonian Indians' boredom and Charles Goodyear's luck.

Perhaps the Indians roasted them like s'mores—rotating them ever so slowly to make sure every side got just dark enough, but not so long that they caught on fire. Or maybe they went all out, expediting the process and blowing out any flames. Of course, for the art of hovering a rubber-coated foot over a fire, one's pain tolerance may have ultimately determined how long the process went on.

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Can Microsoft's Bing, or Anyone, Challenge Google?

From Time Magazine:

Every year, the market-research firm Millward Brown conducts a survey to determine the economic worth of the world's brands — in other words, to put a dollar value on the many corporate logos that dominate our lives. Lately the firm's results have been stuck on repeat: Google has claimed the top spot for the past three years. The most recent report values Google's brand — those six happy letters that herald so many of our jaunts down the Web's rabbit hole — at more than $100 billion.

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Tweeting No Longer For The Birds, But Not Just For Twitter, Either

Photo: U.S. trademark ruling says many other companies have filed requests to claim ownership of the word ‘tweet'.

From The Globe And Mail:

Tweeting used to be for the birds, but the term has taken on a whole new meaning with the explosion in popularity of Twitter, an online service that allows users to blog via 140-character “tweets.”

But efforts by Twitter to trademark the word “tweet” have suffered a major setback after U.S. officials said others might have beaten the microblogging pioneer to the punch.

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How We Support Our False Beliefs

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Aug. 23, 2009) — In a study published in the most recent issue of the journal Sociological Inquiry, sociologists from four major research institutions focus on one of the most curious aspects of the 2004 presidential election: the strength and resilience of the belief among many Americans that Saddam Hussein was linked to the terrorist attacks of 9/11.

Although this belief influenced the 2004 election, they claim it did not result from pro-Bush propaganda, but from an urgent need by many Americans to seek justification for a war already in progress.

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Powerful Ideas: Beer Waste Makes Fuel

From Live Science:

After beer is made, the waste from breweries could help generate power, researchers now suggest.

One problem brewers face is what to do with the thousands of tons of grain left over at the end of the brewing process. In the past, they just sold the waste to farmers who either fed it to their animals or spread it on their fields as fertilizer. However, in Europe, given reductions in cattle breeding and stricter regulations on what waste is allowed on land, neither option is as easy anymore.

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NASA Clears Shuttle Discovery for Tuesday Launch

Space Shuttle Discovery on launch pad: Photo courtesy NASA

From Space.com:

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - NASA officials today cleared the space shuttle Discovery to blast off Tuesday as the weather outlook improved for the planned predawn launch.

Mike Moses, head of Discovery's mission management team, said the shuttle and its seven-astronaut crew are ready for their 1:36 a.m. EDT (0536 GMT) launch toward the International Space Station on Tuesday.

"We are go for launch," Moses told SPACE.com late Sunday.

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Will Antitrust Probe Keep Microsoft, Yahoo Apart?

From The Miami Herald/AP:

WASHINGTON -- Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp. hope that by joining forces, they can tilt the balance of power in Internet search away from Google Inc. First, however, Yahoo and Microsoft have to convince regulators that their plan won't hurt online advertisers and consumers.

As the U.S. Justice Department reviews the proposed partnership, approval figures to hinge on this question: Will the online ad market be healthier if Google's dominance is challenged by a single, more muscular rival instead of two scrawnier foes?

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Cutting The Cord: America Loses Its Landlines

From The Economist:

Ever greater numbers of Americans are disconnecting their home telephones, with momentous consequences.

MUCH has been made of the precipitous decline of America’s newspapers. According to one much-cited calculation, the country’s last printed newspaper will land on a doorstep sometime in the first quarter of 2043. That is a positively healthy outlook, however, compared with another staple of American life: the home telephone. Telecoms operators are seeing customers abandon landlines at a rate of 700,000 per month. Some analysts now estimate that 25% of households in America rely entirely on mobile phones (or cellphones, as Americans call them)—a share that could double within the next three years. If the decline of the landline continues at its current rate, the last cord will be cut sometime in 2025.

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Northwest Fears That Invasive Mussels Are Headed Its Way

(Click Image to Enlarge)

From McClatchy News:

WASHINGTON — Highly invasive mussels are lurking on the Northwest's doorstep, threatening to gum up the dams that produce the region's cheap electricity, clog drinking water and irrigation systems, jeopardize aquatic ecosystems and upset efforts to revive such endangered species as salmon.

Despite efforts to stop them, the arrival of zebra and quagga mussels may be inevitable.

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Moonquake Mystery Deepens

From Earth Magazine:

Between 1969 and 1972, five Apollo missions installed seismic stations at their landing sites on the nearside of the moon. Because the moon was thought to be seismically dead, the instruments were left almost as an afterthought to detect meteor strikes. But from the time the stations were switched on until they were decommissioned in 1977, they recorded hundreds of internally generated moonquakes, some as strong as magnitude 5.5 on the Richter scale.

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New Way To Reproduce A Black Hole?

Illustration of a binary black hole system. (Credit: NASA/JPL)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Aug. 22, 2009) — Despite their popularity in the science fiction genre, there is much to be learned about black holes, the mysterious regions in space once thought to be absent of light. In a paper published in the August 20 issue of Physical Review Letters, Dartmouth researchers propose a new way of creating a reproduction black hole in the laboratory on a much-tinier scale than their celestial counterparts.

The new method to create a tiny quantum sized black hole would allow researchers to better understand what physicist Stephen Hawking proposed more than 35 years ago: black holes are not totally void of activity; they emit photons, which is now known as Hawking radiation.

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Gigantic Lightning Jets Shoot From Clouds To Space

A series of still images from a captured video sequence of a gigantic jet observed near Duke University. The thunderstorm that produced this jet was about 200 miles away and is below the visible horizon. Credit: Steven Cummer

From Live Science:

Strokes of lightning flashing down towards the ground are a familiar sight during summer thunderstorms, but scientists have capture an image of a rare lightning bolt shooting out upwards from a cloud, almost to the edge of the Earth's atmosphere.

These bolts of upwards lightning, one type among a variety of electrical discharges now known to occur above thunderstaorms, are called gigantic jets, and were only first discovered in 2001.

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Four Ways to Fight Back Against Cyber Attacks

From Popular Mechanics:

This week, prosecutors indicted notorious hacker Albert Gonzalez. He's accused of having masterminded a scheme to steal more than 130 million credit card numbers. Gonzalez may be behind bars, but his trial underscores the fact that your personal and financial information are vulnerable to attack from thieves in cyberspace. Here are four ways to fight back.

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NASA May Outsource Amid Budget Woes

From Wall Street Journal:

For the first time since the advent of manned space exploration, the U.S. appears ready to outsource to private companies everything from transporting astronauts to ferrying cargo into orbit.

Proposals gaining momentum in Washington call for contractors to build and run competing systems under commercial contracts, according to federal officials, aerospace-industry officials and others familiar with the discussions.

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Steve Jobs's New Trick: The Apple Tablet

A design concept for the Apple tablet.

From The Guardian:

Rumours are rife that Steve Jobs is about to unveil a revolutionary touchscreen gadget.

Feverish speculation all over the internet, gadget shoppers nearing mass hysteria and pundits predicting our lives will never be the same. It must mean that an Apple product launch is on the way.

The company that makes the Mac computer, iPod music player and iPhone is reportedly poised to launch a tablet computer – small enough to carry in a handbag or briefcase but big enough to comfortably surf the web, read newspapers and watch films. It could be Apple's latest billion-dollar jackpot.

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Ten Days Left To Buy Traditional Lightbulbs: EU Ban Means Only Low-Energy Ones Will Be On Sale

Photo: Banned: Pearl, incandescent lightbulbs are being cleared from shelves in a bid to slash energy bills and carbon dioxide emissions

From The Daily Mail:

Traditional lightbulbs will disappear from our shops in just ten days.

All conventional pearl, incandescent lightbulbs are being banned by the European Union to slash energy bills and carbon dioxide emissions.

The move covers every type of frosted traditional bulb, from the 60 watt pearl bulbs used in table lamps to more specialised opaque 25 and 40 watt bulbs shaped like golf balls and candles.

Clear and frosted 100 watt lightbulbs will also not be on sale from September 1.

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Expanding Waistlines May Cause Shrinking Brains

From New Scientist:

BRAIN regions key to cognition are smaller in older people who are obese compared with their leaner peers, making their brains look up to 16 years older than their true age. As brain shrinkage is linked to dementia, this adds weight to the suspicion that piling on the pounds may up a person's risk of the brain condition.
The brains of elderly obese people looked 16 years older than the brains of those who were lean

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My Comment: Does this mean that "skinny" people are smarter?

Phones, PCs Put E-Book Within Reach Of Kindle-Less

Many phones are now sophisticated enough, and have good enough screens, that they can be used as e-book reading devices. They can now rival the Kindle, pictured. (Mark Lennihan/AP)

From Christian Science Monitor:

Amazon's pioneering device may not dominate the market for long. Many phones are now sophisticated enough to be used as e-book reading devices.

A few weeks ago, Pasquale Castaldo was waiting at the Dallas-Fort Worth airport for a delayed flight, when a man sitting across from him pulled out an Amazon Kindle book-reading device.

“Gee, maybe I should think about e-books myself,” Castaldo thought.

He didn’t have a Kindle, but he did have a BlackBerry. He pulled it out and looked for available applications. Sure enough, Barnes & Noble Inc. had just put up an e-reading program. Castaldo, 54, downloaded it, and within a minute, began reading Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice.”

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Learning To Live Without The Net

From The BBC:

Bill Thompson feels the pain of the digitally dispossessed.

I have just endured a week of limited connectivity and it has given me a salutary lesson in what life is like for the digitally dispossessed here in the UK and around the world.

I have been driven to searching for open wireless access points so that I can download my e-mail, sometimes wandering the beach looking for elusive 3G signals just to get my Facebook status updated.

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How Do Scientists Really Use Computers?

From American Scientist:

Computers are now essential tools in every branch of science, but we know remarkably little about how—or how well—scientists use them. Do most scientists use off-the-shelf software or write their own? Do they really need state-of-the-art supercomputers to solve their problems, or can they do most of what they need to on desktop machines? And how much time do grad students really spend patching their supervisors’ crusty old Fortran programs?

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First Avatar Trailer Reveals Pandora’s Intoxicating Alien World

From Underwire/Wired Science:

The new Avatar trailer gives the world its first glimpse of the alien world dreamed up by James Cameron for his coming sci-fi epic.

The fast-paced clip is short on dialogue and long on brief flashes of the dazzling flora and fauna that inhabit Pandora, the distant moon where the movie’s sweeping action unfolds.

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Mysterious Origins: 8 Phenomena That Defy Explanation

Photo: A UNIVERSE OF MYSTERIES: Why aren't there suns, planets and galaxies made of antimatter? NASA

From Scientific American:

The unknown origins behind language, handedness, flu seasons, superconductivity, antimatter, proton spin, cosmic rays and sex.

Our September 2009 special issue on origins contains articles on 57 innovations and insights that shape our world today. They include some big ones, like the origin of life, the universe and the mind; sobering stories, like mad cow disease and HIV; and whimsical tales, like paper clips and cupcakes. This past week, we've posted a dozen additional online-only origins: the open-plan office space, fruit ripening, malaria, the computer mouse, atmospheric oxygen, hatred, wine, dogs, rubber boots, zero and, of course, Scientific American.

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Engineers Develop Flexible, Inorganic LED Display

Flexible Inorganic LED Pacific Northwest National Lab via Ars Technica

From Popular Science:

The promise of OLED technology is that, unlike its inorganic counterpart, it can be used to create flexible and nearly transparent ultra-thin screens, opening up myriad possibilities for what we can do with displays and lighting. But just as market-ready OLED technology suffered a setback as Sony delayed its latest OLED television this week (only the world’s second commercial OLED TV, after Sony's XEL-1 set), engineers have devised a way to make cheaper, more efficient inorganic LED technology bend to their whims. Literally.

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The Crew Of STS-128

STS128-S-002 (30 Jan. 2009) --- Attired in training versions of their shuttle launch and entry suits, these seven astronauts take a break from training to pose for the STS-128 crew portrait. Seated are NASA astronauts Rick Sturckow (right), commander; and Kevin Ford, pilot. From the left (standing) are astronauts Jose Hernandez, John "Danny" Olivas, Nicole Stott, European Space Agency's Christer Fuglesang and Patrick Forrester, all mission specialists. Stott is scheduled to join Expedition 20 as flight engineer after launching to the International Space Station on STS-128.

From Yahoo News/Space:

A former off-road racer, a Swedish physicist and three tweeting astronauts form just part of the eclectic crew poised to blast off Tuesday aboard NASA's space shuttle Discovery.

Discovery's six-man, one-woman crew is slated to launch on a 13-day mission to the International Space Station, where they astronauts will deliver vital supplies and experiments, as well as a new crewmember for the orbiting laboratory.

"This is a great crew," said Discovery commander Rick Sturckow in a NASA interview. "I think from the very beginning we got off to a good start and we've maintained a good pace throughout the training ... and still manage to have fun together doing it, so I've really enjoyed training with this crew."

Read more ....

Space Shuttle Discovery On Track For Tuesday Launch

Space shuttle Discovery back on Earth (AFP: Pierre Ducharme)

From Yahoo News/Space:

NASA's space shuttle Discovery is on track for a planned Tuesday launch toward the International Space Station, mission managers said Saturday.

The shuttle and its seven-astronaut crew are nearly ready for their predawn launch Tuesday at 1:36 a.m. EDT (0536 GMT) from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, said NASA test director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson.

"All of our vehicle systems are in good shape. Our countdown work is progressing well," Blackwell-Thompson said today in a morning status briefing. "Discovery and her launch team are ready to go."

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Universal Vaccine Could Put An End To All Flu

From New Scientist:

IT IS not a nice way to die. As the virus spreads through your lungs, your immune system goes into overdrive. Your lungs become leaky and fill with fluid. Your lips and nails, then your skin, turn blue as you struggle to get enough oxygen. Basically, you drown.

Flu can kill in other ways, too, from rendering you vulnerable to bacterial infections to triggering heart attacks. Of course, most flu strains, including (so far) the 2009 pandemic virus, cause only mild symptoms in the vast majority of people. But with 10 to 20 per cent of people worldwide getting flu every year, that still adds up to a huge burden of illness - and even in a good year some half a million die.

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Evolution Of The Human Appendix: A Biological 'Remnant' No More

Normal location of the appendix relative to other organs of the digestive system (frontal view). (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Aug. 21, 2009) — The lowly appendix, long-regarded as a useless evolutionary artifact, won newfound respect two years ago when researchers at Duke University Medical Center proposed that it actually serves a critical function. The appendix, they said, is a safe haven where good bacteria could hang out until they were needed to repopulate the gut after a nasty case of diarrhea, for example.

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What You Should Know About Arthritis

A graphic shows what's inside your joints, and what can go wrong.

From Live Science:

This Week's Question: I'm pretty sure I have arthritis in my knee. Is there any danger this will spread?

First, anyone who thinks they may have arthritis should see a doctor. Self-diagnosis is hazardous to your health. Now for some information about arthritis all geezers should know.

Arthritis, which comes in different forms, is inflammation of the joints. Osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis and gout are the three most common forms of arthritis among seniors. Osteoarthritis is the most prevalent. None is contagious.

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