US National Parks Face 'Greatest Threat', Senate Told

Views like this could be lost forever (Image: KPA/Zuma/Rex Features)

From New Scientist:

US national parks could be changed so significantly by global warming that they will be lost forever, senators were warned this week.

"If we continue adding heat-trapping gases to the atmosphere in the way we now are, we could, for the first time, lose entire national parks," Stephen Saunders, president of the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization told the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, National Parks Subcommittee.

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Behind the Scenes With the World's Most Ambitious Rocket Makers

SpaceX propulsion chief Tom Mueller examines a spacecraft control thruster.

From Popular Mechanics:

An improbable partnership between an Internet mogul and an engineer could revolutionize the way NASA conducts missions—and, if these iconoclasts are successful, send paying customers into space

In late 2001, Tom Mueller was sacrificing his nights and weekends to build a liquid-fuel rocket engine in his garage.

Mueller, a propulsion engineer at Redondo Beach, Calif.–based aerospace firm TRW, felt like an “unwanted necessity” at his day job. His prolific ideas about engine design were lost at such a large, diverse company. To satisfy his creative impulses, he built his own engines, attached them to airframes and launched them in the Mojave Desert with fellow enthusiasts in the Reaction Research Society, America’s oldest amateur rocketry club. RRS members, many of them employees at aerospace firms, meet regularly in the Los Angeles area to build and launch the biggest and highest flying rockets they can—just as the group has done since it was founded in the early 1940s.

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Test for Nasa's New Rocket Motor

The motor will burn for a full two minutes.

From The BBC:

The first-stage rocket motor that US space agency (Nasa) hopes will launch astronauts in future undergoes its first full-scale test on Thursday.

The static firing will take place at a facility owned by manufacturer Alliant Techsystems Inc (ATK) in Utah.

The five-segment booster is intended to power the early flight phase of Nasa's Ares 1 rocket, the vehicle designed to loft its new Orion crew carrier.

The two-minute burn will give engineers valuable performance data.

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The Equilibrium Concept: A Car That Acts Like A Person

The Equilibrium Concept Car: Automotive designer Bob Romkes's vision for the Equilibrium concept is a car that uses artifical intelligence and other technologies to adapt to a driver's needs, and mimics the responses of a living being. Bob Romkes

From Popular Science:

You love your car, but would you want it to be more human? One designer thinks so.

Ask anyone who's ever talked back to their GPS navigation system: Product developers are pretty good at using technology to humanize inanimate objects. But how would you like it if your car responded to your presence -- lighting up with delight or panting like a pet dog? What if, more helpfully, it recognized your touch on the steering wheel, and queued up your favorite MP3s and set your seating position just the way you liked it? Creepy or no? Either way, that's the future envisioned in the Equilibrium (EQ), a concept car by Dutch designer Bob Romkes that uses artificial intelligence to simulate life and the personality of an individual. Imagine rows of faceless sedans parked at the mall suddenly springing to virtual life, each becoming a sort of Tamagotchi with a purpose.

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Rewriting General Relativity? Putting A New Model Of Quantum Gravity Under The Microscope

Scientists are trying to figure out to what extent a new theory of quantum gravity will reproduce general relativity -- the theory that currently explains, to very high accuracy, how masses curve spacetime and create the influence of gravity. (Credit: Image copyright American Physical Society / Illustration: Carin Cain)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Aug. 26, 2009) — Does an exciting but controversial new model of quantum gravity reproduce Einstein's theory of general relativity?

Scientists at Texas A&M University in the US explore this question in a paper appearing in Physical Review Letters and highlighted with a Viewpoint in the August 24th issue of Physics.

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Death Calculator Predicts Your Odds Of Kicking The Bucket

From Live Science:

A new web site claims to give the odds on you dying next year, or for whatever period you select, based on a few simple questions.

The site, DeathRiskRankings.com, is the brainchild of researchers and students at Carnegie Mellon University. It provides answers based on publicly available data from the United States and Europe, comparing mortality risks by gender, age, cause of death and geographic region. Put your info in, and it produces the probable causes of your demise and provides insight on the timing of that unfortunate event.

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GM Monkeys With DNA Of THREE Parents Raises Hope Of Eradicating Incurable Diseases

From The Daily Mail:

Scientists have produced four baby monkeys who each have three biological parents.

They used an IVF procedure designed to stop the spread of incurable inherited diseases.

Scientists believe the breakthrough could lead to the first genetically engineered children within a few years.

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Video: UAV In A Firefight Of A Different Kind

From Autopia:

Unmanned aerial aircraft see a lot of action on the battle front, but not all the battles are in Iraq or Afghanistan. Some firefights are waged on the home front.

Earlier this month in Alaska, a 40-pound Insitu Scan Eagle saw duty fighting wildfires after dense haze grounded conventional aircraft. The UAV is operated by the University of Alaska, which according to university officials is the first entity other than NASA or the Department of Homeland Security allowed to fly an unmanned aircraft beyond the line of sight in civil airspace.

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As Farmland Grows, The Trees Fight Back

A ripening barley field in Bourton on the Water in Gloucestershire, Britain
Tim Graham / Getty

From Time Magazine:

Farms vs. forests — that's the usual dynamic in tropical countries, where the growth of agriculture often comes at the expense of trees. In nations like Brazil and Indonesia — where deforestation is behind the vast majority of carbon emissions — rain forests are not just cut down for logging but also burned to make room for new farms and pastureland. As more people need more food — and biofuels as well — there's a risk that we could see many of our remaining virgin rain forests wiped out completely.

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Dying Languages Archived For Future Generations

Cambridge University

From The Telegraph:

A Cambridge University project to safeguard the world's 6,000 spoken languages has been launched after it emerged half could die out within a generation.

The World Oral Literature Project aims to help cultures under threat from globalisation create lasting records of their native languages.

Still in its inaugural year, the project led by Cambridge University's Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, has already handed out around 10 grants to tribes from Mongolia to Nigeria - and the researchers admitted traditional British languages such as Cornish and Gaelic are also at risk.

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SKorea Satellite Lost After Launch: Officials

The Korea Space Launch Vehicle-1 blasted off into space on Tuesday. Korea Aerospace Research Institute, via European Pressphoto Agency

From Breitbart/AFP:

A satellite launched by South Korea's first space rocket is thought to have burnt up in the Earth's atmosphere after missing its designated orbit, officials said Wednesday.

Seoul vowed to press on with its drive to become a space technology leader despite Tuesday's setback, caused by the defective operation of a fairing covering the satellite.

The science and technology ministry said one of the two aerodynamic fairings covering the rocket's tip failed to fall away, after opening in preparation for the satellite's release.

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Where Did You Get Those Lovely Spirals?

Mystery no more. Astronomers think they've figured out how spiral galaxies,
like the Milky Way, form. Credit: NASA/JPL

From Science Now:

Look at an image of the Milky Way galaxy, and you can't help but notice its exquisite spiral arms. For nearly 100 years, astronomers have tried to understand how the Milky Way and other spiral galaxies formed these dramatic patterns--and now they think they finally have the answer.

Current thinking about how spiral galaxies form traces back to an idea nearly 2 millennia old, to 2nd-century Egyptian mathematician Ptolemy. Trying to describe how the five planets in the night sky followed seemingly irregular paths, Ptolemy hit upon an idea he called epicycles.

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Lower-cost Solar Cells To Be Printed Like Newspaper, Painted On Rooftops

Researchers apply the nanoparticle “inks” as a spray on the solar cells.
(Credit: Image courtesy of University of Texas at Austin)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Aug. 25, 2009) — Solar cells could soon be produced more cheaply using nanoparticle “inks” that allow them to be printed like newspaper or painted onto the sides of buildings or rooftops to absorb electricity-producing sunlight.

Brian Korgel, a University of Texas at Austin chemical engineer, is hoping to cut costs to one-tenth of their current price by replacing the standard manufacturing process for solar cells – gas-phase deposition in a vacuum chamber, which requires high temperatures and is relatively expensive.

Read more .....

Robotic Fish Could Patrol Waterways

Mechanical engineers Kamal Youcef-Toumi and Pablo Valdivia have designed the sleek robotic fish to more easily maneuver into areas where traditional underwater autonomous vehicles can’t go. Credit: Patrick Gillooly/MIT

From Live Science:

Schools of newly-designed robotic fish could one day patrol waterways, swimming around as fluidly as the real fish they're based on, looking for environmental pollutants and inspecting submerged structures, such as boats and oil pipelines.

Mechanical engineers Kamal Youcef-Toumi and Pablo Valdivia Y Alvarado designed the sleek robotic fish to more easily maneuver into areas where traditional underwater autonomous vehicles can't go.

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Islay To Be Entirely Powered By tides

Philip Maxwell, chairman of the Islay Energy Trust, by the Sound of Islay where the ScottishPower turbines will be sited. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/Murdo MacLeod

From The Guardian:

Exclusive: ScottishPower is to build turbines in the Sound of Islay that will generate enough electricity for the island's 3,500 inhabitants – and its famous distilleries.

ScottishPower is planning a tidal energy project that will supply all the electricity for one of Scotland's most famous islands, the Guardian can reveal.

The company is close to signing a supply contract with Diageo, the drinks group, to provide electricity from the project to eight distilleries and maltings on Islay – including the makers of the renowned Laphroaig and Lagavulin whiskies.

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Fill Her Up! The World's Highest Garage Attendant Prepares Space Shuttle Discovery For Launch

Perched 153ft above the ground a Nasa technician prepares the liquid oxygen tank on the US space shuttle Discovery. Today's launch was scrubbed after a faulty fuel valve was detected

From The Daily Mail:

Next time you find yourself tapping your foot impatiently as you fill up your car with petrol spare a thought for Nasa engineers.

They have the task of filling the space shuttle Discovery's external fuel tank with nearly two million litres of liquid hydrogen and oxygen. The process takes the best part of a day and leaves Nasa with a hefty energy bill.

The liquid oxygen is stored in the top of the nose cone while the liquid hydrogen makes up the bottom half of the tank. They are fed through to the three main engines at an impressive speed, with oxygen pumping through at 80,000 litres a minute and hydrogen at 215,000litres a minute.

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Climate Tipping Point Defined For US Crop Yields

From The New Scientist:

While news reports and disaster movies remind us about tipping points for Arctic melt and sea level rise, some things closer to home get less attention. Take food supply: new modelling studies show that there are climate tipping points here too, beyond which crop yields will collapse.

Wolfram Schlenker at Columbia University, New York, and Michael Roberts at North Carolina State University in Raleigh used a high-resolution dataset of weather patterns from 1950 to 2005 to discover how yields of three key US crops would respond to increasing temperatures.

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Jessica Biel Most 'Dangerous' Celeb In Cyberspace

From CNET:

Through no fault of her own, actress Jessica Biel is now the most hazardous celebrity on the Internet.

Fans searching online for Biel have a one-in-five chance of hitting a Web site with malware, according to McAfee's third annual report listing Hollywood's most "dangerous" online celebrities.

In general, hunting for Hollywood's in-crowd poses a much greater threat than searching for just about anyone else. For example, President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama ranked No. 34 and No. 39, respectively.

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Wikipedia To Launch Page Controls

From The BBC:

The online encyclopaedia Wikipedia is on the cusp of launching a major revamp to how people contribute to some pages.

The site will require that revisions to pages about living people and some organisations be approved by an editor.

This would be a radical shift for the site, which ostensibly allows anyone to make changes to almost any entry.

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Why Craigslist Is Such A Mess

From Wired News:

The Internet's great promise is to make the world's information universally accessible and useful. So how come when you arrive at the most popular dating site in the US you find a stream of anonymous come-ons intermixed with insults, ads for prostitutes, naked pictures, and obvious scams? In a design straight from the earliest days of the Web, miscellaneous posts compete for attention on page after page of blue links, undifferentiated by tags or ratings or even usernames. Millions of people apparently believe that love awaits here, but it is well hidden. Is this really the best we can do?

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Hernandez To 'Tweet' From Discovery In Space

From L.A. Times:

If you want to get the latest developments about the launch of the space shuttle Discovery and the adventures of its crew, specifically Jose Hernandez, the California-born son of Mexican immigrants and now a national hero here in Mexico, you can sign up to follow Hernandez's Twitter feed.

Hernandez is already posting updates on the micro-blogging site about his preparations for take-off and developments concerning the delayed launch of the space shuttle in both English and Spanish.

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World's Last Great Forest Under Threat: New Study

Canadian evergreen forest. (Credit: iStockphoto/Stacey Newman)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Aug. 25, 2009) — The world's last remaining "pristine" forest -- the boreal forest across large stretches of Russia, Canada and other northern countries -- is under increasing threat, a team of international researchers has found.

The researchers from the University of Adelaide in Australia, Memorial University of Newfoundland in Canada and the National University of Singapore have called for the urgent preservation of existing boreal forests in order to secure biodiversity and prevent the loss of this major global carbon sink.

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New Theory Questions Why We Sleep

From Live Science:

The purpose of sleep remains one of the greatest unsolved mysteries in science. Although we spend roughly one-third of life asleep, researchers still do not know why.

While sleep is often thought to have evolved to play an unknown but vital role inside the body, a new theory now suggests it actually developed as a method to better deal with the outside world.

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US Plans For Science Outreach To Muslim World

From Nature:

White House to send scientists as envoys.

The administration of US President Barack Obama is ramping up plans to develop scientific and technological partnerships with Muslim-majority countries.

The move follows a June speech by Obama at Cairo University in Egypt, when he promised to appoint regional science envoys, launch a fund to support technological development and open centres of scientific excellence in Africa, the Middle East and southeast Asia. So far, the science-envoy plan is closest to getting off the ground, say White House officials, who see it as part of a broader drive to improve relations with the Islamic world.

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Shuttle Launch Delayed By Valve Problem

Space Shuttle Discovery sits on launch pad 39-A

From Reuters:

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., Aug 25 (Reuters) - NASA delayed a Wednesday morning liftoff of the space shuttle Discovery because of a problem with a valve in its fuel tank.

It was the second consecutive delay, after stormy weather postponed a launch attempt early on Tuesday morning. Discovery and its seven-member crew were preparing for a 13-day supply mission to the International Space Station.

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Scientists Design Plant Filtration System That Lets You Drink Your Own SHOWER Water

From The Daily Mail:

Eco-thinkers have come up with an amazing new way to create drinking water - by putting plants in the bottom of a shower.

Designers Jun Yasumoto, Vincent Vandenbrouk, Olivier Pigasse, and Alban Le Henry came up with the concept when looking for new ways to recycle precious H2O.

After you have washed in the special eco-shower the water passes down into a series of physical filters and is treated by plants such as reeds and rushes growing around your feet.

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Survival In A Post-Apocalypse Blackout

Surviving a blackout (Image: WestEnd61/Rex Features)

From New Scientist:

NATURAL catastrophes such as asteroid impacts, massive volcanic eruptions or large-scale wildfires would have periodically plunged our planet into abnormal darkness. How did life survive without the sun's life-giving rays during such episodes? With a little help from organisms that can switch to another source of energy while they wait for sunlight to pierce the darkness once more.

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3 New Farm Bots Programmed To Pick, Plant And Drive

From Popular Mechanics:

Intelligent, manned machines aren’t just for warplanes and border guards—they can be found on the farm too. Increasingly, agro-bots are taking laborious tasks out of the farmer’s helper’s hands, and saving time and money in the process. Here are three robotic farm servants who may right now be working in a field near you.

Agricultural robots are already among us: mowing grass, spraying pesticides and monitoring crops. For example, instead of regularly dousing an entire apple orchard with chemicals, towed sensors find diseases or parasites with infrared sensors and cameras, and spray only the affected trees. But could a robot wholly replace a migrant worker?

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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.

Read more ....

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.

Read more ....

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.

Read more ....

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".

Read more ....

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.

Read more ....

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.

Read more ....

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.

Read more ....

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.

Read more ....

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.

Read more ....

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.

Read more ....

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.

Read more ....

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."

Read more ....

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.

Read more ....

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.

Read more ....

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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