Apple's Snow Leopard Reviewed

A detail of the Snow Leopard desktop. Photograph: Apple

From The Guardian:

The Guardian's comprehensive review of Apple's new Snow Leopard OS.

Mac OS X 10.6 – aka Snow Leopard – will be released tomorrow. The truth is that it doesn't contain hundreds of big new features to entice you into upgrading – but it does have one that everyone will appreciate: speed.

Snow Leopard is, in fact, blisteringly fast. Booting is quicker, waking from sleep is quicker, and, of course, launching applications is quicker than if you're using Leopard.

Read more ....

Physicists Successfully Predict Stock Exchange Plunge

Predicting the drop (Image: Sipa Press/Rex Features)

From New Scientist:

WITH 20/20 hindsight, financial crashes seem inevitable, yet we never see them coming. Now a team of physicists and financiers have bucked the trend by successfully predicting a steep fall in the Shanghai Stock Exchange.

Their model, which employs concepts from the physics of complex atomic systems, was developed by Didier Sornette of the Financial Crisis Observatory in Zurich, Switzerland, and Wei-Xing Zhou of the East China University of Science and Technology in Shanghai. The idea is that if a plot of the logarithm of the market's value over time deviates upwards from a straight line, it's a clear warning that people are investing simply because the market is rising rather than paying heed to the intrinsic worth of companies. By projecting the trend, the team can predict when growth will become unsustainable and the market will crash.

Read more ....

IBM Scientists Take First Close-Up Image Of A Single Molecule

Pentacene, Up Close: IBM Research - Zurich

From Popular Science:

As part of a greater effort to someday build computing elements at an atomic scale, IBM scientists in Zurich have taken the highest-resolution image ever of an individual molecule using non-contact atomic force microscopy. Performed in an ultrahigh vacuum at 5 degrees Kelvin, scientists were able to "to look through the electron cloud and see the atomic backbone of an individual molecule for the first time," a feat necessary for the further development of atomic scale electronic building blocks.

Read more ....

Europe Looks To Buy Soyuz Craft

A Soyuz craft has three seats versus the shuttle's seven.

From The BBC:

Europe is seeking to maintain flight opportunities for its astronauts by buying Soyuz spacecraft from Russia.

The European Space Agency (Esa) has asked Moscow if it is possible to increase the production of the craft from four to five a year.

Esa could then buy its own vehicle, perhaps with the Canadians who are also looking for more seat opportunities.

The expected retirement of US shuttles in 2010/11 means fewer humans will be going into space in the coming years.

Read more ....

‘Peak Oil’ Is A Waste Of Energy

From The New York Times:

REMEMBER “peak oil”? It’s the theory that geological scarcity will at some point make it impossible for global petroleum production to avoid falling, heralding the end of the oil age and, potentially, economic catastrophe. Well, just when we thought that the collapse in oil prices since last summer had put an end to such talk, along comes Fatih Birol, the top economist at the International Energy Agency, to insist that we’ll reach the peak moment in 10 years, a decade sooner than most previous predictions (although a few ardent pessimists believe the moment of no return has already come and gone).

Read more ....

Extrasolar Hot Jupiter: The Planet That 'Shouldn’t Exist'

Artist's impression shows a gas-giant exoplanet transiting across the face of its star.
(Credit: ESA/C. Carreau)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Aug. 27, 2009) — A planet has been discovered with ten times the mass of Jupiter, but which orbits its star in less than one Earth-day.

The discovery, reported in this week’s Nature by Coel Hellier, of Keele University in the UK, and colleagues, poses a challenge to our understanding of tidal interactions in planetary systems.

Read more ....

Rat Race: New Evidence That Running Is Addictive

Serious runners know the feeling, a sense of never-ending endurance that comes on a long run. But is it good for you? The sensation may be addictive, the new study finds. Image credit: Stockxpert

From Live Science:

Just as there is the endorphin rush of a "runner's high," there can also be the valley of despair when something prevents avid runners from getting their daily fix of miles.

Now, researchers at Tufts University may have confirmed this addiction by showing that an intense running regimen in rats can release brain chemicals that mimic the same sense of euphoria as opiate use. They propose that moderate exercise could be a "substitute drug" for human heroin and morphine addicts.

Read more ....

NASA Aborts Critical Rocket Test

The five-segment solid rocket motor for Ares I. Credit: NASA

From Technology Review:

The first full-scale test of the booster for NASA's Ares I rocket was called off because of a power failure.

Today NASA was supposed to conduct the first full-scale test of the motor for the first stage of its future space rocket, Ares I. The test, at NASA partner Alliant Techsystems, was in Utah at 3:00 P.M. EST and was intended to last two minutes. The goal was to obtain data on thrust, roll control, acoustics, and vibrations to aid engineers in designing Ares I. But the test was scrubbed 20 seconds before ignition of the 154-foot motor, which was anchored to the ground horizontally. The problem: failure of a power unit that drives hydraulic tilt controls for the rocket's nozzle, according to a local report. The static firing test of the motor has not yet been rescheduled.

Read more ....

Weather Supercomputer Used To Predict Climate Change Is One Of Britain's Worst Polluters

The computer used 1.2 megawatts to run - enough to power 1,000 homes

From The Daily Mail:

The Met Office has caused a storm of controversy after it was revealed their £30million supercomputer designed to predict climate change is one of Britain's worst polluters.

The massive machine - the UK's most powerful computer with a whopping 15 million megabytes of memory - was installed in the Met Office's headquarters in Exeter, Devon.

It is capable of 1,000 billion calculations every second to feed data to 400 scientists and uses 1.2 megawatts of energy to run - enough to power more than 1,000 homes.

Read more ....

Climate Change 'To Cost More Than £300 Billion'

Oxfam staged an underwater family to highlight the risk of sea rises due to climate change.

From The Telegraph:

The world will have to spend £300 billion, three times as much as previously thought, adapting to the effects of climate change, scientists have said.

The UN originally said it would cost just £25 to £105 billion ($40-170 billion), or the cost of about three Olympic Games per year, from 2030 to pay for the sea defences, increase in deaths and damage to infrastructure caused by global warming.

However a new study by leading scientific body the International Institute for Environment and Development and the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College London estimated it will cost more than triple that amount per annum.

Read more ....

Laughing Gas Is Biggest Threat To Ozone

From The Telegraph:

It's no joke - laughing gas is now the biggest threat to the Earth's ozone layer, scientists have said.

Nitrous oxide, better known as the dental anaesthetic "laughing gas", has replaced CFCs as the most potent destroyer of ozone in the upper atmosphere, a study has shown.

Unlike CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons), once extensively used in refrigerators, emissions of the gas are not limited by any international agreement.

Read more ....

Girls Are Primed To Fear Spiders

Women are more likely to be fearful of spiders (Image: Donna Day/Getty)

From New Scientist:

The sight of eight long black legs scuttling over the floor makes some people scream and run – and women are four times more likely to take fright than men. Now a study suggests that females are genetically predisposed to develop fears for potentially dangerous animals.

David Rakison, a developmental psychologist at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, found that baby girls only 11 months old rapidly start to associate pictures of spiders with fear. Baby boys remain blithely indifferent to this connection.

Read more ....

Sunspots Stir Oceans

Image from NASA

From Nature News:

Variations in the Sun's brightness may have a big role in Pacific precipitation.

Computer simulations are showing how tiny variations in the Sun's brightness can have a big influence on weather above the Pacific Ocean.

The simulations match observations that show precipitation in the eastern Pacific varies with the Sun's brightness over an 11-year cycle. However, the model does not indicate a relationship between solar activity and the rise in global temperature over the past century.

Read more ....

Tiny Ancient Shells -- 80,000 Years Old -- Point To Earliest Fashion Trend

Perforated Nassarius gibbosulus from archaeological layers dated to between 73,400 and 91,500 years ago at Taforalt. (Credit: Image courtesy of d'Errico/Vanhaeren)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Aug. 27, 2009) — Shell beads newly unearthed from four sites in Morocco confirm early humans were consistently wearing and potentially trading symbolic jewelry as early as 80,000 years ago. These beads add significantly to similar finds dating back as far as 110,000 in Algeria, Morocco, Israel and South Africa, confirming these as the oldest form of personal ornaments. This crucial step towards modern culture is reported this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

A team of researchers recovered 25 marine shell beads dating back to around 70,000 to 85,000 years ago from sites in Morocco, as part of the European Science Foundation EUROCORES programme 'Origin of Man, Language and Languages'. The shells have man-made holes through the centre and some show signs of pigment and prolonged wear, suggesting they were worn as jewelry.

Read more ....

How to Swat a Mosquito

An Aedes aegypti mosquito feeding on blood. Credit: USDA

From Live Science:

WASHINGTON (ISNS) -- Spring this year was unusually wet in the eastern half of the United States, with heavy rains falling from everywhere from Kansas and Missouri to New York City and Washington, D.C., the National Weather Service reported -- and with those rains has come a bumper crop of mosquitoes.

According to Jeannine Dorothy, a Maryland state entomologist, the wetter than usual spring means more mosquito eggs -- and more of the adult critters to swat.

Read more ....

Listening for Gravity Waves, Silence Becomes Meaningful

Photo: ARMED FOR DISCOVERY: At the LIGO site in Louisiana, a pair of four-kilometer-long arms [one of which stretches toward the top of this photograph] awaits the telltale elongation or compression of a passing gravity wave. A similar observatory in Washington State is also on the case. LIGO Scientific Collaboration

From Scientific American:

The ripples in spacetime predicted by general relativity remain one of the most sought-after prizes in physics, and new research narrows estimates of their prevalence.

Gravity waves spread through space and time like ripples on a pond, warping the fabric of the universe as they pass. The largest waves emanate from the most cataclysmic events in the universe: stellar explosions, mergers of black holes, and the violent first moments of cosmological history. Or so the venerable theory of general relativity goes—although many predictions of Albert Einstein's theory of gravity have been proved, only indirect evidence for gravity waves has been found.

Read more ....

Why Teams In Red Win More

Competitors who wear red win more than those that are dressed in any other colour, according to a study in Germany. Photo: GETTY IMAGES

From The Telegraph:

Competitors who wear red win more than those that are dressed in any other colour, according to a study in Germany.

Researchers found that those who wear red tops, jackets or clothing score 10 per cent more in any competition than if they were in another colour.

Experts believe that red could make individuals and teams feel more confident as well as being perceived by others as more aggressive and dominant.

The findings could explain why Manchester United, Liverpool and Arsenal, have been so successful,. On the other hand, the results could suggest that the success of those teams has given those that wear the red colour more confidence.

Read more ....

Google Book Search: Protecting Privacy As Rhe Library Moves Online

Google's ambition to create an uber-library on the Internet raises some concerns for privacy experts. (ABC News Photo Illustration)

From ABC News:

Google's Plan to Digitize Millions of Books Is Not Without Controversy.

Imagine having online access to virtually any book, at anytime, including millions of books no longer in print. Imagine being able to browse through this extraordinary collection of much of the world's knowledge, search for quotes and key passages, annotate pages with your own thoughts, and share the marked-up page with friends and colleagues.

Now imagine that this uber-library never closes; that it's always just one mouse-click away.

This isn't fiction, it is the ambitious vision of Google Book Search, an online service that stands to revolutionize the way people access and interact with books.

Read more ....

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.

Read more ....

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.

Read more ....

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.

Read more ....

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.

Read more ....

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.

Read more ....

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.

Read more ....

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.

Read more ....

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.

Read more ....

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.

Read more ....

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.

Read more ....

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.

Read more ....

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.

Read more ....

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.

Read more ....

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.

Read more ....

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.

Read more ....

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.

Read more ....

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.

Read more ....

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.

Read more ....

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?

Read more ....

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.

Read more ....

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.

Read more ....

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.

Read more ....

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.

Read more ....

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.

Read more ....

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.

Read more ....

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.

Read more ....

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?

Read more ....

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.

Read more ....

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.

Read more ....

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.

Read more ....

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.

Read more ....

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.

Read more ....

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.

Read more ....