International Space Updates, September 2009

From Daily Tech:

NASA must use ISS to get to Mars; mice head into space; and two more companies join a Japanese space energy project

Even though NASA reportedly doesn't have necessary funds for deep space missions, NASA scientist Julie Robinson believes extending the International Space Station (ISS)'s mission until 2020 is necessary. After more than 10 years of construction from the United States and 15 other nations, the floating science laboratory is expected to end in 2016.

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The Mystery Of Chernobyl

Nuclear wasteland? The 30-mile exclusion zone around Chernobyl and the abandoned town of Pripyat is now home to animals Photo: Reuters

From The Telegraph:

A bitter dispute is raging over whether the fallout zone is a wasteland or wonderland. Now, a team of scientists is heading back into the contaminated area to find out the truth.

We walked out into a wasteland, grey and desolate. The buildings had deteriorated, windows had been smashed. Trees and weeds had grown over everything: it was a ghost town." It reads like a passage from a post-apocalyptic novel, such as Cormac McCarthy's The Road; in fact, it's how Tim Mousseau describes his first visit to Chernobyl.

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Bionic Brain Chips Could Overcome Paralysis

Regaining control of the body (Image: Daniel Chang)

From New Scientist:

A MONKEY sits on a bench, wires running from its head and wrist into a small box of electronics. At first the wrist lies limp, but within 10 minutes the monkey begins to flex its muscles and move its hand from side to side. The movements are clumsy, but they are enough to justify a rewarding slug of juice. After all, it shouldn't be able to move its wrist at all.

A nerve connection in the monkey's upper arm had previously been blocked with an anaesthetic that prevented signals travelling from its brain to its wrist, leaving the muscles temporarily paralysed. The monkey was only able to move its arm because the wires and the black box bypassed the broken link.

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Engineering Earth 'Is Feasible'

From BBC:

A UK Royal Society study has concluded that many engineering proposals to reduce the impact of climate change are "technically possible".

Such approaches could be effective, the authors said in their report.

But they also stressed that the potential of geo-engineering should not divert governments away from their efforts to reduce carbon emissions.

Such engineering projects could either remove carbon dioxide or reflect the Sun's rays away from the planet.

Suggestions range from having giant mirrors in space, to erecting giant CO2 scrubbers that would "clean up" the air.

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Facebook To Tighten Privacy Policies And Give Users More Control Over Personal Data

From Times Online:

Facebook, the world's largest online social network, has bowed to pressure and agreed to tighten up its privacy policies further.

The company will give its 250 million users more control over the personal information they share with third-party applications such as games and quizzes and will clarify what happens to data when a user deactivates an account.

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Eye Say! How The Animal Kingdom Views The World

All-round vision: Tarantulas have eight eyes - two wide ones at the front, with four small ones underneath, and two more small ones on the side of the upper head

From The Daily Mail:

To say they come in all shapes and sizes is an understatement.

Tarantulas boast an eight-pack for all-round vision. Male elephants give off scent from behind theirs' to attract mates. And the octopus relies as much on its tentacles to get around.

These fascinating images give a tantalising glimpse of the wonders nature has evolved to see - and the extra functions they bring.

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Acoustic Tweezers Can Position Tiny Objects

"Acoustic tweezers" enable flexible on-chip manipulation and patterning of cells using standing surface acoustic waves. (Credit: Tony Jun Huang, Jinjie Shi, Penn State)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Aug. 31, 2009) — Manipulating tiny objects like single cells or nanosized beads often requires relatively large, unwieldy equipment, but now a system that uses sound as a tiny tweezers can be small enough to place on a chip, according to Penn State engineers.

"Current methods for moving individual cells or tiny beads include such devices as optical tweezers, which require a lot of energy and could damage or even kill live cells," said Tony Jun Huang, assistant professor of engineering science and mechanics. "Acoustic tweezers are much smaller than optical tweezers and use 500,000 times less energy."

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Coldest, Driest, Calmest Place On Earth Found

From Live Science:

The search for the best observatory site in the world has lead to the discovery of what is thought to be the coldest, driest, calmest place on Earth — a place where no human is thought to have ever set foot.

To search for the perfect site to take pictures of the heavens, a U.S.-Australian research team combined data from satellites, ground stations and climate models in a study to assess the many factors that affect astronomy — cloud cover, temperature, sky-brightness, water vapor, wind speeds and atmospheric turbulence.

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Opera 10 To Emerge Tuesday

From CNET:

Opera Software will release version 10 of its browser Tuesday, a new version of software that has loyal fans but not as much adoption as several rivals.

The Norwegian company says Opera 10 has better performance, a Turbo mode for slow Internet connections, support for a variety of Web standards such as Web fonts, and improvements to the Opera Mail feature. The company issued two Opera 10 release candidates for the free software in the last week, and spokeswoman Falguni Bhuta announced Monday the final version will arrive September 1.

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7 Equipment Breakthroughs That Shook Up Sports

From Popular Mechanics:

It's one of the most entertaining games of cat and mouse in the sports world. A competitor, or a manufacturer, comes up with a piece of gear that threatens to turn a sport upside down. Then the game's powers that be are faced with a dilemma. Ban it outright? Rewrite the rule book? Or just let it be? Just such a controversy is raging in swimming, where streamlined suits have been banned, but it's important to remember that seeking an edge through better equipment is as old as sport itself. Here are seven pieces of gear that shook up their respective sports and sent officials back to the drawing board.

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Diving Deep For A Living Fossil

Light-equipped booms on Alvin illuminate the sea floor and pillow lava formations created by eruptions on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. The Stephen Low Company and Rutgers University

From The New York Times:

For 33 years, Peter A. Rona has pursued an ancient, elusive animal, repeatedly plunging down more than two miles to the muddy seabed of the North Atlantic to search out, and if possible, pry loose his quarry.

Like Ahab, he has failed time and again. Despite access to the world’s best equipment for deep exploration, he has always come back empty-handed, the creature eluding his grip.

The animal is no white whale. And Dr. Rona is no unhinged Captain Ahab, but rather a distinguished oceanographer at Rutgers University. And he has now succeeded in making an intellectual splash with a new research report, written with a team of a dozen colleagues.

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Four Years Later, New Orleans' Green Makeover

A house under construction in the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans in the "Make It Right" program is designed to be extremely eco-friendly. Charlie Varley / Sipa

From Time Magazine:

After Hurricane Katrina flattened New Orleans exactly four years ago, on Aug. 29, 2005, the city emerged as an inadvertent symbol of global warming, the first American victim of climate change. Over 200,000 homes were destroyed during the Category 5 hurricane. But in the years since, the Crescent City has quietly embraced a new and unexpected role as a laboratory for green building. Sustainable development groups that range from the international nonprofit Global Green to earth-friendly celebrities like Brad Pitt descended on New Orleans, determined not just to build the city back, but to build it back green. "It's going to come back," says Matt Petersen, the president of Global Green USA. "But we want to build it better than it was before."

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US Scientists Set To Reveal The True Colour Of Dinosaurs

From Independent:

A new technique that identifies the hue of ancient birds may help a Yale team with bigger beasts.

It is a question that has baffled the greatest scientific minds – and those of the average seven-year-old: what colour were dinosaurs?

Now a dramatic breakthrough in fossil examination has sparked a race to discover an answer that may satisfy the scientific community as well as anxious crayon-wielders. A research team at Yale University believes it has established a technique that can identify the colour of fossilised feathers and fur. Preliminary results suggest that the true colours of dinosaurs may soon be revealed.

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In Vino Veritas

Photo: Insectaries are natural habitats for beneficial insects that control pests. The Benziger Family Winery’s main insectary is planted with more than 50 kinds of plants and flowers. Credit: Benziger Family Winery

From Technology Review:

Winemakers disappointed by organic methods have turned to biodynamics as the purest route to wine that's true to soil, grape, and climate.

For years the question in winemaking was how technology could make wine better. This was especially true if the wine was Californian. When California cabernet sauvignon bested the best of Bordeaux--in a legendary blind tasting, the "Judgment of Paris," convened by the English wine merchant Steven ­Spurrier--it was a moment of great national pride at the time of America's Bicentennial, and it was achieved in part because California winemakers had used technology in ways tradition-bound French winemakers would not. As California wine became respectable, Silicon Valley millionaires bought vineyards in Napa and Sonoma counties. California wine and tech soon enjoyed a happy marriage.

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Tumors Feel The Deadly Sting Of Nanobees

Bee on a finger. Researchers have recently harnessed the toxin in bee venom to kill tumor cells. (Credit: iStockphoto/Tatiana Buzuleac)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Aug. 31, 2009) — When bees sting, they pump poison into their victims. Now the toxin in bee venom has been harnessed to kill tumor cells by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The researchers attached the major component of bee venom to nano-sized spheres that they call nanobees.

In mice, nanobees delivered the bee toxin melittin to tumors while protecting other tissues from the toxin's destructive power. The mice's tumors stopped growing or shrank. The nanobees' effectiveness against cancer in the mice is reported in advance online publication Aug. 10 in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.

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What Makes A Psychopath? Answers Remain Elusive

Psychopathic behavior can take many forms, not all of it violent. But some common themes underlie the condition, with pieces of a brain's emotional machinery missing. Psychopaths often lack empathy, guilt, conscience or the ability to show remorse. Image credit: stockxpert

From Live Science:

As exaggerated as many popular depictions of psychopaths often are, many nevertheless do pose a genuine danger to others. So what makes psychopaths the way they are?

Scientists are now working toward uncovering the roots of this disorder in the brain. Their research could lead to ways to intervene against the disorder and hopefully prevent it from manifesting.

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Banana Diseases Hit African Crops

From The BBC:

Food supplies in several African countries are under threat because two diseases are attacking bananas, food scientists have told the BBC.

Crops are being damaged from Angola through to Uganda - including many areas where bananas are a staple food.

Experts are urging farmers to use pesticides or change to a resistant variety of banana where possible.

Scientists have been meeting in Tanzania to decide how to tackle the diseases, which are spread by insects.

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Find Out How You'll Die, In 4 Easy Online Steps

What Will Finally Do You In?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/44165698@N00/ / CC BY 2.0

From Popular Science:

A new website lets you figure out how you might die, by sorting death data by cause of death, sex, and age. For American males ages 20-29, the most common cause of death is accidents (40.2 percent of deaths), followed by homicide (17.5 percent), and suicide (11.7 percent). Urinary tract infections? 0.3 percent.

The Death Risk Rankings site was compiled by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, and seems to have about a zillion ways to organize the data. It's quite cumbersome to use, so I'm going to save you the effort.

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Laser Tests Could Silence The Dentist's Drill

From New Scientist:

THE dentist's dreaded drill could become a medical relic thanks to laser tests which spot weaknesses in dental enamel in time to repair the surface before more drastic intervention is needed.

Dentists currently check for cavities with X-rays and metal probes, but these cannot detect weaknesses in the enamel while there is still a chance to repair it. David Wang, a graduate student at the University of Sydney in Australia, instead studied whether the propagation of sound waves through the enamel could provide an early warning (Optics Express, vol 17, p 15592).

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Wikipedia To Color Code Untrustworthy Text

From Wired Science:

Starting this fall, you’ll have a new reason to trust the information you find on Wikipedia: An optional feature called “WikiTrust” will color code every word of the encyclopedia based on the reliability of its author and the length of time it has persisted on the page.

More than 60 million people visit the free, open-access encyclopedia each month, searching for knowledge on 12 million pages in 260 languages. But despite its popularity, Wikipedia has long suffered criticism from those who say it’s not reliable. Because anyone with an internet connection can contribute, the site is subject to vandalism, bias and misinformation. And edits are anonymous, so there’s no easy way to separate credible information from fake content created by vandals.

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Space shuttle reaches space station for 9-day stay

The shuttle Discovery, docked to the International Space Station.
(Credit: NASA TV)

From Reuters:

*Three spacewalks planned during shuttle's visit

*Discovery astronaut Nicole Stott to join station crew

*Shuttle delivering more than 7 tons of gear for outpost

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., Aug 30 (Reuters) - U.S. space shuttle Discovery arrived at the International Space Station on Sunday with food, equipment and new lab gear for the orbital outpost.

After nearly two days of traveling following its launch late Friday night, Discovery reached the Space Station at 8:54 p.m. EDT (0054 GMT Monday) as it sailed 225 miles (362 km) over the Atlantic.

"The entire rendezvous and docking was smooth as silk," said NASA mission commentator Rob Navias.

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Energy Saving Light Bulbs Offer Dim Future

Light Bulb Test Photo: JULIAN SIMMONDS

From The Telegraph:

Energy saving light bulbs are not as bright as their traditional counterparts and claims about the amount of light they produce are "exaggerated", the European Union has admitted.

Soon they will be the only kind of light bulb allowed, but now officials in Brussels have admitted that energy-saving bulbs are not as bright as the old-fashioned kind they are replacing.

From tomorrow a Europe-wide ban on traditional incandescent bulbs will begin to be rolled out, with a ban on 100W bulbs and old-style frosted or pearled bulbs.

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Three Months From a Climate Summit, Agreement Far Off

Ice sculptures, made from glacial melt water, placed by Greenpeace at the Temple of Earth in Beijing, mark the start of the 100-day countdown to the United Nations Copenhagen Climate Summit and the launch of the Tck Tck Tck campaign. LU GUANG / GREENPEACE INTERNATIONAL / EPA

From Time Magazine:

If you happened on Friday morning to walk into the Temple of Earth in Beijing — the nearly 500-year-old monument where Chinese emperors once prayed for good harvests — you would have noticed a steady drip. The environmental group Greenpeace placed ice sculptures of 100 children — made of the glacial meltwater that feeds China's great rivers — inside the temple, to symbolize the risk that climate change and disappearing ice poses to the more than 1 billion people in Asia threatened by water shortages.

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iPhones For The Blind

Blind Man with Touch Interface: courtesy of Sungkyunkwan University in South Korea

From Popular Science:

Quick, get out your iPhone. Unlock it and slide over to that game you've been playing when your boss isn't looking. Now mute it, put the phone to sleep, close your eyes, and try to do that again. Can you do it? Didn't think so.

There's not a simple way to use touchscreens when you can't see what you're doing, which means 10 million blind and low-vision Americans can't use this ubiquitous technology. But what if you could feel it? What if the "slide to unlock" key was an actual slide? Even better, what if you could have a Braille iPhone?

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Aspirin Does More Harm Than Good In Healthy People: Research

Aspirin: The drug does more harm than good in healthy people,
British researchers have said Photo: GETTY

From The Telegraph:

Healthy people who take aspirin to prevent a heart attack are doing themselves more harm than good, researchers have said.

Millions of people - including a substantial number of the "worried well" - take a daily dose of the drug in the belief it will keep them healthy.

But at a conference for leading doctors, British scientists said they have found that for healthy people taking aspirin does not significantly reduce the risk of a heart attack.

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White Europeans 'Only Evolved 5,500 Years Ago After Food Habits Changed'

Photo: People with pale skin like model Lily Cole may be descended from Europeans who dramatically changed their diets

From The Daily Mail:

People in England may have only developed pale skin within the last 5,500 years, according to new research.

Scientists believe that a sudden change in the diet around that time from hunter-gathering to farming may have led to a dramatic change in skin tone to make up for a lack of vitamin D.

Farmed food is lacking in vitamin D and while humans can produce it when exposed to the ultraviolet light in sunlight darker skin is far less efficient at it.

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Social Media As A Paradigm Shift

Photosynthetic Viruses Keep World's Oxygen Levels Up

From New Scientist:

NEXT time you take in a lungful of oxygen, consider this: it was made possible in part by ocean viruses.

The viruses, which infect single-celled algae called cyanobacteria, are hyperefficient photosynthesisers thanks to a unique set of genes.

Previous work had shown that cyanophage viruses have some photosynthesis genes, apparently used to keep the host cyanobacteria on life support during the infection, which otherwise knocks out the cells' basic functions.

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India Loses Moon Satellite Links

From The BBC:

All communication links with the only Indian satellite orbiting the Moon have been lost, India's space agency says.

Radio contact with the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft was lost abruptly early on Saturday, said India's Bangalore-based Space Research Organization (Isro).

The unmanned craft was launched last October in what was billed as a two-year mission of exploration.

The launch was regarded as a major step for India as it seeks to keep pace with other space-faring nations in Asia.

Following its launch from the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, it was hoped the robotic probe would orbit the Moon, compile a 3-D atlas of the lunar surface and map the distribution of elements and minerals.

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Ancient Skeletons Could Help Solve Mystery Of Rare Disease

Ballyhanna graveyard site at Ballyshannon. Photo from Ask About Ireland

From Independent (Ireland):

TWO ancient skeletons with a rare genetic bone disease unearthed from a medieval Irish graveyard may hold key insights for medical experts.

An archaeologist believes the discovery of the remains -- afflicted by massive bone growths -- could help modern-day clinicians glean more information about that unusual debilitating condition.

There have only been 16 cases of the hereditary bone growth disorder, now known as multiple osteochondromas, identified in ancient remains worldwide. Four of these have been located in Ireland.

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Star-Birth Myth 'Busted'

False-colour images of two galaxies, NGC 1566 (left) and NGC 6902 (right), showing their different proportions of very massive stars. Regions with massive O stars show up as white or pink, while less massive B stars appear in blue. NGC 1566 is much richer in O stars than is NGC 6902. The images combine observations of UV emission by NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer spacecraft and H-alpha observations made with the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) telescope in Chile. NGC 1566 is 68 million light years away in the southern constellation of Dorado. NGC 6902 is about 33 million light years away in the constellation Sagittarius. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/JHU)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Aug. 30, 2009) — An international team of researchers has debunked one of astronomy's long held beliefs about how stars are formed, using a set of galaxies found with CSIRO’s Parkes radio telescope.

When a cloud of interstellar gas collapses to form stars, the stars range from massive to minute.

Since the 1950s astronomers have thought that in a family of new-born stars the ratio of massive stars to lighter ones was always pretty much the same — for instance, that for every star 20 times more massive than the Sun or larger, you’d get 500 stars the mass of the Sun or less.

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Dangers In The Deep: 10 Scariest Sea Creatures

From Live Science:

On land during the day, we humans rule. Or at least we're considered top predators, and with our feet on the ground, we're in our element.

In the sea, sans a boat, forget about it. We're too slow, too encumbered with gear, and often too stupid to be much more than prey. What's to worry about down there? Plenty!

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NASA Looking To Solve Medium-Lift Conundrum

NASA hopes the Taurus 2 and Falcon 9 rockets will be ready to launch medium-class science missions. Credit: Orbital Sciences and SpaceX

From Spaceflight Now:

Facing a lack of rocket options for medium-class robotic missions, NASA's launch czar said the agency will not need another medium-lift rocket until at least 2014, enough time for new boosters to prove themselves.

William Wrobel, NASA's assistant associate administrator for launch services, said future medium-class missions will most likely fly on Falcon 9 or Taurus 2 rockets now being developed for resupply missions to the International Space Station.

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Space Shuttle News Updates -- August 30, 2009

The space shuttle Discovery sits atop Launch Pad 39A during final launch preparations at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida August 24, 2009. Discovery is scheduled for launch later in the day on a mission to the International Space Station. REUTERS/Pierre Ducharme

Astronauts Inspect Discovery Heat Shield -- CBS News

(CBS) The Discovery astronauts conducted an inch-by-inch inspection of the most critical sections of the shuttle's heat shield Saturday, examining the ship's nose cap and wing leading edge panels with a laser scanner on the end of a 50-foot-boom attached to the shuttle's robot arm. No obvious problems stood out, reports CBS News space analyst Bill Harwood.

But it will take engineers several more days to complete the normal (post-Columbia tragedy) assessment of launch imagery, laser scans carried out Saturday, and close-up photos of Discovery's belly during final approach to the International Space Station Sunday evening, before the heat shield is given a clean bill of health.

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More News On The Space Shuttle

Shuttle steers closer to space station for hookup -- AP
Shuttle Discovery to Dock with Space Station Today -- WBKO
Shuttle steers closer to space station for hookup -- AP
Space Shuttle's Midnight Launch Dazzles in Photos -- Space.com
'Space rookies' soak it up -- BBC

Dual-Screen Laptop On Sale By Christmas

One of the first photos of the gScreen Spacebook Photo: GIZMODO

From The Telegraph:

The world's first truly dual-screen laptop, which will allow computer users to multi-task while on the move, is due to go on sale by the end of the year.

The pioneering PC, known as the Spacebook, is the brainchild of Alaska-based technology firm gScreen.

While growing numbers of office workers – especially in the financial industries – use several desktop monitors to track many programmes and information sources at the same time, no manufacturer has yet released a portable equivalent.

The gScreen Spacebook will boast two 15.4 in screens which can slide away to fill the space of a single screen when the laptop is being stored or transported.

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Why The Greenland And Antarctic Ice Sheets Are Not Collapsing

From Watts Up With That:

Global warming alarmists have suggested that the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica may collapse, causing disastrous sea level rise. This idea is based on the concept of an ice sheet sliding down an inclined plane on a base lubricated by meltwater, which is itself increasing because of global warming.

In reality the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets occupy deep basins, and cannot slide down a plane. Furthermore glacial flow depends on stress (including the important yield stress) as well as temperature, and much of the ice sheets are well below melting point.

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Swine Flu Program Could Be Largest Vaccination Effort In Human History

You Might Feel A Little Pinch

From Popular Science:

With the White House Council of Advisors on Science and Technology estimating that this winter's swine flu outbreak could lead to 30,000 to 90,000 deaths in the US (on top of the usual 30,000 deaths that occur from seasonal flu), the government has ramped up its effort to vaccinate as many Americans as possible against H1N1. In fact, the vaccination effort is so large, it may constitute the largest vaccination program in human history.

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Mysterious Glaciers That Grew When Asia Heated Up

BYU professor Summer Rupper doing field work with Switzerland's Gornergrat glacier. Her newest study details how a group of Himalayan glaciers grew despite a significant rise in temperatures. (Credit: Image courtesy of Brigham Young University)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Aug. 29, 2009) — Ice, when heated, is supposed to melt.

That’s why a collection of glaciers in the Southeast Himalayas stymies those who know what they did 9,000 years ago. While most other Central Asian glaciers retreated under hotter summer temperatures, this group of glaciers advanced from one to six kilometers.

A new study by BYU geologist Summer Rupper pieces together the chain of events surrounding the unexpected glacial growth.

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Is Quantum Mechanics Selectively Erasing Our Memory?

Entropy At Work: One liquid diffusing into another is an
example of an increase in entropy, or randomness.

From Popular Science:

In a paper published last week, MIT physicist Lorenzo Maccone hypothesizes that, yes, quantum physics is messing with our minds. The laws of physics work just as well if time is running forwards or backwards. But we all seem to experience time running in only one direction, and in the same direction as everyone else -- a mystery of physics that's yet to be solved.

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Man-Made Volcanoes May Cool Earth

The Anak Krakatau volcano

From Times Online:

THE Royal Society is backing research into simulated volcanic eruptions, spraying millions of tons of dust into the air, in an attempt to stave off climate change.

The society will this week call for a global programme of studies into geo-engineering — the manipulation of the Earth’s climate to counteract global warming — as the world struggles to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

It will suggest in a report that pouring sulphur-based particles into the upper atmosphere could be one of the few options available to humanity to keep the world cool.

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Stevenage: The Final Frontier In Space Technology

The rocket and fuel tanks of the Lisa Pathfinder satellite, which will be launched in 2011 and pave the way for new scientific experiments on gravitational wave detection and black holes.

From The Daily Mail:

You might think Nasa is the only pioneer of space technology, but this £200m satellite (below) is being built not in Houston but at a sleepy industrial estate in Hertfordshire.

It's so tantalisingly close, this strange octagonal aluminium box with its shimmery array of circuitry. I see wires coated in silver, connectors of gold, and parts so delicate that even in this temperature-and humidity-controlled, dust-free environment they have to be protected with pink translucent plastic bags.

In two years' time, this box - the inside of a satellite - will be blasted four times further out into space than any human has ever been.

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A Latino Astronaut's Remarkable Journey

Photo: Astronaut Jose Hernandez is an American-born son of immigrants from Michoacan, Mexico.

From CNN:

(CNN) -- For astronaut Jose Hernandez, his first space flight, scheduled to be aboard the space shuttle Discovery, marks a remarkable journey from the farm fields of California to the skies.

Hernandez, an American-born son of immigrants from Michoacan, Mexico, is getting plenty of attention at home and abroad for his journey from working the fields to operating some of the most advanced mechanics on the space shuttle.

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Why Obama's Dog Has Curly Hair

Portugese water dog. (Credit: iStockphoto/Lee Feldstein)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Aug. 28, 2009) — University of Utah researchers used data from Portuguese water dogs – the breed of President Barack Obama's dog Bo – to help find a gene that gives some dogs curly hair and others long, wavy hair.

It was part of a National Institutes of Health (NIH) study – published online Thursday, Aug. 27 by the journal Science – showing that variations in only three genes account for the seven major types of coat seen in purebred dogs. The findings also point the way toward understanding complex human diseases caused by multiple genes.

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Microbe Metabolism Harnessed to Produce Fuel

Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) Director Jay Keasling with Rajit Sapar in lab at JBEI with beaker of cellulose sludge. Credit: JBEI//Jay Keasling

From Live Science:

Microbes such as the yeast we commonly use in baking bread and fermenting beer are now being engineered to produce the next generation of biofuels. Jay Keasling, a professor of chemical engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, is leading a team of scientists in an effort to manipulate the chemistry within bacteria so they will produce fuel from sugar.

At the Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI), one of three research centers set up by the Department of Energy for the research and development of biofuels, Keasling is utilizing synthetic biology techniques involving chemistry, genetic engineering and molecular biology. Foundational work being done at the Synthetic Biology Engineering Research Center (SynBERC), where Keasling is director, will underpin the research at JBEI. SynBERC is funded by the National Science Foundation.

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Sony Sides With Google in ‘Library of Future’ Settlement

From Epicenter/Wired:

n the battle to win readers for the books of the future, Sony has sided with Google over a controversial, proposed copyright lawsuit settlement that lets Google build out the library and bookstore of the future.

That pits Sony and Google against Yahoo, Microsoft and Amazon, all of which have allied in opposition to the settlement. (See Wired.com’s Google Book Search FAQ to learn more.)

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Why Do Muslims Fast During Ramadan?

Muslims pray before they break their fast in a mosque during the Ramadan month in Kabul, Afghanistan. Mohammad Kheirkhah / UPI / Landov

From Time Magazine:

Like more than a billion fellow Muslims around the world, Sulley Muntari began the monthlong fasting ritual of Ramadan on Aug. 22. Abstaining from food or drink during daylight hours is challenging enough for the average person, but for the Ghana-born Muntari, a professional soccer player with Italy's Serie A team Inter Milan, running more than six miles per game on an empty stomach might have proved to be too much. In his first match after the start of Ramadan, the midfielder was removed from the game after just half an hour of play.

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Shuttle Lights Up Sky With Spectacular Launch

Space shuttle Discovery roars to life and blasts off on space station resupply mission.
(Credit: NASA TV)

From CNET:

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla.--Running four days late, the shuttle Discovery roared to life and shot into space overnight Friday, lighting up the night sky with a rush of fire as it set off on a 13-day mission to deliver 7.5 tons of supplies and equipment to the International Space Station.

With commander Frederick "Rick" Sturckow and pilot Kevin Ford monitoring the computer-controlled ascent, Discovery's twin solid-fuel boosters ignited at 11:59 p.m. EDT, kick-starting the crew's eight-and-a-half-minute ride to orbit with a rush of 5,000-degree flame.

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Entangled Light, Quantum Money

Photo: Two Nodes of a quantum network that Caltech researchers created by halting entangled photons within two ensembles of cesium atoms housed in an ultrahigh-vacuum system. Temporarily storing entanglement provides a basis for quantum data storage, which might be useful for various applications, including quantum cryptography.
Credit: Nara Cavalcanti

From Technology Review:

A breakthrough explores the challenges--and suggests the financial possibilities--of creating quantum networks.

In recent years, the Austrian physicist Anton Zeilinger has bounced entangled photons off orbiting satellites and made 60-atom fullerene molecules exist in quantum superposition--essentially, as a smear of all their possible positions and energy states across local space-time. Now he hopes to try the same stunt with bacteria hundreds of times larger. Meanwhile, Hans Mooij of the Delft University of Technology, with Seth Lloyd, who directs MIT's Center for Extreme Quantum Information Theory, has created quantum states (which occur when particles or systems of particles are superpositioned) on scales far above the quantum level by constructing a superconducting loop, visible to the human eye, that carries a supercurrent whose electrons run simultaneously clockwise and counterclockwise, thereby serving as a quantum computing circuit.

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What Country Has More English Speakers Than Any Other Country?

Preaching to the converted: Li Yang, founder of the Crazy English movement, lectures a crowd of students. SEAN GALLAGHER

Crazy English: How China's Language Teachers Became Big Celebrities -- The Independent

This year it will be announced that China now has more English speakers than any other country in the world. And such is the demand for their services that top teachers have become big stars.

"Where are you from? Do you speak English?" It's a familiar phrase near the Forbidden City in Beijing, or along the capital's Nanjing Road, as Chinese people try a standard opening gambit to spark up a conversation with a foreigner. Many visitors baulk at being approached so baldly, and are worried that it could be a scam. Very occasionally it is a con – and tourists should be wary when some nice young people offer to bring them to a tea house – but mostly the youngsters are desperate for access to real live Anglophones who can help them improve their conversational English.

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Small Fluctuations In Solar Activity, Large Influence On Climate

Image: Recently published research shows how newly discovered interactions between the Sun and the Earth affect our climate. (Credit: UCAR)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Aug. 28, 2009) — Subtle connections between the 11-year solar cycle, the stratosphere, and the tropical Pacific Ocean work in sync to generate periodic weather patterns that affect much of the globe, according to research appearing this week in the journal Science. The study can help scientists get an edge on eventually predicting the intensity of certain climate phenomena, such as the Indian monsoon and tropical Pacific rainfall, years in advance.

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New Theory For Why We Cry

Do we cry because it makes us feel good, or because it cleanses us of stressful chemicals? Or, as Oren Hasson now theorizes, is a good cry just a way to get attention and gain acceptance? Image credit: stockxpert

From Live Science:

We shed tears when in pain, but what purpose does crying have?

A scientist now proposes a new theory for why crying evolved — tears can act as handicaps to show you have lowered your defenses.

"Crying is a highly evolved behavior," said researcher Oren Hasson, an evolutionary biologist at Tel Aviv University in Israel. "My analysis suggests that by blurring vision, tears lower defenses and reliably function as signals of submission, a cry for help, and even in a mutual display of attachment and as a group display of cohesion."

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