'Optical Computer' Performs First Ever Calculation

Professor Jeremy O'Brien, Director of the Centre for Quantum Photonics (left) and Jonathan Matthews
Photo: PA

From The Telegraph:

An 'optical computer' which uses light particles rather than traditional circuitry has performed the first ever calculation, as scientists hope it could pave the way for a computer smaller and faster than anything seen before.

Scientists have hailed the step, despite the calculation taking longer than a schoolchild.

The optical quantum chip uses single particles of "whizzing" light which could eventually pave the wave for a "super-powerful quantum computer".

Read more ....

The Singularity And The Fixed Point -- A Commentary

From Technology Review:

The importance of engineering motivation into intelligence.

Some futurists such as Ray Kurzweil have hypothesized that we will someday soon pass through a singularity--that is, a time period of rapid technological change beyond which we cannot envision the future of society. Most visions of this singularity focus on the creation of machines intelligent enough to devise machines even more intelligent than themselves, and so forth recursively, thus launching a positive feedback loop of intelligence amplification. It's an intriguing thought. (One of the first things I wanted to do when I got to MIT as an undergraduate was to build a robot scientist that could make discoveries faster and better than anyone else.) Even the CTO of Intel, Justin Rattner, has publicly speculated recently that we're well on our way to this singularity, and conferences like the Singularity Summit (at which I'll be speaking in October) are exploring how such transformations might take place.

Read more ....

China Cracks Down On Stem Cell Tourism

From New Scientist:

Chinese and European researchers have today published ethical guidelines aimed at discouraging Chinese doctors from offering patients unproven or sham treatments based on stem cells.

The authors hope the move will reinforce legal curbs on stem cell treatments introduced on 1 May by China's ministry of health.

The launch follows new allegations of fraud in stem cell research, and the arrest of individuals in Hungary allegedly offering bogus treatments.

Read more ....

New Hope For Aids Vaccine As Scientists Find 'Achilles Heel'

From Times Online:

The search for an HIV vaccine has taken a major step forward with the discovery of a potential Achilles heel of the virus that causes Aids.

Two powerful antibodies that attack a vulnerable spot common to many strains of HIV have been identified, improving the prospects for a vaccine against a virus that affects an estimated 33 million people and kills over 2 million each year.

The discovery is important because it highlights a potential way around HIV’s defences against the human immune system, which have so far thwarted efforts to make a workable vaccine. The hope is that a vaccine that stimulates the production of these antibodies could remain effective against HIV even as the virus mutates.

Read more ....

Money Woes Likely To Hobble NASA's Planned Moon Mission

From McClatchy News:

WASHINGTON — NASA, whose successes helped cement America's reputation as the world's technological leader, is facing a series of money woes that could thwart its hopes of remaining the globe's leader in space exploration.

A blue-ribbon presidential panel is expected to advise the White House later this month that returning astronauts to the moon by 2020, as former President George W. Bush proposed, is financially impossible under NASA's $18.7 billion budget.

Read more ....

1000 MPH or Bust: Behind the Scenes With Supersonic Car Tech

(Illustration by Curventa)

From Popular Mechancis:

A series of successful rocket tests in the Mojave desert recently marks another step in the development of a car built to reach 1000 mph. The British team Bloodhound Supersonic Car (SSC) is comprised of some legendary land speed experience. Richard Noble was the man behind the Thrust SSC—the car that set the current land speed record. And the man that will slide behind the wheel of the Bloodhound is Andy Green, the former fighter pilot who holds the land speed record for the fastest diesel vehicle in the world (just over 350 mph, back in 2006). We met with the team recently to get a sense of the scope of the Bloodhound project and the challenges that lie ahead on the road to 1000 mph.

Read more ....

Study Finds Prime Time On The Internet Is 11 p.m.

Newscom

From Christian Science Monitor:

According to a study, North Americans have been staying up late to do their Internet surfing this summer, so late that the peak usage for the whole day has been at 11 p.m. Eastern time.

It’s 11 p.m. Do you know where your neighbors are?

Chances are they’re online. According to a study, North Americans have been staying up late to do their Internet surfing this summer, so late that the peak usage for the whole day has been at 11 p.m. Eastern time.
That appears to be a shift from previous years, when most Internet activity was in the daytime.

Read more ....

Diesel Exhaust Is Linked To Cancer Development Via New Blood Vessel Growth

New research shows that diesel exhaust can induce the growth of new blood vessels that serve as a food supply for solid tumors. (Credit: iStockphoto)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 2, 2009) — Scientists have demonstrated that the link between diesel fume exposure and cancer lies in the ability of diesel exhaust to induce the growth of new blood vessels that serve as a food supply for solid tumors.

The researchers found that in both healthy and diseased animals, more new blood vessels sprouted in mice exposed to diesel exhaust than did in mice exposed to clean, filtered air. This suggests that previous illness isn’t required to make humans susceptible to the damaging effects of the diesel exhaust.

Read more ....

Eating At Night May Put On Pounds

From Live Science:

When you eat, not just what you eat, can affect your weight, a new study on mice suggests.

Mice that were fed a high-fat diet during the time they'd normally eat — the regular hours in their daily circadian cycle — gained 20 percent in weight over six weeks. But mice fed the same high-fat diet during hours they should have been sleeping put on 48 percent compared to the weight they started with.

While the results would have to be replicated on humans to see if the effects are the same, researchers suspect they are.

Read more ....

The 15 Biggest Wikipedia Blunders

From PC World:

Wikipedia's just announced plans to restrict the editing of some of its articles. Under the new system, any changes made to pages of still-living people will have to be approved by an "experienced volunteer" before going online.

The change marks a significant shift in the philosophy of the openly edited user-controlled encyclopedia -- and that may not be a bad thing. Here are 15 of the biggest Wikipedia blunders the new editing system might have prevented. These false facts, according to widely published accounts, all appeared on the Wikipedia site at some point.

Read more ....

New Microprocessor Runs On Thin Air

From The New Scientist:

There's no shortage of ways to perform calculations without a standard electronic computer. But the latest in a long lineMovie Camera of weird computers runs calculations on nothing more than air.

The complicated nest of channels and valves (see image) made by Minsoung Rhee and Mark Burns at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, processes binary signals by sucking air out of tubes to represent a 0, or letting it back in to represent a 1.

A chain of such 1s and 0s flows through the processor's channels, with pneumatic valves controlling the flow of the signals between channels.

Read more ....

A Dental Filling Made From Bile And Silica

A Smile for Bile:
Science Photo Library/Photo Researchers; © Thomas J. Peterson/Getty Images; iStock

From Popular Science:

The ancient Greeks thought an excess of bile could make you angry or melancholy, but Julian Zhu thinks the digestive juice could improve your smile. Zhu, a chemist at the University of Montreal, hit upon the idea while developing a bile-acid-based gel for tissue repair. He found that combining modified bile acids with silica created a hard plastic—perfect for patching broken pearly whites. The bile plastic matches the durability of plastic composite fillings and is more resistant to cracks. And it doesn’t leach mercury, as many commonly used metal fillings do. Bile occurs naturally in the body, so it wouldn’t cause any harm if the fillings were to decompose over time.

Read more ....

Google's Gmail Goof-Up

From Business Week:

The Web company initially offered little explanation for its e-mail failure; government may think twice before trusting it with vital tasks, says Computerworld.

It's too bad the National Transportation Safety Board can't investigate Google to find out just why Gmail crashed Tuesday as Google's explanations for its outages (via its dashboard) are short and kindergarten-like.

The NTSB would seek out the root cause of the outage, hold hearings and issue a report with recommendations for fixing the problem. But Google follows the standard operating practice of cloud and SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) providers, and that is to tell customers as little as possible about an outage. They treat their customers like dumb bunnies.

Read more ....

Update: Google Explains Why You Didn’t Have Gmail -- Epicenter/Wired

Global Warming Could Forestall Ice Age

Researchers use a floating platform to take sediment cores from Sunday Lake in southwestern Alaska. Darrell Kaufman/Northern Arizona University

From The New York Times:

The human-driven buildup of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere appears to have ended a millenniums-long slide toward cooler summer temperatures in the Arctic, the authors of a new study report.

Scientists familiar with the work, to be published Friday in the journal Science, said it provides fresh evidence that human activity is not only warming the globe, particularly the Arctic, but could even fend off what had been presumed to be an inevitable descent into a new ice age over the next several dozen millenniums.

The reversal of the slow cooling trend in the Arctic, recorded in samples of layered lakebed mud, glacial ice and tree rings from Alaska to Siberia, has been swift and pronounced, the team writes.

Read more ....

More Climate Change News

Arctic reverses trend, is warmest in two millennia -- AP
Arctic now warmest in 2000 years, researchers say -- Reuters
Human Activity Blamed in Reversal of Cooling in Arctic -- Washington Post
Next Ice Age Delayed by Global Warming, Study Says -- National Geographic
Arctic Temperatures Are Warmest in 2,000 Years -- Live Science
Recent Arctic warming follows centuries of natural cooling -- CBC
Arctic ice reveals last decade was hottest in 2,000 years -- Daily Mail

Telegraphs Ran on Electric Air in Crazy 1859 Magnetic Storm

Image from Wikipedia

From Wired Science:

On Sept. 2, 1859, at the telegraph office at No. 31 State Street in Boston at 9:30 a.m., the operators’ lines were overflowing with current, so they unplugged the batteries connected to their machines, and kept working using just the electricity coursing through the air.

In the wee hours of that night, the most brilliant auroras ever recorded had broken out across the skies of the Earth. People in Havana and Florida reported seeing them. The New York Times ran a 3,000 word feature recording the colorful event in purple prose.

Read more ....

Will Kepler Find Habitable Moons?

Artist's impression of a hypothetical exomoon in orbit around a Saturn-like planet in another planetary system. (Credit: Dan Durda)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 3, 2009) — Since the launch of the NASA Kepler Mission earlier this year, astronomers have been keenly awaiting the first detection of an Earth-like planet around another star. Now, in an echo of science fiction movies a team of scientists led by Dr David Kipping of University College London thinks that they may even find habitable ‘exomoons,’ too.

The new results will appear in a paper in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Read more ....

New Origin of Life Proposed: Zinc & Zap

Unlike Miller and Urey, who believed the early Earth had a reducing atmosphere, scientists today believe the early Earth had a neutral atmosphere composed primarily of carbon dioxide. Credit: NASA

From Live Science:

The Miller-Urey experiment, conducted by chemists Stanley Miller and Harold Urey in 1953, is the classic experiment on the origin of life. It established that the early Earth atmosphere, as they pictured it, was capable of producing amino acids, the building blocks of life, from inorganic substances.

Now, more than 55 years later, two scientists are proposing a hypothesis that could add a new dimension to the debate on how life on Earth developed.

Read more ....

Cairo Slums Get Energy Makeover

Solar CITIES project leader T.H. Culhane (right) and organization intern Omar Nagy stand next to a solar-powered water heater on the roof of an apartment building in the Zabaleen neighborhood of Cairo, Egypt. The project offers people in Cairo's slums clean energy through solar panels and biogas reactors and a chance to improve their lives, according to Culhane. Photograph courtesy T.H. Culhane

From National Geographic:

In the ghettos of Egypt's largest city, solar panels are sprouting on apartment rooftops, providing residents with clean power and water and a chance to directly improve their lives.

Since 2003 the nonprofit Solar CITIES project has installed 34 solar-powered hot water systems and 5 biogas reactors in Cairo's poor Coptic Christian and Islamic neighborhoods.

Read more ....

NASA Monitoring Space Junk; May Need to Move ISS

International Space Station

From Daily Tech:

The U.S. space agency is monitoring a piece of space junk that could impact the ISS

NASA is now monitoring a piece of space trash that may force a shift in position for the International Space Station and shuttle Discovery, which is currently docked at the ISS.

An old piece of metal from the Ariane 5 rocket body will fly by the ISS sometime on Friday, with it reaching its closest point just 6.2 miles away from the ISS. The size of the space junk remains unknown, though a decision will be made later this evening.

Read more ....

'Telepathic' Microchip Could Help Paraplegics Control Computers

Dr Jon Spratley says his device could motor neuron sufferers such as Stephen Hawking, operate PCs and television by thought alone Photo: MARTIN POPE

From The Telegraph:

A 'telepathic' microchip that enables paraplegics to control computers has been developed by Dr Jon Spratley, a British scientist.

The chip is implanted onto the surface of the brain, where it monitors electronic 'thought' pulses.

While paraplegics may be unable to move their limbs, their brains still produce an electronic signal when they try.

Read more ....

Ancient Wall Found In Jerusalem

From The BBC:

A 3,700-year-old wall has been discovered in east Jerusalem, Israeli archaeologists say.

The structure was built to protect the city's water supply as part of what dig director Ronny Reich described as the region's earliest fortifications.

The 26-ft (8-m) high wall showed the Canaanite people who built it were a sophisticated civilisation, he said.

Critics say Israel uses such projects as a political tool to bolster Jewish claims to occupied Palestinian land.

Excavations at the site, known as the City of David, are in a Palestinian neighbourhood just outside the walls of Jerusalem's old city.

Read more ....

Star Wars As Andromeda Galaxy Devours Its Neighbour

Stars are being pulled from Triangulum as it orbits Andromeda due to the strong gravity of this massive galaxy, according to new research

From The Daily Mail:

British astronomers have captured the first ever images of a cannibalistic galaxy of stars 'consuming' another.

The remarkable photographs showing the giant Andromeda galaxy 'devouring' a smaller star formation is described by experts as the 'Holy Grail' of space photography.

Stargazers have long known that Andromeda, which lies approximately 2.5 million light years away, has grown by 'feeding' on other clusters, But this is the first time that its expansion has been caught on camera.

Read more ....

13 More Things That Don't Make Sense

From New Scientist:

Strive as we might to make sense of the world, there are mysteries that still confound us.

Here are thirteen of the most perplexing. Cracking any one of them could yield profound truths.

Read more ....

How Science Can Create Millions of New Jobs

From Business Week:

Reigniting basic research can repair the broken U.S. business model and put Americans back to work .

Name an industry that can produce 1 million new, high-paying jobs over the next three years. You can't, because there isn't one. And that's the problem.

America needs good jobs, soon. We need 6.7 million just to replace losses from the current recession, then an additional 10 million to keep up with population growth and to spark demand over the next decade. In the 1990s the U.S. economy created a net 22 million jobs, or 2.2 million a year. But from 2000 to the end of 2007, the rate plunged to 900,000 a year. The pipeline is dry because the U.S. business model is broken. Our growth engine has run out of a key fuel—basic research.

Read more ....

The First "Clown" Going To Space

Guy Laliberte poses for a picture as he attends a training session in a space capsule at the Star City space centre outside Moscow July 9, 2009. The Canadian billionaire owner of Cirque du Soleil is on the countdown to become the world's seventh, and Canada's first, space tourist, slated to travel on a Russian Rocket

Laliberté Set To Be Inspired -- The Montreal Gazette

Space tourist launches to ISS on Sept. 30

Canada's first space tourist will blast off into space as part of a three-man supply crew on Sept. 30.

Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberté, NASA astronaut Jeff Williams and Russian cosmonaut Maxim Suraev are scheduled to launch on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

"I think this is a great, great opportunity of inspiration and I intend to inspire myself as much as possible," said Laliberté, speaking from the Johnson Space Centre in Houston.

Read more ....

Guy Laliberté, in a lighter moment, clowns around during training for launch to the International Space Station. (Credit: Space Adventures Ltd.)

More News On Canada's First Space Tourist

'First clown in space' has serious mission goals -- AP
The future first clown in space to advocate for water -- AFP
Circus billionaire plans show from space -- Reuters
Space clown plans global show -- MSNBC
Cirque boss's space trip to have serious message - aside from the clown nose -- Canadian Press
Cirque du Soleil show in space -- BBC
Cirque du Soleil chief outlines 'poetic' space mission -- CNET
Big Artistic Performance to Be Set in Space -- Space.com
Laliberté flying without a nyet -- Montreal Gazette
U2 to participate in “Moving Stars and Earth for Water” event -- U2Log

Giant Galaxy Hosts Most Distant Supermassive Black Hole

False-color image of the QSO (CFHQSJ2329-0301), the most distant black hole currently known. In addition to the bright central black hole (white), the image shows the surrounding host galaxy (red). The white bar indicates an angle on the sky of 4 arcseconds or 1/900th of a degree. (Credit: Tomotsugu GOTO, University of Hawaii)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 2, 2009) — University of Hawaii (UH) astronomer Dr. Tomotsugu Goto and colleagues have discovered a giant galaxy surrounding the most distant supermassive black hole ever found. The galaxy, so distant that it is seen as it was 12.8 billion years ago, is as large as the Milky Way galaxy and harbours a supermassive black hole that contains at least a billion times as much matter as our Sun.

Read more ....

FAQ: The Science And History Of Wildfires

From Live Science:

The Station Fire, the largest of eight wildfires roaring through parts of California, began on Aug. 26 and has since burned more than 140,000 acres of land within the Angeles National Forest and near the surrounding foothill communities of La Canada-Flintridge, La Crescenta, Acton, Soledad Canyon, Pasadena and Glendale.

Here's what's behind this fire and others, and how this fire season stacks up to history:

Read more ....

Future Robot Soldiers?

The Exoskeleton: Extreme Technological Innovation -- Raytheon

Raytheon Company’s research facility in Salt Lake City, Utah, is developing a robotic suit for the soldier of tomorrow. The exoskeleton is essentially a wearable robot that amplifies its wearer’s strength, endurance and agility. Reminiscent of super heroes depicted in comic books and Hollywood movies, the bleeding edge technology effectively blurs the lines between science fiction and reality. So much so, that Popular Science magazine recently likened Raytheon’s exoskeleton to the “Iron Man”® depicted in the blockbuster movie of the same name.

Read more ....

My Comment: Watch the YouTube video .... I am impressed.

Studying Ancient Man To Learn To Prevent Disease

iStockphoto

From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

Health care as we know it didn't exist 3,000 years ago. But along the Georgia coast, the Pacific Northwest, and coastal Brazil, people grew tall and strong and lived relatively free of disease. They ate game, fish, shellfish, and wild plants.

But as corn farming spread through various regions of the Americas, people got shorter. Many became prone to anemia and began dying of tuberculosis and other infectious diseases.

Read more ....

As Wildfire Threatens L.A., Satellites And Supertankers Hover

Smoke Monster: Smokey won't like this. NASA

From Popular Science:

Los Angelenos have recently watched billowing clouds from a nearby wildfire hover overhead, in scenes reminiscent of "Volcano." NASA's Terra satellite took the opportunity to snap a photo of the smoke monster on the night of August 30. Red outlines in the photo indicate wildfire hotspots.

Read more ....

Milk Drinking Started Around 7,500 Years Ago In Central Europe

Map showing origin of milk drinking in Europe.
(Credit: Image courtesy of University College London)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 1, 2009) — The ability to digest the milk sugar lactose first evolved in dairy farming communities in central Europe, not in more northern groups as was previously thought, finds a new study led by UCL (University College London) scientists published in the journal PLoS Computational Biology.

The genetic change that enabled early Europeans to drink milk without getting sick has been mapped to dairying farmers who lived around 7,500 years ago in a region between the central Balkans and central Europe.

Read more ....

Dogs Descended From Wolf Pack On Yangtze River

From The Telegraph:

Today's dogs are all descended from a pack of wolves tamed 16,000 years ago on the shores of the Yangtze river, according to new research.

It was previously known that the birthplace of the dog was eastern Asia but historians were not able to be more precise than that.

However, now researchers have made a number of new discoveries about the history of man's best friend - including that the dog appeared about 16,000 years ago south of the Yangtze river in China.

Read more ....

We Are All Mutants Say Scientists

From The BBC:

Each of us has at least 100 new mutations in our DNA, according to research published in the journal Current Biology.

Scientists have been trying to get an accurate estimate of the mutation rate for over 70 years.

However, only now has it been possible to get a reliable estimate, thanks to "next generation" technology for genetic sequencing.

Read more ....

Discovery Of Novel Genes Could Unlock Mystery Of What Makes Us Uniquely Human

A baby chimp (Pan troglodytes) and his handler looking at each other.
(Credit: iStockphoto/Warwick Lister-Kaye)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 2, 2009) — Humans and chimpanzees are genetically very similar, yet it is not difficult to identify the many ways in which we are clearly distinct from chimps. In a study published online in Genome Research, scientists have made a crucial discovery of genes that have evolved in humans after branching off from other primates, opening new possibilities for understanding what makes us uniquely human.

Read more ....

What Happens When an Astronaut Sneezes?

No kidding! This CDC photograph captured a sneeze in progress, revealing the plume of salivary droplets as they are expelled in a large cone-shaped array from this man's open mouth. The flu virus can spread in this manner and survive long enough on a doorknob or countertop to infect another person. It dramatically illustrating the reason you should cover your mouth when sneezing or coughing to protect others from germ exposure, health officials say. It’s also why you need to wash your hands a lot, on the assumptions others don’t always cover their sneezes. Credit: CDC/James Gathany .

From Live Science:

Best to do the sneezing inside a shuttle or the space station, not on a spacewalk, when it can get real messy, with goo sprayed all over the inside of the helmet's "windshield."

Lately astronauts have been complaining about stuffy heads up there on the International Space Station. NASA doesn't think they have colds, though. Rather, the effects have more to do with pockets of carbon dioxide generated when they gather in groups, space station flight controller Heather Rarick said.

Read more ....

Space Mission To Mercury: How An Ion Engine Works

Photo courtesy NASA
This image of a xenon ion engine, photographed through a port of the vacuum chamber where it was being tested at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, shows the faint blue glow of charged atoms being emitted from the engine. The ion propulsion engine is the first non-chemical propulsion to be used as the primary means of propelling a spacecraft.

From The Telegraph:

The solar electric propulsion systems – or ion engines - which will power the next generation of spacecraft to Mercury and beyond are ten times more efficient than conventional rocket engines.

In an ion engine the gas xenon is pumped through a chamber where xenon atoms are stripped of an electron, becoming electrically charged ions, and drift towards two grids a millimetre apart.

The grids are fed with two thousand volts – in space this power will come from paper-thin solar panels spanning 26m. As the ions pass through the electrified grids they accelerate to up to 50km a second and shoot from the rear in a parallel beam.

Read more ....

First Baby Born From New Egg-Screening Technique

From Breitbart/AFP:

Meet Oliver, the first baby in the world born using a new egg-screening technique that could double the odds of an implanted embryo taking hold in the womb, unveiled by British experts on Wednesday.

Baby Oliver was born in Britain to a 41-year-old woman after 13 failed attempts at in vitro fertilisation (IVF).

The new technique, called array comparative genomic hybridisation (CGH), makes it possible to ensure eggs have a normal number of chromosomes, boosting the likelihood of a successful pregnancy.

Read more ....

Great Ball Of Fire? No, Just A 'Sun Dog' Scampering Across The Sky

Blazing light: The flash was photographed by Matthew Pinless
near his home in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire

From The Daily Mail:

Matthew Pinless was sure that the streak of light he spotted in the sky while walking was more likely to be a meteor than a UFO.

In fact it was neither. The blazing ball hanging above a residential street in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, is thought to be a ‘sun dog’.

The phenomenon occurs when sunlight is refracted by hexagonal-shaped ice crystals in high and cirrus clouds - and is quite common, experts say.

Read more ....

First Spacewalk Complete

Credit NASA

From Red Orbit:

The first spacewalk of the STS-128 mission came off without a hitch on Tuesday, as spacewalkers Danny Olivas and Nicole Stott completed all the tasks on their to-do list.

Olivas and Stott left the International Space Station at 4:49 p.m. Tuesday, and spent the next 6 hours and 35 minutes outside, working to get cargo that space shuttle Discovery will bring home ready for its return. They started with a depleted ammonia tank assembly on the P1, or port 1, segment of the station’s truss, getting it out of the way in preparation for the installation of a new tank to be installed on Thursday, during the mission’s second spacewalk. The ammonia in the tanks is used to cool the station and expel the heat generated by its residents and systems.

Read more ....

Maintenance Error Causes Two-Hour Gmail Outage

From ZDNet:

Google's nearly two-hour Gmail outage yesterday was the result of a miscalculation regarding the capacity of its system, the company said late on Tuesday.

Gmail (Google Mail) was down from about 12:30pm PDT (8:30pm BST) Tuesday to about 2:30pm PDT (10:30pm BST), affecting millions of Gmail customers who depend on the service for everything from fantasy football roster updates to business-critical information. The problem was caused by a classic cascade in which servers became overwhelmed with traffic in rapid succession.

Read more ....

Finding Smells That Repel

Michael C. Witte

From The Wall Street Journal:

If you're one of those people whom mosquitoes tend to favor, maybe it's because you aren't sufficiently stressed-out.

Insects have very keen powers of smell that direct them to their targets. But for researchers trying to figure out what attracts or repels the pests, sorting through the 300 to 400 distinct chemical odors that the human body produces has proved daunting.

Read more ....

Keeping Genes Out Of Terrorists' Hands

Photo: Low standards could mean that hazardous genes get through screening more easily. W. Philpott/Reuters

From Nature:

Gene-synthesis industry at odds over how to screen DNA orders.

A standards war is brewing in the gene-synthesis industry. At stake is the way that the industry screens orders for hazardous toxins and genes, such as pieces of deadly viruses and bacteria. Two competing groups of companies are now proposing different sets of screening standards, and the results could be crucial for global biosecurity.

"If you have a company that persists with a lower standard, you can drag the industry down to a lower level," says lawyer Stephen Maurer of the University of California, Berkeley, who is studying how the industry is developing responsible practices. "Now we have a standards war that is a race to the bottom."

Read more ....

My Comment: This is a topic that I am ignorant of. But my brother .... who has a Doctorate in Chemistry and who has worked in the pharmaceutical industry exploring these topics for he past 20 years tells me to be afraid .... be very afraid.

Hmmmm .... OK .... I am afraid.

Global Warming And The Sun -- A Commentary

From L.A. Times:

Recent studies seem to show that there's more to climate change than we know.

Assuming there are no sunspots today, a 96-year record will have been broken: 53 days without any solar blemishes, giant magnetic disruptions on the sun's surface that cause solar flares. That would be the fourth-longest stretch of stellar solar complexion since 1849. Wait, it gets even more exciting.

During what scientist call the Maunder Minimum -- a period of solar inactivity from 1645 to 1715 -- the world experienced the worst of the cold streak dubbed the Little Ice Age. At Christmastime, Londoners ice skated on the Thames, and New Yorkers (then New Amsterdamers) sometimes walked over the Hudson from Manhattan to Staten Island.

Read more ....

World's Smallest Semiconductor Laser Heralds New Era In Optical Science

Image: The schematic on the left illustrates light being compressed and sustained in the 5 nanometer gap -- smaller than a protein molecule -- between a nanowire and underlying silver surface. To the right is an electron microscope image of the hybrid design shown in the schematic. (Credit: Courtesy of Xiang Zhang Lab, UC Berkeley)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Aug. 31, 2009) — Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, have reached a new milestone in laser physics by creating the world's smallest semiconductor laser, capable of generating visible light in a space smaller than a single protein molecule.

This breakthrough, described in an advanced online publication of the journal Nature on Aug. 30, breaks new ground in the field of optics. The UC Berkeley team not only successfully squeezed light into such a tight space, but found a novel way to keep that light energy from dissipating as it moved along, thereby achieving laser action.

Read more ....

Why Pacific Hurricanes Hit The Americas So Rarely

Hurricane Jimena was heading west-northwest toward Mexico’s Baja Peninsula on August 30, 2009, when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this image. Near the time of the image, the storm had sustained winds of 140 mph, making it a Category 4 storm. Clouds from the storm stretch out over western Mexico. Credit: Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team, Goddard Space Flight Center

From Live Science:

Stories of hurricane winds and rain lashing the coasts of Florida, Louisiana and other southeastern states pop up in the news constantly during the summer, but warnings of Pacific storms such as Jimena are few and far between.

In fact, only one hurricane is thought to have ever struck California, and that was clear back in 1858. Could it happen again? Not impossible, but also extremely unlikely in any given year.

Read more ....

The Race To The Higgs Boson: LHC Versus Tevatron

Tevatron Fermilab

From Popular Science:

While the LHC's in the shop for repairs from its massive breakdown last September, an older particle accelerator might beat them to finding the Higgs boson, the fundamental particle thought to give matter mass.

At a conference last week, Tevatron physicists threw down the gauntlet, vowing that by 2011, the Tevatron accelerator (located at Fermi National Accelerator Lab outside Chicago) will be able to definitively prove or disprove the existence of the Higgs boson.

Read more ....

8 Of The Most Dangerous Places (To Live) On The Planet

A monument reading "Polyus Cholada," Russian for "Pole of Cold," stands at the entrance to the city of Verkhoyansk.

From Popular Mechanics:

It’s hurricane season, a time of year when residents in vulnerable areas—like New Orleans—need to hunker down, stock up and prepare for the unforeseen. But there are other places in the world where the dangers are so great that it’s hard to believe anyone is willing to stay put and fight it out with Mother Nature. Here, we have canvassed the globe for 10 places that require fortitude, resourcefulness and a great faith in one’s DIY skills to make it through the year alive.

Read more ....

Astrophysicists Puzzle Over Planet That's Too Close To Its Sun

From L.A. Times:

Completing an orbit in less than an Earth day, planet Wasp-18b should have burned up, according to accepted theory.

Scientists have discovered a planet that shouldn't exist. The finding, they say, could alter our understanding of orbital dynamics, a field considered pretty well settled since the time of astronomer Johannes Kepler 400 years ago.

The planet is known as a "hot Jupiter," a gas giant orbiting the star Wasp-18, about 330 light-years from Earth. The planet, Wasp-18b, is so close to the star that it completes a full orbit (its "year") in less than an Earth day, according to the research, which was published in the journal Nature.

Read more ....

Social Networking Sites Grab Big Slice Of Web Ads

From Yahoo News/Reuters:

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - About one of every five Internet display ads in the United States is viewed on a social networking Web site like MySpace and Facebook, according to a new report.

The report by analytics firm comScore underscores the increasing prominence of social media sites in the Internet landscape and broadening acceptance of the sites by brand advertisers.

It also illustrates the increasing competition between social media sites and established Internet companies like Yahoo Inc and Time Warner Inc's AOL which have long billed themselves as the top online destinations for brand advertisers.

Read more ....

5 Future Robotic Expeditions And What They Could Reveal [Slide Show]

ESA/AOES Medialab

From Scientific American:

Some are already on their way and some are still in the works, but here is what we may see from unmanned exploration of space in the coming years.

Fifty years ago this month, the Soviet Union scored a coup in the space race with a probe called Luna 2. The spacecraft, which resembled a squat, souped-up version of its cousin Sputnik, was launched on September 12, 1959, and two days later reached the lunar surface. By impacting the moon, Luna 2 became the first man-made object to land on a celestial body other than Earth.

Read more ....

Fahrenheit 747: World’s Biggest Fire Extinguisher Douses L.A. County

From Autopia/Wired Science:

The deadly fires that have blackened more than 105,000 acres around Los Angeles prompted authorities to call in the world’s largest fire extinguisher — a Boeing 747 that can drop 20,000 gallons of retardant over a swath of land three miles long.

The plane made its first-ever drop in the continental United States when fire officials summoned it to the Oak Glen fire east of Los Angeles mid day on Monday. After the successful first drop, the Supertanker was called back into action Monday evening where it made further drops on the massive Station fire north of the city which grew to more than 164 square miles and threatened 10,000 homes. Nearly 2,600 firefighters from as far away as Montana are throwing everything they have at the blaze, and on Monday they called in the biggest tool in their inventory.

Read more ....

Neuroscientists Find Brain Region Responsible For Our Sense Of Personal Space

Patient SM, a woman with complete bilateral amygdala lesions (red), preferred to stand close to the experimenter (black). On average, control participants (blue) preferred to stand nearly twice as far away from the same experimenter. Images drawn to scale.

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Aug. 31, 2009) — In a finding that sheds new light on the neural mechanisms involved in social behavior, neuroscientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have pinpointed the brain structure responsible for our sense of personal space.

The discovery, described in the August 30 issue of the journal Nature Neuroscience, could offer insight into autism and other disorders where social distance is an issue.

Read more ....