Simpler, Fresher Facebook Lite Puts Twitter In The Shade

The login page of Facebook Lite - the service is aimed
at users in countries with limited bandwidth

From The Daily Mail:

Facebook is currently testing a simplified version of its social network service aimed at countries where internet bandwidth is limited. But it may prove popular with other users tired of the currently over-fussy website.

The new system, named Facebook Lite, focuses on messaging and user updates and now looks far more similar to rival micro-blogging service Twitter.

It is available to a handful of users in the UK by going to http://lite.facebook.com. However, at present a preview of the service is only widely available in India and the US.

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Shuttle Landing Delayed For A Day

From The BBC:

The landing of the shuttle Discovery at the Kennedy Space Center has been delayed for at least a day due to bad weather in Florida.

Thunderstorms and strong winds meant that the US space agency Nasa skipped both Thursday landing possibilities.

The shuttle, which is returning from a mission to the International Space Station (ISS), will have to orbit the earth for a 14th day.

The new landing slot is at 1754 (2154 GMT) on Friday.

However the weather forecast for Friday is worse, and Saturday is only a little better.

Nasa says if necessary it will consider the possibility of using a runway at Edwards Air Force Base in California.

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Women Are Getting More Beautiful

From Times Online:

FOR the female half of the population, it may bring a satisfied smile. Scientists have found that evolution is driving women to become ever more beautiful, while men remain as aesthetically unappealing as their caveman ancestors.

The researchers have found beautiful women have more children than their plainer counterparts and that a higher proportion of those children are female. Those daughters, once adult, also tend to be attractive and so repeat the pattern.

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Electrical Circuit Runs Entirely Off Power In Trees

Electrical engineers Babak Parviz and Brian Otis and undergraduate student Carlton Himes (right to left) demonstrate a circuit that runs entirely off tree power. (Credit: University of Washington)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 9, 2009) — You've heard about flower power. What about tree power? It turns out that it's there, in small but measurable quantities. There's enough power in trees for University of Washington researchers to run an electronic circuit, according to results to be published in an upcoming issue of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers' Transactions on Nanotechnology.

"As far as we know this is the first peer-reviewed paper of someone powering something entirely by sticking electrodes into a tree," said co-author Babak Parviz, a UW associate professor of electrical engineering.

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Arctic May Be Changed Forever, Study Finds

An adult female caribou and her newborn calf in Greenland during 2008-2009. Caribou numbers have been declining as a result of climate change. Credit: Eric Post, Penn State University

From Live Science:

The dramatic changes sweeping the Arctic as a result of global warming aren't just confined to melting sea ice and polar bears — a new study finds that the forces of climate change are propagating throughout the frigid north, producing different effects in each ecosystem with the upshot that the face of the Arctic may be forever altered.

"The Arctic as we know it may be a thing of the past," said Eric Post of Penn State, who led an international team that brought together research on the effects of climate change from ecosystems across the Arctic.

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Is Warfare in Our Genes? Apparently Not

Can humans ever live in eternal peace? (Image: Rex Features)

Winning The Ultimate Battle: How Humans Could End War -- The Scientist

OPTIMISTS called the first world war "the war to end all wars". Philosopher George Santayana demurred. In its aftermath he declared: "Only the dead have seen the end of war". History has proved him right, of course. What's more, today virtually nobody believes that humankind will ever transcend the violence and bloodshed of warfare. I know this because for years I have conducted numerous surveys asking people if they think war is inevitable. Whether male or female, liberal or conservative, old or young, most people believe it is. For example, when I asked students at my university "Will humans ever stop fighting wars?" more than 90 per cent answered "No". Many justified their assertion by adding that war is "part of human nature" or "in our genes". But is it really?

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My Comment: A fascinating read. Somehow I missed this story. Read the whole thing.

Solar Superstorm

An ultraviolet-wavelength picture of the sun taken by the ESA/NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) on Oct. 23, 2003.

From NASA:

October 23, 2003: Newly uncovered scientific data of recorded history's most massive space storm is helping a NASA scientist investigate its intensity and the probability that what occurred on Earth and in the heavens almost a century-and-a-half ago could happen again.

In scientific circles where solar flares, magnetic storms and other unique solar events are discussed, the occurrences of September 1-2, 1859, are the star stuff of legend. Even 144 years ago, many of Earth's inhabitants realized something momentous had just occurred. Within hours, telegraph wires in both the United States and Europe spontaneously shorted out, causing numerous fires, while the Northern Lights, solar-induced phenomena more closely associated with regions near Earth's North Pole, were documented as far south as Rome, Havana and Hawaii, with similar effects at the South Pole.

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The Age Of Enhancement

From Prospect:

A cornucopia of drugs will soon be on sale to improve everything from our memories to our trust in others.

On 6th December 2004 a baby girl named Yan was born. Her father, an internet entrepreneur, is called Shen Tong. Yan was Shen’s first child, and you might have expected him to have an excitable, sleepless night. But oddly the opposite occurred. He slept better than he had done for 15 years, six months and two days. It’s possible to be exact about the timing because 15 years, six months and two days earlier was 4th June 1989 and on that day Shen had been on a boulevard just off Tiananmen Square in Beijing. He was a 20-year-old student, and like thousands of others he was demonstrating in favour of political reform.

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New Robot Travels Across The Seafloor To Monitor The Impact Of Climate Change On Deep-sea Ecosystems

During July 2009, the Benthic Rover traveled across the seafloor while hooked up to the MARS ocean observatory. This allowed researchers to control the vehicle in "real time." The yellow cable on the right side of the image is a long "extension cord" that unspools as the Rover moves. (Credit: Copyright 2009 MBARI)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 10, 2009) — Like the robotic rovers Spirit and Opportunity, which wheeled tirelessly across the dusty surface of Mars, a new robot spent most of July traveling across the muddy ocean bottom, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) off the California coast. This robot, the Benthic Rover, has been providing scientists with an entirely new view of life on the deep seafloor. It will also give scientists a way to document the effects of climate change on the deep sea. The Rover is the result of four years of hard work by a team of engineers and scientists led by MBARI project engineer Alana Sherman and marine biologist Ken Smith.

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Memory Scientists Say: All Is Not Forgotten

fMRI Brain Activity Jan Hardenbergh

From Popular Science:

Unless you are this woman, you probably have a long mental list of moments and facts you wish you could remember -- but for the life of you, you can't. To use a personal example, I periodically Google the words "yellow house Berlin," hoping to produce the name of that one hostel I lived in for a summer in college; alas, no success yet. The good news, though, is that while such memories may be currently inaccessible, they're not entirely gone, and could theoretically be retrieved, according to new brain imaging research from the University of California, Irvine.

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No Sex Tonight Honey, I Haven't Taken My Statins

High cholesterol levels could prevent women from becoming sexually aroused
(Image: F1 Online / Rex Features)

From New Scientist:

High cholesterol isn't just bad for the heart – it could also make it harder for women to become sexually aroused. That might mean that cholesterol-lowering drugs like statins would help to treat so-called female sexual dysfunction (FSD).

Hyperlipidemia, or raised levels of cholesterol and other fats in the blood, is associated with erectile dysfunction in men, because the build-up of fats in blood vessel walls can reduce blood flow to erectile tissue. Since some aspects of female sexual arousal also rely on increased blood flow to the genitals, Katherine Esposito and her colleagues at the Second University of Naples in Italy compared sexual function in premenopausal women with and without hyperlipidemia.

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When two husbands are better than one

Women laborers work in an onion field at Rambha village of Karnal district in the northern Indian state of Haryana on April 30, 2009. A shortage of females in this area has led to more people participating in polyandry, or the phenomenon of a woman taking more than one husband. (Vijay Mathur/Reuters)

From Global Post:

Polyandry in the Himalayas is a complex affair. Not surprisingly.

SPITI VALLEY, HIMACHAL PRADESH, India — An array of stars twinkled over Himalayan peaks towering nearly three miles high, while below in the chilly darkness a husband and wife relaxed after their 120-mile pilgrimage. Leaning back in chairs in front of a guest house, warm in their woolen clothing, they appeared indistinguishable from the hundreds of others who had come to hear the teachings of a Buddhist leader.

What set them apart was the person they had left behind: the woman's other husband.

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4 Forgotten Facts About Combat UAVs

MQ-9 Reaper

From Popular Mechanics:

CREECH AIR FORCE BASE, Nev.—The U.S. Air Force squadrons that form the 432d Air Expeditionary Wing here are the first that exist only to fly unmanned aerial vehicles. The base, which currently hosts training and operations for MQ-1 Predators and MQ-9 Reapers, is trailblazing modern military aviation. It's a perfect place for practitioners who fly UAVs every day to set the record straight on some common misconceptions about UAVs.

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My Comment: No real surprises .... but for those who are still new to what UAVs are capable of, this is a good read.

Ancient Oceans Offer New Insight Into Origins Of Animal Life

In prehistoric times, Earth experienced two periods of large increases and fluctuations in the oxygen level of the atmosphere and oceans. These fluctuations also led to an explosion of multicellular organisms in the oceans, which are the predecessors for life as we know it today. (Credit: iStockphoto/Sebastian Meckelmann)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Sep. 10, 2009) — Analysis of a rock type found only in the world's oldest oceans has shed new light on how large animals first got a foothold on Earth.

A scientific team led by Professor Robert Frei at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, and including scientists from Newcastle University, UK, and universities in Uruguay and Southern Denmark, have for the first time managed to plot the rise and fall of oxygen levels in the Earth's atmosphere over the last 3.8 billion years.

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To Hot Rocks in Earth, Just Add Water

Steam rises from cooling towers as U.S. Geothermal's Raft River geothermal power plant near Malta, Idaho. Researchers from the University of Utah's Energy and Geoscience Institute will inject cool water and pressurized water into a "dry" geothermal well at the site during a $10.2 million study aimed at making existing power plants more productive and making geothermal power feasible nationwide. Credit: U.S. Geothermal, Inc.

From Live Science:

Researchers will inject cool water and pressurized water into a “dry” geothermal well during a five-year, $10.2 million study aimed at boosting the productivity of geothermal power plants and making them feasible nationwide.

“Using these techniques to increase pathways in the rock for hot water and steam would increase availability of geothermal energy across the country,” says geologist Ray Levey, director of the Energy & Geoscience Institute (EGI) at the University of Utah.

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The Red Meat Footprint

Credit: iStockphoto

From Cosmos:

Our diets revolve around meat. But rumours abound that being vegetarian is better for the environment. Could there be some truth to it? We investigate the evidence.

Death row inmates put a lot of thought into their final meal choice. After all, it's the last food they will eat on this Earth. And their choice is telling for overwhelmingly, in the United States at least, they want meat.

Pork chops, filet mignon, steak, hamburger, meatloaf, fried chicken, sausages… with not a lentil, slice of haloumi or vegetarian lasagne in sight. Prisoners on death row might not be the most representative of groups, but their choices give an inkling of the central role meat plays in our diet.

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Where Does Sex Live In The Brain? From Top To Bottom.

Image: iStockphoto

From Discover Magazine:

Neuroscientists explore the mind's sexual side and discover that desire is not quite what we thought it was.

On April 11, 1944, a doctor named T. C. Erickson addressed the Chicago Neurological Society about a patient he called Mrs. C. W. At age 43 she had started to wake up many nights feeling as if she were having sex—or as she put it to Erickson, feeling “hot all over.” As the years passed her hot spells struck more often, even in the daytime, and began to be followed by seizures that left her unable to speak. Erickson examined Mrs. C. W. when she was 54 and diagnosed her with nymphomania. He prescribed a treatment that was shockingly common at the time: He blasted her ovaries with X-rays.

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Last Days of Big American Physics: One More Triumph, Or Just Another Heartbreak?

From The Wire Science:

BATAVIA, Illinois — High-energy particle physicists around the world are collectively holding their breath waiting for the Large Hadron Collider to come online and start unlocking the most elusive secrets of the universe. It’s as if time is standing still until their shiny new toy is ready to play with.

But not at Fermilab. Here, physicists are in the scientific equivalent of an all-out sprint, still clinging to the ever-thinning hope that before the LHC ramps up to full power, their own 28-year old particle collider, the Tevatron, will catch the coveted Higgs boson, a theoretical particle that is at the heart of the Standard Model of physics.

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Space Junk Forces Shuttle Discovery To Dodge On Way Home

Earth is seen behind Space Shuttle Discovery in this image photographed by an Expedition 20 crew member on the International Space Station soon after the shuttle and station began their post-undocking relative separation in this NASA handout photo taken September 8, 2009. The STS-128 and Expedition 20 crew concluded nine days of cooperative work onboard the shuttle and station before undocking the two spacecraft. REUTERS/NASA/Handout

From Yahoo News/Space.com:

The space shuttle Discovery will have to dodge a mysterious piece of orbital trash before trying to land in Florida Thursday.

Shuttle commander Rick Sturckow and pilot Kevin Ford will fire Discovery's thrusters at about 12:02 p.m. EDT (1605 GMT) to move their spacecraft clear of the space junk and continue on with their planned landing attempt today.

The "mystery orbital debris," as Mission Control called it, apparently came free from the shuttle or the International Space Station while both vehicles were linked during a spacewalk on Saturday. NASA engineers do not know what the object is or its size, but it has been creeping ever closer to Discovery since the shuttle fired its engines to leave the station's orbital neighborhood Tuesday.

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Japan's Space Truck Ready To Fly

From The BBC:

Japan is ready to launch its new space freighter from the Tanegashima base in the south of the country.

The 16.5-tonne unmanned H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV) will haul cargo to the International Space station (ISS).

Its success is vitally important to the station project, which is set to lose the servicing capability of the US shuttle fleet next year.

When the orbiters retire, re-supply will be in the hands of a number of robotic vessels - the HTV included.

The logistics demands of a fully crewed, fully functional ISS will require all of the freighters to play their part.

Lift-off for the HTV is timed for 0201 local time on Friday (1701 GMT, Thursday).

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Nasa Scientists Levitate Mice With Magnet

Scientists have previously managed to levitate frogs and grasshoppers

From The Telegraph:

Nasa-backed scientists have successfully levitated mice, as part of research into the conditions endured by astronauts in space.

The mice were made to float using a superconducting magnet that produces a field strong enough to rival the pull of gravity.

After initial tests on baby mice left them frantically spinning in the air, the scientists decided to sedate the rodents to make their weightless ordeals less disturbing.

Describing the first test on a three-week-old baby mouse, researcher Yuanming Liu of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said: "It actually kicked around and started to spin.

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Apple Launches iPod Nano With Video Camera And iTunes9 As Steve Jobs Makes Surprise Appearance

The new iPod nano with video camera comes in
nine different colours and is as slim as the old model

From The Daily Mail:

Steve Jobs made a surprise entrance at Apple's 'It’s only rock and roll' event in San Francisco to launch the company's latest products today.

Looking gaunt, Apple's co-founder unveiled a new version of the iPod Nano now with a video camera, microphone, and speaker built in.

It also comes with an FM radio, which can be paused, and a pedometer which can be synchronised to run at the beat of the music track being played. It also features iTunes Tagging, where users tag a song they like and can purchase it when they sync to iTunes.

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New Malaria 'Poses Human Threat'

From The BBC:

An emerging new form of malaria poses a deadly threat to humans, research has shown.

It had been thought the parasite Plasmodium knowlesi infected only monkeys.

But it has recently been found to be widespread in humans in Malaysia, and the latest study confirms that it can kill if not treated quickly.

The work, by an international team, appears in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases.

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Bacteria Used To Make Radioactive Metals Inert

Judy Wall, a professor of biochemistry at the University of Missouri, is working with bacteria that convert toxic radioactive metal to inert substances.

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 9, 2009) — The Lost Orphan Mine below the Grand Canyon hasn't produced uranium since the 1960s, but radioactive residue still contaminates the area. Cleaning the region takes an expensive process that is only done in extreme cases, but Judy Wall, a biochemistry professor at the University of Missouri College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources, is researching the use of sulfate-reducing bacteria to convert toxic radioactive metal to inert substances, a much more economical solution.

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Infection Could Hasten Alzheimer's Memory Loss

From Live Science:

Catching a cold or any other infection could cause more memory loss in people with Alzheimer's disease, a new study suggests.

Alzheimer's is a form of dementia generally diagnosed in some people over 65. While it can result in everything from mood swings to language breakdown and loss of bodily functions, the most familiar hallmark of the disease is memory loss.

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Robot To Be Controlled By Human Brain Cells

Artist's impression of the surge of electrical activity from certain brain cells that causes an epileptic seizure (Image: DAVID MACK / SPL)

From New Scientist:

A robot controlled by human brain cells could soon be trundling around a British lab, New Scientist has learned.

Kevin Warwick and Ben Whalley at the University of Reading, UK, have already used rat brain cells to control a simple wheeled robotMovie Camera.

Some 300,000 rat neurons grown in a nutrient broth and producing spikes of electrical activity were connected to the output of the robot's distance sensors. The neurons proved capable of steering the robot around a small enclosure (see videoMovie Camera).

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Panel Urges NASA to Reset Priorities

Astronaut Nicole Stott works on the International Space Station last week. Reuters

From The Wall Street Journal:

A blue-ribbon panel is recommending that NASA shelve its goal of rapidly returning to the moon and instead focus on nurturing a robust commercial space industry that can handle short-term objectives of the nation's space program, such as ferrying cargo and crew to the international space station.

The panel, called the Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee, headed by former Lockheed Martin Corp. Chairman Norman Augustine, was convened by the Obama administration earlier this year to provide an independent assessment of the priorities of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. It presented its findings to the White House Tuesday.

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Steve Jobs Is Back On The Job

China Plans World's Largest Solar Power Plant

First Solar: Here the company installs a 2 megawatt solar plant in California. Up next, one that's one thousand times the wattage, in China. First Solar

From Popular Science:

First Solar just signed an agreement with China to build the biggest solar power plant yet, according to a statement released today by the company. The 2-gigawatt plant in the Mongolian desert will generate enough electricity to power three million homes.

That's a heck of a lot of cadmium telluride, the semiconductor they use for their thin film cells.

The largest solar plant currently in operation is a mere 60-megawatt plant in Spain, according to pvresources.com.

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Buzz Aldrin to NASA: U.S. Space Policy Is on the Wrong Track

Platon photographed Buzz Aldrin for PM in Los Angeles, May 2009. “It’s mankind’s destiny to walk on another planet,” Aldrin says. “We can achieve it, but we’ve got to have the right plan.” (Photograph by Platon)

From Popular Mechanics:

Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin has a problem with NASA’s current manned space plan: Namely, the five-year gap between the shuttle’s scheduled retirement next year and the debut of the Ares I rocket and the Orion spacecraft, which will take us no further than the moon—a place we’ve already been. Aldrin thinks NASA can do better. His plan is to scrap Ares I, stretch out the remaining six shuttle flights and fast-track the Orion to fly on a Delta IV or Atlas V. Then, set our sites on colonizing Mars. Here, Buzz challenges NASA to take on his bolder mission.

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After Repairs, New Space Images From Hubble

The Hubble's new Wide Field Camera 3 peered into one of the more crowded places in the universe in this view of a small region inside the globular cluster Omega Centauri, which has nearly 10 million stars. NASA, ESA, and the Hubble SM4 ERO Team

From New York Times:

The cosmic postcards are back.

Astronomers on Wednesday unveiled new pictures and observations from the Hubble Space Telescope. With the exception of a picture last month of the bruise on Jupiter caused by a comet, they were the first data obtained with the telescope since a crew spent 13 days in orbit last May replacing, refurbishing and rebuilding its vital components.

“This is truly Hubble’s new beginning,” Edward Weiler, the associate administrator for science at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, said at a news conference in Washington.

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How Air Pollution Can Damage The Heart

Brooks Kraft / Corbis for TIME

From Time Magazine:

Sitting in traffic can certainly be infuriating enough to raise your blood pressure. But new research shows that traffic can raise your blood pressure and put your heart at risk in a more direct way — by exposing you to the pollution in exhaust fumes.

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ADHD Sufferers Have Lower Brain Chemicals

From The Telegraph:

People with attention deficit disorder have lower levels of a chemicals in the brain needed to experience the sensations of reward and motivation, research has shown.

Attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder has been dismissed by some as a label used by parents to excuse badly behaved children but this research provides the first definitive evidence that there is a chemical imbalance in the brain of sufferers.

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Darpa Seeks To Tap Water’s Power Potential

From The Danger Room:

The quest for limitless energy has preoccupied military researchers for years, and Darpa, the Pentagon’s far-out science arm, has often led the way. Now the agency is looking for yet another method to harness cheap and environmentally friendly energy that would be as simple as turning on the tap.

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'NanoPen' May Write New Chapter In Nanotechnology Manufacturing

These highly-magnified images are composed of tiny nanoparticles produced by a "NanoPen."

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 8, 2009) — Researchers in California are reporting development of a so-called "NanoPen" that could provide a quick, convenient way of laying down patterns of nanoparticles — from wires to circuits — for making futuristic electronic devices, medical diagnostic tests, and other much-anticipated nanotech applications. A report on the device, which helps solve a long-standing challenge in nanotechnology, appeared in ACS' Nano Letters.

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Houseplants Make Air Healthier

Houseplants were placed into experimental chambers in a greenhouse equipped with a charcoal filtration air supply system to measure ozone depletion rates. Credit: Dennis Decoteau.

From Live Science:

Houseplants can neutralize harmful ozone, making indoor air cleaner, according to a new study.

Ozone, which is the main component of smog, forms when high-energy light, such as the ultraviolet light from the sun, breaks oxygen bonds, ultimately resulting in O3, three atoms of oxygen joining together. When formed higher up in the atmosphere, the ozone layer protects us from harmful UV rays. Ground-level ozone is not so pleasant.

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Ancient 'Smell Of Death' Revealed

Dying stinks, even for woodlice

From The BBC:

When animals die, their corpses exude a particular "stench of death" which repels their living relatives, scientists have discovered.

Corpses of animals as distantly related as insects and crustaceans all produce the same stench, caused by a blend of simple fatty acids.

The smell helps living animals avoid others that have succumbed to disease or places where predators lurk.

This 'death recognition system' likely evolved over 400 million years ago.

The discovery was made by a team of researchers based at McMaster University, near Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, and is published in the journal Evolutionary Biology.

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The Real Sea Monsters: On the Hunt for Rogue Waves

BIG, BAD WAVE: A monster rogue wave approaches a merchant ship in the Bay of Biscay, an arm of the Atlantic Ocean bordered by the coasts of northwestern Spain and southwestern France. NOAA'S NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE COLLECTION

From Scientific American:

Scientists hope a better understanding of when, where and how mammoth oceanic waves form can someday help ships steer clear of danger.

A near-vertical wall of water in what had been an otherwise placid sea shocked all on board the ocean liner Teutonic—including the crew—on that Sunday in February, more than a century ago.

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Big Artistic Performance To Be Set In Space

From Space.com:

The first ever widely acknowledged artistic performance from space will be broadcast from the International Space Station on Oct. 9.

Orchestrated by Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberte, who is set to launch to the station as a space tourist Sept. 30, the event will feature artists performing from 14 cities around the world, as well as Laliberte broadcasting from space.

Laliberte described the event, called "Moving Stars and Earth for Water," as a "poetic social mission" to communicate the importance water has for the planet and its people.

Scientists have warned that water shortages rank with energy and food issues around the globe as top governmental issues now and in the future.

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A Skull That Rewrites The History Of Man

One of the skulls discovered in Georgia, which are believed to date back 1.8 million years

From The Independent:

It has long been agreed that Africa was the sole cradle of human evolution. Then these bones were found in Georgia...

The conventional view of human evolution and how early man colonised the world has been thrown into doubt by a series of stunning palaeontological discoveries suggesting that Africa was not the sole cradle of humankind. Scientists have found a handful of ancient human skulls at an archaeological site two hours from the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, that suggest a Eurasian chapter in the long evolutionary story of man.

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Humans Aren’t Going to Mars — or Anywhere Else — Without More Money

From Wired Science:

American human space exploration is impossible with NASA’s current budget.

The committee tasked with examining NASA’s role in human space flight delivered that finding today while offering a mix of relatively exciting options if the agency can secure an extra $3 billion per year.

The report, posted to the Office of Science and Technology Policy website, does not chart any new territory, but it’s unusually clear about the scale and nature of NASA’s problems. The committee said what needed to be said in the interest of a reality-based space program.

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Quietest Room In The World Opens Its Doors

Dr David Carberry prepares an experiment in the new Bristol University building which is the 'quietest' in the world Photo: SWNS

From The Telegraph:

The world's 'quietest' room opened its doors for the study of nanotechnology in Bristol.

The ''ultra-low vibration suite'', which cost £11million, allows scientists to manipulate atoms and molecules without the interference of environmental vibrations interrupting their work.

There is virtually no air movement inside the cutting edge laboratory, which is anchored to the rock foundation in the basement of the Nanoscience and Quantum Information Centre in Bristol.

Read more ....

Cargo Spaceship Meets The Catcher In The Sky

Artist's impression of HTV approaching ISS (Image:JAXA)

From The New Scientist:

If the first launch of Japan's new heavy-lifting rocket passes without incident this month, the residents of the International Space Station will soon be taking delivery of food, water, some spanking new laptops, a robot arm and a couple of Earth-observing experiments. Business as usual, you might think, except that the way this particular cargo gets to its destination is subtly different to its predecessors.

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"Quantum Quest" Brings Cassini to the Big Screen (Starring William Shatner as Every Star in the Universe)

From Popular Science:

Harry Kloor may be the world’s most well-rounded nerd. He is the only person to have earned doctorates in physics and chemistry simultaneously, and he has penned episodes of Star Trek: Voyager. And when NASA asked him for help in improving its image with young people, he drew on both of those experiences. The best way to get kids enthused about outer space, Kloor figured, was to hide their medicine in a bucket of popcorn. Next February, Quantum Quest, a star-studded CGI space adventure that pairs animated protons with real footage from NASA spacecraft, hits theaters. “Many of NASA’s scientists were inspired by Star Trek and Star Wars,” he says. “I want to inspire that kind of passion.” We caught up with Kloor to find out why kids will go nuts for quarks.

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That Late-Night Snack: Worse Than You Think

Eating at irregular times -- the equivalent of the middle of the night for humans, when the body wants to sleep -- influences weight gain, a new study has found. (Credit: iStockphoto/Curt Pickens)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 7, 2009) — Eat less, exercise more. Now there is new evidence to support adding another "must" to the weight-loss mantra: eat at the right time of day.

A Northwestern University study has found that eating at irregular times -- the equivalent of the middle of the night for humans, when the body wants to sleep -- influences weight gain. The regulation of energy by the body's circadian rhythms may play a significant role. The study is the first causal evidence linking meal timing and increased weight gain.

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Why 09/09/09 Is So Special

In some cultures, the number 9 is special and can carry good or bad omens. These characters from the movie "9," which opens on 09/09/09, flee for their lives from the Fabrication Machine. Credit: Focus Features

From Live Science:

Have special plans this 09/09/09?

Everyone from brides and grooms to movie studio execs are celebrating the upcoming calendrical anomaly in their own way.

In Florida, at least one county clerk's office is offering a one-day wedding special for $99.99. The rarity of this Sept. 9 hasn't been lost on the creators of the iPod, who have moved their traditional Tuesday release day to Wednesday to take advantage of the special date. Focus Features is releasing their new film "9," an animated tale about the apocalypse, on the 9th.

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Laser Cooling May Create "Exotic" States of Matter

An infrared picture shows the change in temperature for laser-cooled gas (blue) and a surrounding metal chamber (red and yellow). After a 30-second pulse from a special type of laser beam, the gas cooled by several degrees compared to its container. Picture courtesy Martin Weitz

From National Geographic:

Laser beams are best known as weapons in science fiction and as heating and cutting tools in science fact. But a new study has flip-flopped conventional physics to show lasers in a whole new light.

In a new technique, Martin Weitz and Ulrich Vogl of the University of Bonn in Germany used a laser to bring the temperature of dense rubidium gas far below the normal point at which the gas becomes a solid.

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Underwater Laser Pops In Navy Ops

From The BBC:

US military researchers are developing a method for communication that uses lasers to make sound underwater.

The approach focuses laser light to produce bubbles of steam that pop and create tiny, 220-decibel explosions.

Controlling the rate of these explosions could provide a means of communication or even acoustic imaging.

Read more ....

My Comment: The geek in me loves reading reports like this one.

The House That Twitters

IBM head of invention Andy Stanford-Clark at his home on the Isle of Wight which he has turned into a hi-tech house using Twitter

From The Telegraph:

A Tudor cottage has been converted into one of the most hi-tech homes in the world after its owner connected it to the internet messaging service Twitter.

Now the house tells its owner when his dinner is ready, if someone is at the door or when a mouse has been caught in a trap.

Dr Andy Stanford-Clark has fitted the grade 1 listed cottage with hundreds of sensors, allowing everything from energy usage to the burglar alarm to be relayed by the blogging website.

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Ancient Skeletons Discovered In Georgia Threaten To Overturn The Theory Of Human Evolution

Astonishing discovery: Archaeologists have unearthed six ancient skeletons dating back 1.8 million years in the hills of Georgia

From The Daily Mail:

For generations, scientists have believed Africa was the cradle of mankind.

Now an astonishing discovery suggests the human race may have spent a 'gap year' in Eurasia.

Archaeologists have unearthed six ancient skeletons dating back 1.8 million years in the hills of Georgia which threaten to overturn the theory of human evolution.

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Clues To Blast-Related Brain Injury

Photo: Brain blast: Scientists found that people who suffered concussions as the result of a blast had a more diffuse pattern of brain injury (shown in red) than those whose concussions resulted from a blow to the head or an acceleration injury.
Credit: David Moore et al.

From Technology Review:

New research shows that explosions trigger unique damage to brain tissue.

The blasts caused by improvised explosive devices in Iraq and Afghanistan appear to inflict a fundamentally different type of brain damage than do more traditional sources of concussions, such as blunt trauma. The findings point toward new approaches to diagnosing and monitoring these injuries, which have been a huge concern to the military in recent years. The research also begins to resolve a controversy in brain-injury research--whether soldiers who are near an explosion but don't get hit in the head can still suffer a unique type of brain damage.

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My Comment: If this report is true, it means that thousands of Iraqi/Afghan veterans may have experienced brain trauma that were never diagnosed .... or .... for those who were diagnosed, it may mean years of treatment and care that was never contemplated just a few years back. This is a very sobering report, and will be followed up by this blog in the future.

The Complicated World of Ancient Humans

Paved entrance to the Tayinat Temple in Turkey, a hotbed of trade in the Iron Age.

From Discover Magazine:

Recent digs show long-distance trade and complex social structures were around for longer than archaeologists thought.

For civilizations in Europe and the Near East, the Bronze and Iron Ages—when metalworking was first developed—have been viewed as times when simple societies struggled through technological upheaval, famine, and sickness. But new findings are revealing surprising social and cultural complexity.

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