Scientists Make Paralyzed Rats Walk Again After Spinal-cord Injury

A combination of drugs, electrical stimulation and regular exercise can enable paralyzed rats to walk and even run again, researchers have discovered. (Credit: iStockphoto/Dmitry Maslov)

From Science Daily:

UCLA researchers have discovered that a combination of drugs, electrical stimulation and regular exercise can enable paralyzed rats to walk and even run again while supporting their full weight on a treadmill.

Published Nov. 20 in the online edition of Nature Neuroscience, the findings suggest that the regeneration of severed nerve fibers is not required for paraplegic rats to learn to walk again. The finding may hold implications for human rehabilitation after spinal cord injuries.

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When You Could Fling A Frisbee From Canada To Zimbabwe

Ancient basalt vein, Greenland Credit: Michael A. Hamilton

From Live Science:

Imagine flipping a Frisbee in Quebec, Canada, and seeing it land in Zimbabwe. That’s a distance of 8,000 miles now, but 2.6 billion years ago, with good wrist action, it would have been no feat at all (if only there had been Frisbees and, of course, people).

Present-day Quebec and Zimbabwe were adjacent way back then, say geologists who are using new techniques to map Earth’s early continents.

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Quantum Computers Are Coming – Just Don't Ask When

Will quantum computers do for the 21st century what digital computers did for the 20th? (Image: Everett Collection/Rex Features)

From The New Scientist:

WHATEVER happened to quantum computers? A few years ago, it seemed, it was just a case of a tweak here, a fiddle there, and some kind of number-crunching Godzilla would be unleashed upon us. Just as digital processors changed our lives in ways hard to imagine a few decades ago, the monstrous information processing power of individual atoms and electrons would mean that computing - and the world - would never be the same again.

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The Guide to Home Geothermal Energy

Drill and Fill: Installers thread pipe into a hole a few inches wide and over 100 feet deep. As wind and solar hog the alt-energy spotlight, this technology has remained underground.

From Popular Mechanics:

Efficient and economical, geothermal heats, cools and cuts fossil fuel use at home. Whether you're in sunny Florida, or snowy New Hampshire, a ground-fed climate system can free a consumer from fluctuating energy prices and save money on power bills immediately. Here's how it works.

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Fungus-Infected Violin Beats Stradivarius in Listening Test

Biotech-Enhanced Violins via Science Daily

From Popular Science:

Violins made by the Italian master craftsman Antonio Stradivarius are worth millions of dollars for their unparalleled sound. And that's great, for the handful of musicians who can afford these centuries-old instruments. This month, a new violin made from wood treated with a fungus actually trumped a Stradivarius in a blind listening test, offering hope for violinists who want high tonal quality at an affordable price.

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Earth Approaching Sunspot Records

Charlie Perry, a research hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Lawrence, sifts through graphs of data in explaining why he believes solar activity may have greater impacts on global temperatures than previously thought. COREY JONES/THE CAPITAL-JOURNAL

From CJ Online:

The average person may not associate coolness with the sun.

The sun releases energy through deep nuclear fusion reactions in its core and has surface temperatures as hot as 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit, according to NASA's Web site.

Not cool at all.

But the sun's recent activity, or lack thereof, may be linked to the pleasant summer temperatures the midwest has enjoyed this year, said Charlie Perry, a research hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Lawrence.

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We Trust People More If They Resemble Us

There are people we trust instinctively and those we do not, says the research. More often than not, this decision is based on physical appearance. Credit: iStockphoto

From Cosmos:

GUILDFORD, U.K.: A new study has found that subconsciously we are more likely to trust people with similar facial features to our own, but less likely to be physically attracted to them.

There are people we trust instinctively and those we do not, says the research. More often than not, this decision is based on physical appearance.

Using computer graphics, a team led by Lisa DeBruine from the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, manipulated faces so they looked more or less similar to participants in their study. Effectively, the faces either resembled siblings or not, said DeBruine.

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Hunting Hidden Dimensions

From U.S. News And World Report:

Black holes, giant and tiny, may reveal new realms of space.

In many ways, black holes are science's answer to science fiction. As strange as anything from a novelist's imagination, black holes warp the fabric of spacetime and imprison light and matter in a gravitational death grip. Their bizarre properties make black holes ideal candidates for fictional villainy. But now black holes are up for a different role: heroes helping physicists assess the real-world existence of another science fiction favorite—hidden extra dimensions of space.

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How Cooking Helped Us To Evolve

From Times Online:

The success of the human species is all down to our mastery of fire and cooking, a scientist claims. And hot food not sex was the basis for our relationships.

It is the ultimate domestic cliché: a woman, pinafored and dutiful, tending a stove all day in preparation for her husband’s homecoming. As soon as he walks in, the ritual can begin: family members take their seats around the table (he sits at the head, of course) and dinner is served. Our couple are reliving a scene that has played out billions of times in our history because gender roles — husband at work all day, woman as homebody — have been forged not by relatively recent social conventions but by our distant evolutionary past.

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WHO: H1N1 Vaccine Production To Fall Short

From Time Magazine:

(GENEVA) — Global production of swine flu vaccines will be "substantially less" than the previous maximum forecast of 94 million doses a week, the World Health Organization said Friday.

The number of doses produced in a year will therefore fall short of the 4.9 billion doses the global health body previously hoped could be available for the pandemic, WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl told reporters in Geneva.

Production will be lower because some manufacturers are still turning out vaccines for seasonal flu — an illness that can be serious in sick and elderly people, Hartl said.

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Magnetism Observed In Gas For The First Time

Graduate student Gyu-boong Jo optimizes the laser beam position on the mirror of the optical setup that produced an ultracold gas of lithium atoms. (Credit: Photo by Patrick Gillooly)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 18, 2009) — For the first time, MIT scientists have observed ferromagnetic behavior in an atomic gas, addressing a decades-old question of whether it is possible for a gas to show properties similar to a magnet made of iron or nickel.

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Urinating On Your Tomato Plants Could Give You Fruit Four Times Larger

Photo: Human urine mixed with wood ash was the ultimate eco-friendly fertiliser, according to researchers

From The Daily Mail:

Gardeners keen to boost their crop of tomatoes may be surprised to learn they can turn to an unusual and free source of fertiliser.

Allotment growers can enrich the soil and therefore their plants using their own wee, according to a new study.

Scientists discovered the unusual addition made crops up to four times larger.

A team of Finnish researchers found that sprinkling tomatoes with human urine mixed with wood ash was the ultimate eco-friendly fertiliser.

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Advanced Solar Panels Coming to Market

Photo: Cheaper solar: Nanosolar’s thin-film panels.
Credit: Nanosolar

From Technology Review:

Nanosolar's new factory could help lower the price of solar power, if the market cooperates.

A promising type of solar-power technology has moved a step closer to mass production. Nanosolar, based in San Jose, CA, has opened an automated facility for manufacturing its solar panels, which are made by printing a semiconductor material called CIGS on aluminum foil. The manufacturing facility is located in Germany, where government incentives have created a large market for solar panels. Nanosolar has the potential to make 640 megawatts' worth of solar panels there every year.

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Oil Rig Of The Future: A Solar Panel That Produces Oil

OIL FROM THE SUN Researchers propose creating a biological solar panel, which will contain diatoms instead of photovoltaic cells. Diatoms, microalgae that are found in all aquatic and moist environments, first appeared more than 180 million years ago. © KATIV, COURTESY OF ISTOCKPHOTO.COM

From Scientific American:

Researchers propose a novel approach to producing biofuel using diatoms.

BANGALORE, India—In the ongoing hunt for alternative fuel sources that are also cost-effective, researchers are looking into making biofuel from genetically engineered diatoms, a type of single-celled algae with shells made of glasslike silica.

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Jupiter Auroras Fed By Largest Moon's Magnetic "Bubble"

From The National Geographic:

A mini-magnetosphere around the largest moon in the solar system leaves a mighty footprint on Jupiter's atmosphere—helping to drive the "hyperauroras" that dance across the planet's poles.

That's one finding in new research that offers unprecedented details on interactions between Jupiter and two of its moons, the giant Ganymede and the volcanically active Io.

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Why Are We The Naked Ape?

No one is sure why Homo sapiens is the only primate to have lost its body hair
(Image: Laurent Gillieron / EPA / Corbis)

From New Scientist:

RIGHT from the start of modern evolutionary science, why humans are hairless has been controversial. "No one supposes," wrote Charles Darwin in The Descent of Man, "that the nakedness of the skin is any direct advantage to man: his body, therefore, cannot have been divested of hair through natural selection."

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Diamonds Are A Laser's Best Friend

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 20, 2009) — Tomorrow's lasers may come with a bit of bling, thanks to a new technology that uses man-made diamonds to enhance the power and capabilities of lasers. Researchers in Australia have now demonstrated the first laser built with diamonds that has comparable efficiency to lasers built with other materials.

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How You Write 'Shows If You're A Liar', Scientists Discover

Psychologists have suggested that handwriting changes when someone is lying because the brain has to work harder to invent facts Photo: GETTY

From The Telegraph:

How you write can indicate whether you’re a liar, scientists in Haifa, Israel, have discovered.

Instead of analysing body language or eye movement, to catch out people telling fibs, people’s handwriting can instead give them away.

While stressing the research was in the early stages, scientists say it could one day help validate loan application or even insurance claims.

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Genetics May Explain Why Some Children Have Sex Earlier Than Others

From The Independent:

Genetics may explain why children who live in homes without fathers have sex at a younger age than others, according to a report published today.

The study, published in the American journal Child Development, found a genetic theory to challenge "environmental" theories which previously explained the link.

Researchers looked at more than 1,000 cousins aged 14 and older, testing for genetic influences as well as factors such as poverty, education opportunities and religion.

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Can A Daily Pill Really Boost Your Brain Power?

In recent years Adderall and Ritalin, another stimulant, have been adopted as cognitive enhancers.

From The Guardian:

In America, university students are taking illegally obtained prescription drugs to make them more intelligent. But would you pop a smart pill to improve your performance? Margaret Talbot investigates the brave new world of neuro enhancement

A young man I'll call Alex recently graduated from Harvard. As a history major, Alex wrote about a dozen papers a term. He also ran a student organisation, for which he often worked more than 40 hours a week; when he wasn't working, he had classes. Weeknights were devoted to all the schoolwork he couldn't finish during the day, and weekend nights were spent drinking with friends and going to parties. "Trite as it sounds," he told me, it seemed important to "maybe appreciate my own youth". Since, in essence, this life was impossible, Alex began taking Adderall to make it possible.

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U.S. Media Ignoring About Face by Leading Global Warming Proponent

From News Busters:

Imagine if the Pope suddenly announced that the Catholic Church had been wrong for centuries about prohibiting priests from marrying. Would that be considered big news?

Of course.

And yet something like that has happened in the field of global warming in which a major scientist has announced that the world, in contrast to his previous belief, is actually cooling.

This was the analogy made by columnist Lorne Gunter in the Calgary Herald:

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Impact Of Renewable Energy On Our Oceans Must Be Investigated, Say Scientists

Photo: Dolphin. Scientists are calling for urgent research to understand the impact of renewable energy developments on marine life. (Credit: Dr Matthew Witt, University of Exeter.)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 20, 2009) — Scientists from the Universities of Exeter and Plymouth are calling for urgent research to understand the impact of renewable energy developments on marine life. The study, now published in the Journal of Applied Ecology, highlights potential environmental benefits and threats resulting from marine renewable energy, such as off-shore wind farms and wave and tidal energy conversion devices.

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Reminder: Dan Brown's 'Lost Symbol' Is Fiction

From Live Science:

WASHINGTON — Dan Brown's latest book, "The Lost Symbol," is woven with a maze of secretive plots, conspiracies, symbols and codes. "Symbol" is another thriller by Brown that draws inspiration from a mixture of science and mysticism.

One of the main characters is a researcher at the Smithsonian Institution's vast support center, a location that is off-limits to the public. The real science in "Symbol" takes a turn toward fiction when Brown suggests that noetics — a metaphysical discipline that attempts to examine the connection between human and supernatural intelligence — will revolutionize human knowledge. The "research" is based on the work of institutions that were formed in the late 1970s, during the height of New Age mysticism.

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The 'GI' Helmet That Will Help Our Troops To Shoot Straighter

Safer: The new-style Army helmet will allow troops to fire more accurately in the prone position than the older version

From The Daily Mail:

New helmets designed to help British troops to target the enemy are being rushed out to Afghanistan this weekend.

The Ministry of Defence is issuing the lighter headgear following soldiers’ complaints that the current helmet is unsuitable for firefights with the Taliban.

Five thousand Mark 7 helmets, along with new Osprey Assault body armour, are being sent to Afghanistan for the troops of 11 Brigade who are starting a six-month operational tour.

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Can You Trust Crowd Wisdom?

Credit: Technology Review

From Technology Review:

Researchers say online recommendation systems can be distorted by a minority of users.

When searching online for a new gadget to buy or a movie to rent, many people pay close attention to the number of stars awarded by customer-reviewers on popular websites. But new research confirms what some may already suspect: those ratings can easily be swayed by a small group of highly active users.

Vassilis Kostakos, an assistant professor at the University of Madeira in Portugal and an adjunct assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), says that rating systems can tap into the "wisdom of the crowd" to offer useful insights, but they can also paint a distorted picture of a product if a small number of users do most of the voting. "It turns out people have very different voting patterns," he says, varying both among individuals and among communities of users.

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Solar System Dwarf Planet "Haumea" Has A Mystery Spot

SEE SPOT SPIN: An impression of what the dwarf planet Haumea's dark,
red spot might look like. P. LACERDA

From Scientific American:

A blotch on the distant, football-shaped body could help reveal what the dwarf planet is made of.

Haumea, the mini planet whose detection set off an international and as yet unresolved war of words in 2005 between the two teams claiming its discovery, is back on the astronomy scene with more intrigue.

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Robot Arm To Grab Robotic Ship -- A Space Station First

The International Space Station's robotic arm reaches out to capture the Japanese HTV cargo ship in an artist's rendering. The tricky cosmic catch, slated to happen on September 17, 2009, might affect the orbiting outpost's ultimate lifespan by offering a cheaper way of delivering supplies to space, experts say. Due to budget concerns, the space station is currently slated to be deorbited in 2015. Picture courtesy Canadian Space Agency

From National Geographic:

For the first time, a robotic arm attached to the International Space Station (ISS) will capture an unmanned spaceship for docking on Thursday.

The bus-size Japanese H-II Transfer Vehicle, or HTV, was launched on its maiden flight September 10. The remote-control ship is carrying more than four tons of equipment, food, clothes, and other essentials for the six astronauts currently aboard the space station.

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Wind, Not Water, May Explain Red Planet's Hue

Mars is red now (left), but it may have looked charcoal (right) in the past
(Image: NASA/ESA/Hubble Team)

From New Scientist:

Mars's distinctive red hue may be the result of thousands of years of wind-borne sand particles colliding with one another – and not rust, a new study argues.

Scientists generally agree that Mars's red colour is caused when a dark form of iron called magnetite oxidises into a reddish-orange form called haematite.

Just how the transformation came about is a matter of debate. Many researchers say water caused the oxidation. But some argue that hydrogen peroxide and ozone, which might be created when ultraviolet light breaks down carbon dioxide and oxygen in the Martian atmosphere, could be to blame.

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Disputed Solar Project In Calif. Desert Dropped

From CNET:

A proposed solar-energy project in the California desert that caused intense friction between environmentalists and the developers of renewable energy has been shelved.

BrightSource Energy had planned a 5,130-acre solar power farm in a remote part of the Mojave Desert, on land previously intended for conservation. The company, based in Oakland, Calif., on Thursday said it was instead seeking an alternative site for the project.

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Whatever Happened to Acid Rain?

From Slate:

Why do we never hear about acid rain anymore? Did it just go away?

Back in the 1980s, when the Lantern herself was just a little penlight, acid rain was the environmental scourge of the day. Canada's environmental minister proclaimed it an "insidious malaria of the biosphere"; it menaced the Transformers; it turned Kimberly's hair bright green in an episode of Diff'rent Strokes. Toxic precipitation fell off the radar in 1990, when Congress passed an amendment to the Clean Air Act calling for major reductions in the types of emissions that lead to acid rain. Emissions have dropped significantly since then, but the problem is far from gone.

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When ‘Back To Basics’ Leads To Breakthroughs In Science

(James Kelleher/The Orange County Register)

From The Christian Science Monitor:

Two examples of researchers finding amazing things by reconsidering the fundamentals.

Sometimes scientists need to take a fresh look at fundamentals to improve familiar materials. That means getting down to the basic molecular and atomic structures.

When a research group that calls itself “Liquid Stone” recently did that with cement, it found that what scientists thought they knew about the fundamental structure of that ubiquitous material just isn’t so. One team member likens the implications of their new understanding of that structure to the boost biologists got when they discovered the basic structure of the DNA molecule.

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Secrets Of Insect Flight Revealed: Modeling The Aerodynamic Secrets Of One Of Nature's Most Efficient Flyers

Smoke visualization in Oxford University's wind tunnel showing the airflow over a flying locust's wings. (Credit: Animal Flight Group, Dept. of Zoology, Oxford University and Dr John Young, UNSW@ADFA)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 18, 2009) — Researchers are one step closer to creating a micro-aircraft that flies with the manoeuvrability and energy efficiency of an insect after decoding the aerodynamic secrets of insect flight.

Dr John Young, from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Australia, and a team of animal flight researchers from Oxford University's Department of Zoology, used high-speed digital video cameras to film locusts in action in a wind tunnel, capturing how the shape of a locust's wing changes in flight. They used that information to create a computer model which recreates the airflow and thrust generated by the complex flapping movement.

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Online Labs Aim to Revolutionize High School Science

Julia Barnathan (standing), curriculum developer for Northwestern's Office of STEM Education Partnerships, assists a student with a lesson in radiation that uses iLabs to access a geiger counter at the University of Queensland, Australia. Credit: Amanda Morris, Office for Research, Northwestern University

From Live Science:

Fifty years ago, a typical high school science fair featured several exploding volcanoes. Today, one would expect a science fair to look far more advanced. The sad truth, however, is that standard high school science has changed very little.

"There is a growing gap between the practice of science the way researchers at Northwestern and other institutions are conducting it and what science looks like in high school," said Kemi Jona, research associate professor and director of the Office of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math Education Partnerships (OSEP) at Northwestern University. "And that gap keeps getting bigger and bigger."

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Opera Browser Bids For America

From The BBC:

The founder of Opera has said despite its 100m worldwide users, they have a big job ahead conquering America.

In the US, the latest figures by Net Applications showed Opera is 5th in the market with a 2% share behind Microsoft, Apple, Google and Firefox.

But Opera claimed in other parts of the globe it is the most popular browser of choice with growth last year of 67%.

"The reality is that in the U.S. we have some work to do," Opera boss Jon von Tetzchner told BBC News.

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Silicon Valley 'Seeing Revival'

From The BBC:

Silicon Valley is stirring back to life, following a bruising economic downturn, according to industry insiders and start-up entrepreneurs.

The view seems to underscore Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke's belief that the US recession has ended.

He told a Washington think-tank that "from a technical perspective the recession is very likely over".

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Jammie Thomas Lawyers File Suit Against Scribd

From CNET:

A legal complaint seeking class action status filed in Houston on Friday accuses social-publishing site Scribd of egregious copyright infringement.

Scribd managers have "built a technology that's broken barriers to copyright infringement on a global scale and in the process have also built one of the largest readerships in the world," the attorneys representing the class wrote in the complaint. "The company shamelessly profits from the stolen copyrighted works of innumerable authors."

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Big Differences Between European Countries In Heart Risks

From Future Pundit:

The big smoker countries in Europe have much higher rates of heat disease death under age 65.

While heart disease remains the leading cause of death in Europe, mortality rates are falling in most (but not all) countries, according to new findings released by the EuroHeart mapping project.(1) However, this detailed research, part of a three-year programme to analyse cardiovascular health and prevention policies in 16 European countries, also reveals huge inequalities among countries both in the rate of cardiovascular mortality and in national prevention programmes.

• Highest rates of mortality from coronary heart disease (CHD) in men under 65 were found in Hungary (105 per 100,000 population), Estonia (104), Slovakia (74), Greece (50), Finland (48) and UK (44).
• Highest rates for women under 65 were found in Hungary (28), Estonia (20), Slovakia (19), UK (11), Greece (10) and Belgium (9).
• Lowest rates for men under 65 were found in France (17), Netherlands (22), Italy (25) and Norway (27).
• Lowest rates for women under 65 were found in Iceland (3), France (3), Slovenia (5) and Italy (5).

This pattern was also reflected (though not exactly mirrored) in risk factor prevalence, where, for example, Greece (46%), Estonia (42%), Slovakia (41%), Germany (37%) and Hungary (37%) had the highest rates of cigarette smoking.

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America’s Food Revolution

Photo: Cutting-edge molecular gastronomy at Chicago’s Alinea: a sphere of grape foam injected with walnut milk and covered in frozen and powdered Maytag blue cheese. Lara Kastner/SIPA

From City Journal:

Urban revival, globalization, and some world-class chefs have created one of the world’s great culinary scenes.

In a 1769 letter to the naturalist John Bartram, Benjamin Franklin observed that while lots of people like accounts of old buildings and monuments, “I confess that if I could find in any Italian travels a receipt for making Parmesan cheese, it would give me more satisfaction than a transcript of any inscription from any old stone whatsoever.”

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Five Ways To Teach Your Old Phone New Tricks

From The Christian Science Monitor:

This summer was a big season for smart-phone lovers. Apple unveiled a new iPhone with built-in video camera, compass, and online movie rental store. Palm released a worthy rival, the Pre, which lets busy multitaskers flip between e-mail, spreadsheets, and, of course, phone calls. And several touch-screen and next-gen smart phones are on the way.

That’s great news for gadget geeks ready to spend $90 a month (or more) on their cellphones. But what about the rest of us? Even simple mobile phones are capable of a lot these days, thanks to text messaging and a slew of services designed for the average phone. Here are a few tricks to get your plain ol’ cellphone acting like a smart phone.

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Tyrannosaurs Flying F-14s!

The cover of this issue of Galaxy features an unusual space launch concept, but an article inside had more realistic and interesting insights.

From The Space Review:

The comic strip Calvin & Hobbes once ran a classic on a Sunday in 1995. Calvin and his tiger buddy are playing with toy dinosaurs and F-14 Tomcat fighter planes when Calvin concludes that the only thing cooler than tyrannosaurs and F-14s… is tyrannosaurs flying F-14s.

This is a scene that has been repeated throughout the history of human spaceflight, when somebody has come up with some concept for a rocket, spacecraft, whatever, that they decide can be made infinitely cooler by combining it with another concept for a rocket, spacecraft, whatever. Want to explore the icy moons of Jupiter? Let’s combine the most powerful ion engines ever built and the largest space nuclear reactor ever built and the largest rocket ever built. That would be cool. (It will also cost twenty-three billion dollars and never be built.)

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Oddball Stars Explained: New Observations Solve Longstanding Mystery Of Tipped Stars

This artist's conception of the double-star system DI Herculis illustrates the key findings from the new research. Spectroscopic observations showed that the two stars are both tipped over almost horizontally, relative to the plane of their orbits around each other. Because they are rotating rapidly which creates equatorial bulges, the tidal interactions between the two slows down a regular variation in the plane of the orbits, called precession -- a slowing that had been a mystery for three decades. (Credit: Courtesy of Simon Albrecht)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 18, 2009) — A pair of unusual stars known as DI Herculis has confounded astronomers for three decades, but new observations by MIT researchers and their colleagues have provided data that they say solve the mystery once and for all.

It has long been clear that there was something odd going on in this double-star system, but it wasn't clear just what that was. The precession of the orbits of the two stars around each other — that is, the way the plane of those orbits change their tilt over time, like the wobbling of a top as it winds down — seems to take place four times more slowly than established theory says it should. The anomaly is so unexpected that at one point it was seen as possible evidence against Einstein's long-accepted theory of relativity.

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7 Solid Health Tips That No Longer Apply

From Live Science:

Are you taking a daily aspirin or multivitamin to stay healthy? Avoiding eggs and choosing no-cholesterol margarine over butter? Convinced that jogging will ultimately kill your knees? Advice that was once considered gospel truth among the medical community is now being questioned.

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Plugged-In Age Feeds a Hunger for Electricity

(Click Image to Enlarge)

From The New York Times:

With two laptop-loving children and a Jack Russell terrier hemmed in by an electric fence, Peter Troast figured his household used a lot of power. Just how much power did not really hit him until the night the family turned off the overhead lights at their home in Maine and began hunting gadgets that glowed in the dark.

“It was amazing to see all these lights blinking,” Mr. Troast said.

As goes the Troast household, so goes the planet.

Electricity use from power-hungry gadgets is rising fast all over the world. The fancy new flat-panel televisions everyone has been buying in recent years have turned out to be bigger power hogs than some refrigerators.

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How Broadband Is Changing Africa

From The BBC:

Fast broadband will transform Africa, and the rest of the world will change too, says Bill Thompson.

Norman Borlaug, whose work in Mexico and India led to the 'green revolution' in agricultural production, died last week and was widely commemorated for his important work.

While the introduction of new crops and the use of irrigation, fertilisers and pesticides certainly enabled us to feed millions of people, the crops were delivered at a price, and we should not forget that Borlaug's green revolution, like every revolution, had a negative as well as a positive side.

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Warming Arctic 'Halts Migration'

From The BBC:

Milder winters in the Arctic region have led to fewer Pacific brants, a species of sea goose, migrating southwards, say researchers.

A study by the US Geological Survey (USGS) found that as many as 30% of the birds were overwintering in Alaska rather than migrating to Mexico.

Until recently, more than 90% of the species were estimated to head south.

Writing in the journal Arctic, the team said the shift coincides with warming in the North Pacific and Bering Sea.

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VW Redefines ‘Car’ With A 170-MPG Diesel Hybrid

From Autopia:

Volkswagen is redefining the automobile with the L1, a bullet-shaped diesel hybrid that weighs less than 900 pounds, gets an amazing 170 mpg and might see production within four years.

The L1 concept car unveiled at the Frankfurt auto show pushes the boundaries of vehicle design and draws more inspiration from gliders than conventional automobiles. The only question the company’s engineers asked when designing the L1 was, “How would a car have to look and be built to consume as little energy as possible.” Their answer was small, light and extremely aerodynamic. Those guidelines led to a car that requires just 1.38 liters of diesel fuel to go 100 kilometers.

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Chinese Climate Wisdom

(Click image to Enlarge)

From Watts Up With That?:

The Chinese civilization has existed survived intact far longer than any other in human history, and they have records of that civilization that span 2-3 thousand years BC. They’ve seen more climate change than any other civilization.

The Guardian recently interviewed Xiao Ziniu, the director general of the Beijing Climate Center.

Excerpts:

A 2C rise in global temperatures will not necessarily result in the calamity predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), China’s most senior climatologist has told the Guardian.

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Superstitions Stay With Us From Childhood

Despite what we may have learned as we grew up, some misconceptions often remain with us as adults, says a new study. Credit: iStockphoto

From Cosmos:

GUILDFORD, U.K.: Superstitious beliefs we hold as adults may be a by-product of the processes we use to make sense of the world around us as children, according to a novel hypothesis.

The research offers an explanation for curious traditions such as crossing fingers or tapping wood, as responses to events that we can't explain in any other way.

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Pentagon Wants ‘Space Junk’ Cleaned Up

From The Danger Room:

The orbit around Earth is a very messy place and the Pentagon’s far-out research arm wants to do something about it. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency put out a notice yesterday requesting information on possible solutions to the infamous space debris problem.

“Since the advent of the space-age over five decades ago, more than thirty-five thousand man-made objects have been cataloged by the U.S. Space Surveillance Network,” the agency notes. “Nearly twenty-thousand of those objects remain in orbit today, ninety-four percent of which are non-functioning orbital debris.”

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Fake Video Footage 'Persuades Half Of People To Wrongly Accuse Others Of Crime'

Fake video footage can persuade almost half of viewers to
accuse innocent people of crimes Photo: GETTY

From The Telegraph:

Fake video footage can persuade almost half of viewers to accuse people of crimes they have not committed, new research suggests.

The study found that exposure to fabricated footage can "dramatically alter" individuals' version of events, even convincing them to testify as an eyewitness to an event that never happened.

The study, by Warwick University, found that almost 50 per cent of people shown false footage of an event they witnessed first hand were prepared to believe the video version rather than what they actually saw.

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Solar Cycle Driven By More Than Sunspots; Sun Also Bombards Earth With High-speed Streams Of Wind

When the solar cycle was at a minimum level in 1996, the Sun sprayed Earth with relatively few, weak high-speed streams containing turbulent magnetic fields (left). In contrast, the Sun bombarded Earth with stronger and longer-lasting streams last year (right) even though the solar cycle was again at a minimum level. The streams affected Earth's outer radiation belt, posing a threat to earth-orbiting satellites, and triggered space weather disturbances, lighting up auroras in the sky at higher latitudes.

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 18, 2009) — Challenging conventional wisdom, new research finds that the number of sunspots provides an incomplete measure of changes in the Sun's impact on Earth over the course of the 11-year solar cycle. The study, led by scientists at the High Altitude Observatory of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and the University of Michigan, finds that Earth was bombarded last year with high levels of solar energy at a time when the Sun was in an unusually quiet phase and sunspots had virtually disappeared.

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