Credit: Ralph Clevenger/Corbis
Director Jonathan Mostow with a surrogate used in the film to show buyers the mechanics of their potential proxies.
Safer Pain Relief Wounded soldiers could soon administer their
Water-ice is seen to fade over time in this 12m crater within Arcadia Planitia
The overall view of the Iranian site. The mountain under which the site is built is to the lower right of the image. (Credit: GeoEye satellite image/IHS Jane's analysis)
The Asian predatory hornet, Vespa velutina. Photograph: Jean Haxaire/AFP
Revealed: The skull with a bullet hole, kept in a Russian archive, is a woman's
Image: Victor KoenThe conventional answer to this question has been: anywhere but the United States. With its many uninsured citizens and its relatively low life expectancy, the United States has been relegated to the bottom of international health scorecards.
But a prominent researcher, Samuel H. Preston, has taken a closer look at the growing body of international data, and he finds no evidence that America’s health care system is to blame for the longevity gap between it and other industrialized countries. In fact, he concludes, the American system in many ways provides superior treatment even when uninsured Americans are included in the analysis.
Artist's rendition of Haumea and its dark red spot.
Human consumption plans are part of the problem (Image: Alex Wong/Getty)
Human resourcefulness and technological innovation may just help save the environment, argues Jesse Ausubel (Image: Marc Asnin/Redux)
Cities contain many people, but it is not just numbers that put strain on resources, it is the way we consume also (Image: Duncan McKenzie/Getty)
Frank Vaplon saved his home from a California wildfire with mail-order firefighting equipment and plenty of preparation.
Real-Time Cars in Google Earth courtesy Georgia Institute of Technology 
More than 1,000 years old: A strip of gold with a biblical inscription in Latin. It reads: 'Rise up, o Lord, and may thy enemies be dispersed and those who hate thee be driven from thy face'. Photo from The Daily Mail
HOLLYWOOD — Taken at face value, Bruce Willis’ new sci-fi thriller Surrogates sports a premise every bit as outlandish as the wig he wears during much of the movie. In the film’s near-future setting, humans have withdrawn from everyday life almost completely. Instead, they hole up in their homes and send robotic versions of themselves, called “surrogates,” into the real world.
The remote-control androids, which look vaguely like the robots from 1973’s Westworld, perform the operators’ jobs and interact with other surrogates. Willis stars as both a fresh-faced surrogate and its worn-out operator, who chafes at the lack of personal interaction in his life.
Moment of Impact
Astronaut Steven W. Lindsey speaks after the STS-121 shuttle mission in 2006. NASA
Photos: Plainness penalty: Beautiful people, like Birmingham City's MD Karren Brady (left) are paid more than less attractive colleagues, like Ugly Betty (right)
From New Scientist:
From BBC:
New research suggests that modern Scandinavians are not descended from the people who came to Scandinavia at the conclusion of the last ice age but, apparently, from a population that arrived later, concurrently with the introduction of agriculture. (Credit: iStockphoto/Jean Assell)
NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington"A planetary flyby is very much like Christmas morning for the science team. We know there are presents under the tree," says Messenger principal investigator Sean Solomon of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. "We expect to be surprised and we expect to be delighted."
From Geek Dad:New York City is one of the world’s top tourist destinations. Yet the rise of the greatest city in the world has obliterated most traces of what the island was like before Henry Hudson sailed into New York Bay.
But now everyone can take a virtual tour of ancient Manhattan, circa 1609. The tour shows Manhattan and the surrounding land in its original shape and topography. They’re all there: the salt marshes, ponds, rivers and native settlements, all available at the click of a mouse.
A sculptor's rendering of the hominid Australopithecus afarensis. The short ring finger of this human ancestor hints that it was faithful to a single mate, but that might have been difficult, researchers say, given they likely lived in groups and often lost members to predation. Getty Images
From The Telegraph:
Human-like touch: Chimps in the rainforest on the outskirts of Bossou, Republic of Guinea, have learnt to crack nuts using stones
If the moon's water could be collected, lunar astronauts could use it as drinking water and split it into oxygen and hydrogen to make rocket fuel for their return journeys to Earth (Image: NASA)
A dose of flu vaccination is administered at TC Williams High School in Alexandria, Va., on Sept. 11, 2009. Win McNamee / Getty
A map showing the groups across India included in the Nature study. (Credit: Photo courtesy of D. Reich, K. Thangaraj, N. Patterson, A. Price and L. Singh)
This photograph of the full Moon was taken from Apollo 11 during its trip back to Earth. The round smooth area just above the center of the disk is Mare Crisium, left of that is Mare Tranquilitatis. The Apollo 11 landing site is along the left side of Tranquilitatis. Credit: NASA
(Photograph by stevendepolo via Flickr, shared under a Creative Commons license)
Gearless Wind Power The winds of change could soon shake up traditional gearbox turbines GE 
The point of the system, he explains, was to guarantee an automatic Soviet response to an American nuclear strike. Even if the US crippled the USSR with a surprise attack, the Soviets could still hit back. It wouldn't matter if the US blew up the Kremlin, took out the defense ministry, severed the communications network, and killed everyone with stars on their shoulders. Ground-based sensors would detect that a devastating blow had been struck and a counterattack would be launched.
Read more ....
Discovery: An illustration of a feathered dinosaur, Anchiornis huxleyi,
From BBC:
The finding is 'electrifying', say experts (Source: Reuters / Ho New )
Members of the group that confirmed the production of element 114 in front of the Berkeley Gas-filled Separator at the 88-Inch Cyclotron, from left: Jan Dvorak, Zuzana Dvorakova, Paul Ellison, Irena Dragojevic, Heino Nitsche, Mitch Andre Garcia, and Ken Gregorich. Not pictured is Liv Stavestra. (Credit: Photo by Roy Kaltschmidt, Berkeley Lab Creative Services Office)
From Live Science:
From Discover Magazine:
From Mercury News:
India Lifts Off India launches a satellite into space in January 2008. The country's space agency put seven satellites in orbit today, including six from foreign nations. PhysOrg 
