France-Size Shark Sanctuary Created -- A First

The world's first shark sanctuary will protect the declining fish in waters off the tiny island republic of Palau (above, a gray reef shark in Palau), the country's president announced on September 25, 2009. Photograph by Tim Laman/NGS

From National Geographic:

The world's first shark sanctuary will protect the declining fish in waters off the tiny island republic of Palau, the country's president said today.

Johnson Toriboing announced the creation of a shark haven without commercial fishing during an address before the United Nations General Assembly in New York City.

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Cyber Security Experts Learn From Ant Tactics

From The Telegraph:

Scientists have worked out a new way to defend computers from cyber attackers - by studying ants.

Watching how they behaved when a colony was under threat, gave programmers inspiration for a new weapon against infections known as worms and viruses.

Ants use "swarming intelligence" to deter intruders. When one ant detects a threat, he is soon joined by many others to overwhelm their opponent.

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Will Amazon Open The Kindle To Developers?

From CNET:

We're heading into the holiday buying season, which means the introduction of new gadgets and the media's annual anointment of the season's hottest tech toy. Plenty of pundits think electronic book readers will sell briskly this year, which got us thinking: Will Amazon update its Kindle e-book reader in time for the holidays?

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British Museum's Aztec Artefacts 'As Evil As Nazi Lampshades Made From Human Skin'

Showstopper: A turquoise mask which probably represents the sun god Tonatiuh

From The Daily Mail:

Ten minutes into the British Museum's Moctezuma exhibition, devoted to the last Aztec ruler before the Spanish Conquest, you come across a statue of an eagle with a cavity in its back. The cavity, you will discover, was designed to hold the hearts of the victims of human sacrifices.

This detail, for me, obliterates any observation about whether the sculpture is otherwise well crafted. Similarly, I don't care whether a Nazi lampshade fashioned from human skin is beautifully made or not. And the same concern blocks out a lot of one's interest in this exhibition.

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Peruvian Glacial Retreats Linked To European Events Of Little Ice Age

University of New Hampshire master's student Jean Taggart '09, coauthor of a new study published in this week's Science, takes samples from a glacial moraine in southern Peru. (Credit: Joe Licciardi)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 25, 2009) — A new study that reports precise ages for glacial moraines in southern Peru links climate swings in the tropics to those of Europe and North America during the Little Ice Age approximately 150 to 350 years ago. The study, published this week in the journal Science, "brings us one step closer to understanding global-scale patterns of glacier activity and climate during the Little Ice Age," says lead author Joe Licciardi, associate professor of Earth sciences at the University of New Hampshire. "The more we know about our recent climate past, the better we can understand our modern and future climate."

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Children Who Get Spanked Have Lower IQs

From Live Science:

Spanking can get kids to behave in a hurry, but new research suggests it can do more harm than good to their noggins. The study, involving hundreds of U.S. children, showed the more a child was spanked the lower his or her IQ compared with others.

"All parents want smart children," said study researcher Murray Straus of the University of New Hampshire. "This research shows that avoiding spanking and correcting misbehavior in other ways can help that happen."

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Photon 'Machine Gun' Could Power Quantum Computers

Entangled photons can now be controlled (Image: Dan Talson/Rex Features)

From New Scientist:

THERE is a simple rule of computing that holds true even in the weird quantum world: increase the number of units of information available and you boost computing power. Raising the number of quantum bits, or qubits, carries an even greater reward – every additional qubit doubles the computing power.

But raising the number of qubits has proven tricky because of the difficulty of reliably producing entangled particles. Now a team has designed a system that should fire out barrages of entangled photons with machine-gun regularity.

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10 Wonders To Visit Before They Disappear

Credit: Ralph Clevenger/Corbis

From Cosmos:

As global warming sets in, some of the world's wonders may not wait around for you to experience them. Here are the top 10 places you need to visit before the climate changes.

EXPERIENCING is believing. It's one thing to marvel at a documentary about the Great Barrier Reef, and quite another to immerse yourself in the silent beauty and colourful diversity of the world's largest reef system.

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The Tech Behind Surrogates's All-Robot World

Director Jonathan Mostow with a surrogate used in the film to show buyers the mechanics of their potential proxies.

From Popular Mechanics:

PM's Digital Hollywood sits down with Surrogates director Jonathan Mostow to discuss the unexpected challenges of filming a world where everyone looks like a perfect robot. Plus, a chronology of movie androids.

When robot stand-ins populate the world in a movie—as they do in Touchstone Picture’s Surrogates, out Sept. 25—­every character in the frame has to look perfect. And that turned into a headache for director Jonathan Mostow. “Usually you hire background actors off the street,” he says. “We were flying in models.”

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Self-Regulated Morphine Delivery For Wounded Warfighters

Safer Pain Relief Wounded soldiers could soon administer their
own morphine without watchful medics U.S. Army

From Popular Science:

DARPA-funded nanotech drug automatically regulates its morphine dose on the battlefield

Medics still use morphine to relieve the pain of wounded soldiers on the modern battlefield, but have to watch out for morphine reducing breathing and blood pressure to dangerous levels. That may all change with a DARPA-backed combination drug that has successfully limited morphine delivery when it detects low blood oxygen levels.

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Mars Probe Watches Water-Ice Fade

Water-ice is seen to fade over time in this 12m crater within Arcadia Planitia

From The BBC:

Large deposits of nearly pure water-ice may lurk just below the Martian surface, much nearer the equator than previously thought, suggest new images.

The pictures acquired by a Nasa orbiter show white material exposed by fresh meteorite impacts fading over time - behaviour expected of ice on Mars.

An onboard instrument also detected the tell-tale chemical signature of water.

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Satellite Images Of The Second Iranian Nuclear Site

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)

GeoEye Gives Look At Iranian Nuclear Site -- Deep Tech/CNET

Satellite imagery company GeoEye has released a photo of what it says is the controversial and underground Iranian uranium enrichment site that came to light last week.

The photo, taken Saturday, shows the facility at a military site about 20 miles north-northeast of Qum and 100 miles southwest of Tehran, GeoEye said. An analysis of the photo by IHS Jane's, a defense intelligence consulting firm, said the facility has a primary and several auxiliary entrances, ventilation shafts, a surface-to-air missile site, and quarry and construction equipment.

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My Comment: The imaging is very clear. We also must give them credit for making it public as quickly as they did.

UK Warned As Plague Of Bee-Eating Hornets Spreads North In France

The Asian predatory hornet, Vespa velutina. Photograph: Jean Haxaire/AFP

From The Guardian:

For five years they have wreaked havoc in the fields of south-western France, scaring locals with their venomous stings and ravaging the bee population to feed their rapacious appetites. Now, according to French beekeepers, Asian predatory hornets have been sighted in Paris for the first time, raising the prospect of a nationwide invasion which entomologists fear could eventually reach Britain.

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Fresh Doubts Over Hitler's Death After Tests On Bullet Hole Skull Reveal It Belonged To A Woman

Revealed: The skull with a bullet hole, kept in a Russian archive, is a woman's

From The Daily Mail:

Adolf Hitler may not have shot himself dead and perhaps did not even die in his bunker, it emerged yesterday.

A skull fragment believed for decades to be the Nazi leader’s has turned out to be that of a woman under 40 after DNA analysis.

Scientists and historians had long thought it to be conclusive proof that Hitler shot himself in the head after taking a cyanide pill on 30 April 1945 rather than face the ignominy of capture.

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My Comment: I love a mystery like this one.

To Explain Longevity Gap, Look Past Health System

Image: Victor Koen

From New York Times:

If you’re not rich and you get sick, in which industrialized country are you likely to get the best treatment?

The 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.

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Spot Discovered On Dwarf Planet Haumea Shows Up Red And Rich With Organics

Artist's rendition of Haumea and its dark red spot.
(Credit: Image courtesy of Europlanet Media Centre)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 26, 2009) — A dark red area discovered on the dwarf planet Haumea appears to be richer in minerals and organic compounds than the surrounding icy surface.

The discovery will be presented at the European Planetary Science Congress in Potsdam by Dr Pedro Lacerda on Wednesday 16 September.

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The Challenge Of Making Real 'Surrogate' Skin

Image from Tech Digest

From Live Science:

The new movie "Surrogates," starring Bruce Willis, depicts a world in which people live through "surries", highly realistic humanoid robots. But without realistic skin, robots will never have that humanlike personal touch, and will not have the degree of social acceptance that robots would need to have to share the world with the rest of us.

A recent paper details research into this area. In "Towards Humanlike Social Touch for Sociable Robotics," John Cabibihan and his fellow scientists detailed the reasons for testing and developing realistic skin for social robots.

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Population: Overconsumption Is The Real Problem -- A Commentary

Human consumption plans are part of the problem (Image: Alex Wong/Getty)

From The New Scientist:

THERE is a pervading myth that efforts to fight climate change and other environmental perils will be to no avail unless we "do something" about population growth. Even seasoned analysts talk about the threat of "exponential" population growth. But there is no exponential growth. In most of the world fertility rates are falling fast, and the countries where population growth continues are those that contribute least to our planetary predicament.

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Population: Technology Will Save Us -- A Commentary

Human resourcefulness and technological innovation may just help save the environment, argues Jesse Ausubel (Image: Marc Asnin/Redux)

From New Scientist:

Throughout history, technological innovation has saved us from being overwhelmed by overpopulation, and Jesse Ausubel tells Alison George why he is convinced that human resourcefulness can pull the fat out of the fire even now

You're known as a techno-optimist. Why have you got such faith in technology's power to save the environment?

I regard myself as neither an optimist nor a pessimist. But I do think that humanity is ingenious and enterprising. Throughout the ages people have doubted that their descendants could exist, with improving health and longevity, in the numbers and densities we do now. In the 19th century it was common to reason that horse manure or chimney smoke would bury or choke cities. Yet air quality in New York City and water quality in New York harbour are better than when I or my mother was a child. Over time people find, invent and spread solutions for many environmental problems.

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Population: Enough Of Us Now -- A Commentary

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)

From New Scientist:

GLOBAL population growth has slowed significantly, but it hasn't stopped. By 2050 there may be about 35 per cent more people on Earth than there are today. We are already seeing increasing shortages of food, water and other resources and growing numbers of hungry people.

Yet to embark on any discussion about limiting our numbers is to enter sensitive and controversial territory. Perhaps this is not surprising, as in the 1960s, when population growth became an issue of widespread concern, the discussions often had a racist undertone, in which the "well-off" focused on the exploding populations of "underdeveloped nations".

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4 People Who Faced Disaster—And How They Made it Out Alive

Frank Vaplon saved his home from a California wildfire with mail-order firefighting equipment and plenty of preparation.

From Popular Mechanics:

Some disasters are simply not survivable. But most are, and research on human behavior suggests that the difference between life and death often comes down to the simple—yet surprisingly difficult—task of recognizing threats before they overwhelm you, then working through them as discrete challenges. The people who survive disasters tend to be better prepared and more capable of making smart decisions under pressure. Not everyone is born with these traits, but almost anyone can learn them. Here’s how to wire your brain for survival.

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Augmented Google Earth Gets Real-Time People, Cars, Clouds

Real-Time Cars in Google Earth courtesy Georgia Institute of Technology

From Popular Science:

Researchers from Georgia Tech have devised methods to take real-time, real-world information and layer it onto Google Earth, adding dynamic information to the previously sterile Googlescape.

They use live video feeds (sometimes from many angles) to find the position and motion of various objects, which they then combine with behavioral simulations to produce real-time animations for Google Earth or Microsoft Virtual Earth.

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What Happens To A Hoard Of Old Gold?

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

From BBC News Magazine:

The Staffordshire hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold is being described as the most significant find in many years, but just what happens next?

Long queues are snaking around the block at a Birmingham museum where the items are now on view. But after the initial excitement dies down, what exactly will happen to the hundreds of pieces?

While much of the mud has been brushed off the 1,381 items, a proper investigation into the find will have to wait until a series of important procedures are completed.

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The 10 Most Outrageous Military Experiments

From Live Science:

A super soldier program produces Marvel superhero Wolverine in the movie "X-Men Origins: Wolverine," along with rivals Sabretooth and Weapon XI. Now Live Science looks back on real experiments that the U.S. government ran on soldiers and citizens to advance the science of war.

The military didn't replicate Wolverine's indestructible skeleton and retractable claws. Rather, they shot accident victims up with plutonium, tested nerve gas on sailors, and tried out ESP. While some of the tests seem outlandish in hindsight, the military continues to push the envelope in seeking new warfare techniques based on cutting-edge science and technology.

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My Comment: The comments section from this posting by Live Science deserve to be read also.

Real Science Sets Up Surrogates‘ Futuristic Robot Action

From Underwire:

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.

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Mass Extinction Event Spared Europe (Mostly)

Moment of Impact
An artist's illustration of the comet crashing into the Yucatan Peninsula. The comet impact that wiped out the dinosaurs had little effect on life in Europe, according to a new study of fossil evidence. NASA

From Discovery News:

When a comet crashed into the Yucatan Peninsula 65 million years ago, all hell broke loose. Scientists have guessed at the scene: a world enshrouded in ashen darkness leftover from the cosmic impact that left almost nothing -- including the dinosaurs -- standing.

But a new study shows that in western Europe at least, the effects were far less terrifying.

Fossil leaves from four million years after the impact show that plants and insects had made a full recovery.

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Veteran Crew Named For Final Space Shuttle Flight

Astronaut Steven W. Lindsey speaks after the STS-121 shuttle mission in 2006. NASA

From USA Today:

WASHINGTON (AP) — NASA's chief astronaut will shut off the lights on America's space shuttle program.

NASA announced Friday the crew for the last scheduled space shuttle mission, targeted for next September. It will be on the space shuttle Discovery and bring equipment to the international space station.

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Are You Paid A Pretty Penny? Good Looks Really DO Boost Wages, Researchers Say

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 The Daily Mail:

It is a blow for the Ugly Bettys and Plain Janes - research shows that good looks lead to better pay.

A study of 4,000 young men and women found that beauty boosted pay cheques more than intelligence.

Those judged to be the easiest on the eye earned up to 10 per cent more than their less attractive friends and colleagues.

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Has Biodefence Research Made America A Safer Place To Live?

From New Scientist:

Has the massive expansion of biodefence research in the US since the anthrax letters of 2001 made America a safer place, or more dangerous?

That's the burning question among specialists in infectious disease, after a flurry of concerns about safety at labs handling potential bioweapons agents.

Biosafety was already on the political agenda, with the House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce having scheduled a hearing for 22 September on government oversight of high-containment biolabs.

But the hearing was given a sharper edge by the revelation that Malcolm Casabadan, a microbiologist at the University of Chicago, had died just days before.

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Judge Delays Google Books Hearing

From BBC:

A New York judge has put Google's vision of creating the world's biggest digital library on hold.

Judge Denny Chin postponed a fairness hearing set for next month that was meant to address a settlement between Google and authors and publishers.

The $125m agreement, worked out last year, has effectively been sent back to the drawing board by the judge.

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Scandinavians Are Descended From Stone Age Immigrants, Ancient DNA Reveals

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)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 25, 2009) — Today's 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. This is one conclusion of a new study straddling the borderline between genetics and archaeology, which involved Swedish researchers and which has now been published in the journal Current Biology.

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Scientists See Numbers Inside People's Heads

From Live Science:

By carefully analyzing brain activity, scientists can tell what number a person has just seen, research now reveals.

They can similarly tell how many dots a person was presented with.

Past investigations had uncovered brain cells in monkeys that were linked with numbers. Although scientists had found brain regions linked with numerical tasks in humans — the frontal and parietal lobes, to be exact — until now patterns of brain activity linked with specific numbers had proven elusive.

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Mercury Ready For A Rare Close-Up

NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington

From USA Today:

Mercury gets a close look Monday, when NASA's Messenger spacecraft slings 142 miles over the puny planet closest to the sun. For mission scientists, it's a festive occasion.

"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."

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Take A Virtual Tour Of Ancient Manhattan

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.

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Human Ancestors Conflicted on Monogamy

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 Discovery Magazine:

When it comes to love, we Homo sapiens are a peculiar breed: We thrill at the thought of torrid affairs while dreaming about the perfect someone with whom we can spend the rest of our lives.

Some of this never-ending tug-of-war for our hearts is certainly cultural, but according to a new study it's also encoded in the finger bones of Neanderthals and the upright walking primate Australopithecus.

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Aids/HIV: Where It Came From And How It Spread

From The Telegraph:

Aids is now generally acknowledged to be caused by HIV which was originally transferred to humans from chimpanzees from West Africa.

The first known cases of Acquired immune deficiency syndrome (Aids) occurred in the United States in the early 1980s, among a number of homosexual men in New York and California. At that time, the illnesses were seen as rare, opportunistic and linked to cancer that seemed resistant to treatment. Before long, it became clear that the men were suffering from one illness.

As scientists delved into what had caused Aids, they discovered the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) virus, which is know as a "lentivirus", or "slow virus", because it takes such a long time to produce any adverse effects in the body.

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Update: Aids/HIV by numbers -- The Telegraph

I'm Smarter Than I Look: How A Colony Of Chimps Deep In The African Jungle Have Taught Themselves To UseTools

Human-like touch: Chimps in the rainforest on the outskirts of Bossou, Republic of Guinea, have learnt to crack nuts using stones

From The Daily Mail:

The BBC'S new landmark natural history series, Life, has been three long years in the making.

It is a tribute to the dedication and professionalism of a team of filmmakers prepared to go to the ends of the earth to record the most extraordinary animal behaviour.

Journalist Tom Rawstorne was invited to accompany a film crew to Africa as they filmed a community of chimpanzees who use of every day objects as tools.

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How Astronauts Could 'Harvest' Water On The Moon

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)

From New Scientist:

Newly confirmed water on the moon could help sustain lunar astronauts and even propel missions to Mars, if harvesting it can be made practical. A microwave device being developed by NASA could do just that.

Three spacecraft – India's Chandrayaan-1 and NASA's Cassini and Deep Impact probes – have detected the absorption of infrared light at a wavelength that indicates the presence of either water or hydroxyl, a molecule made up of a hydrogen and an oxygen atom. All found the signature to be stronger at the poles than at lower latitudes.

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Africa's Burning Charcoal Problem

From The BBC:

At a road block in western Tanzania, miles from anywhere, a uniformed official raises a flagged barrier. Nearby is a spill of black, like an oil slick.

This is one of several checkpoints which have been set up around the country in a half-hearted attempt to curtail the largely unregulated trade of charcoal, widely used across the continent as a fuel for cooking.

The guard on duty has confiscated six sacks. They lean against one another and bleed black dust into the sand.

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Ahead of Schedule, H1N1 Flu Season Arrives In The U.S.

A dose of flu vaccination is administered at TC Williams High School in Alexandria, Va., on Sept. 11, 2009. Win McNamee / Getty

From Time Magazine:

On the edge of the Western plains, in Spokane, Wash., the reports of significant student sickness started coming in this week. By Thursday morning, nine of the area's roughly 300 schools were reporting absentee rates in excess of 10%. H1N1 had arrived with the end of summer, just as expected.

"This would be comparable to what we would see in a moderate flu season in January or February," says Mark Springer, the Spokane Regional Health District's epidemiologist. "This is just a snapshot in time. We would anticipate increases."

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Ancestral Populations Of India And Relationships To Modern Groups Revealed

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)

From Science Daily:

In a study published in the September 24th issue of Nature, an international team describes how they harnessed modern genomic technology to explore the ancient history of India, the world's second most populous nation.

The new research reveals that nearly all Indians carry genomic contributions from two distinct ancestral populations. Following this ancient mixture, many groups experienced periods of genetic isolation from each other for thousands of years. The study, which has medical implications for people of Indian descent, was led by scientists at the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) in Hyderabad, India together with US researchers at Harvard Medical School, the Harvard School of Public Health and the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT.

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Moon Myths: The Truth About Lunar Effects On You

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

From Live Science:

The moon holds a mystical place in the history of human culture, so it's no wonder that many myths — from werewolves to induced lunacy to epileptic seizures — have built up regarding its supposed effects on us.

"It must be a full moon," is a phrase heard whenever crazy things happen and is said by researchers to be muttered commonly by late-night cops, psychiatry staff and emergency room personnel.

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The Big Question: What Might The Existence Of Water On The Moon Mean For Space Travel?

From The Independent:

Why are we asking this now?

The American space agency Nasa announced yesterday that three separate missions examining the Moon have found clear evidence of water there. The discovery has huge implications not only for science, but geopolitics as well.

Water, as on Earth? Water you could float a boat in?

No. We are not talking oceans here, or rivers, or lakes or even puddles. What researchers claim to have found are molecules of water and hydroxyl (hydrogen and oxygen) that interact with molecules of rock and dust in the top millimetres of the Moon's surface – in essence, water-bearing minerals, rather than water that is in any way free flowing. But water is water. And water is the essential element for life on earth.

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No Need For Panic About "Toxic" Shower Heads: Reality Check

(Photograph by stevendepolo via Flickr, shared under a Creative Commons license)

From Popular Mechanics:

Prompted by a study tracing bacterial contamination to shower heads, news outlets across the globe have broadcast panicked reports proclaiming that shower heads harbor a bounty of germs, that shower heads may deliver a blast of bacteria, and that a long, hot shower "can kill you." Really? PM's investigation throws cold water on the claims.

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General Electric Gives Gearless Wind Turbines A Big Boost

Gearless Wind Power The winds of change could soon shake up traditional gearbox turbines GE

From Popular Science:

Magnet-based wind turbine tech moves forward with GE investment.

Conventional wind turbines have an Achilles heel in the form of their clunky and expensive gearboxes. But that could change with GE's recent purchase of a company that has developed gearless turbine technology based on magnets.

Gearboxes act as the middleman to convert the slow rotations of wind turbine blades into the faster rotations needed for generators to create electricity. The downside of such gears comes from their high-maintenance requirements due to constant stress from wind turbulence.

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Get Nervous: Rusty Soviet Doomsday System Still Turned On

From Gizmodo:

Wired Magazine has a fascinating article on the doomsday system that was built by the Soviets 25 years ago. It was designed to obliterate the US no matter what happened to the USSR—and it still works today. Shiver.

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 ....

Related Article: Inside the Apocalyptic Soviet Doomsday Machine -- Wired News

My Comment: One thing that I am always trying to do in this blog is to find additional articles/opinions that relate to the main story. But for this story .... I have found nothing. Kudos to the Danger Room/Wired for getting some basic information that gives us a general outline of this "Doomsday Machine" story.

Feathered Fossils Prove Birds Evolved From Dinosaurs, Say Chinese Scientists

Discovery: An illustration of a feathered dinosaur, Anchiornis huxleyi,
the fossils of which have been found in China

From The Daily Mail:

A new species of feathered dinosaurs provides hard evidence the prehistoric creatures evolved into birds, a group of Chinese scientists has claimed.

The fossils represent five different species from two different rock sequences in north-eastern China and all have feathers or feather-like structures.

The new finds are 'indisputably' older than archaeopteryx, the oldest known bird, which scientists claim provides exceptional evidence that birds evolved from dinosaurs.

Read more ....

Asteroid Attack: Putting Earth's Defences To The Test

From New Scientist:

T LOOKS inconsequential enough, the faint little spot moving leisurely across the sky. The mountain-top telescope that just detected it is taking it very seriously, though. It is an asteroid, one never seen before. Rapid-survey telescopes discover thousands of asteroids every year, but there's something very particular about this one. The telescope's software decides to wake several human astronomers with a text message they hoped they would never receive. The asteroid is on a collision course with Earth. It is the size of a skyscraper and it's big enough to raze a city to the ground. Oh, and it will be here in three days.

Read more ....

Making Realistic Skin for Robots

From Technology Review:

Without realistic synthetic skin, robots will never be entirely accepted socially. Yet even measuring what it means for skin to be humanlike is proving tough.

When it comes to building realistic robots, it's not just the way they look that's important. It's also the way they feel to the touch, says John-John Cabibihan at the National University of Singapore and pals. They argue that if robots are ever to be accepted socially, they will need to have humanlike skin so that actions such as handshakes can be made as realistic as possible.

Read more ....

Future Is TV-Shaped, Says Intel

From BBC:

The world's biggest chip maker predicts that by 2015 there will be 12 billion devices capable of connecting to 500 billion hours of TV and video content.

Intel said its vision of TV everywhere will be more personal, social, ubiquitous and informative.

"TV is out of the box and off the wall," Intel's chief technology officer Justin Rattner told BBC News.

"TV will remain at the centre of our lives and you will be able to watch what you want where you want.

Read more ....

Suspected Trojan war-era couple found

The finding is 'electrifying', say experts (Source: Reuters / Ho New )

From ABC News (Australia):

Excavations in the ancient city of Troy in Turkey have found the remains of a man and a woman believed to have died in 1200 BC, at the time of the legendary Trojan war, says a German archaeologist.

Dr Ernst Pernicka, a University of Tubingen professor of archaeometry, who is leading excavations on the site in northwestern Turkey, says the bodies were found near a defence line within the city built in the late Bronze Age.

Read more ....