Side Effects Of 1918 Flu Seen Decades Later

Parker / Fox Photos / Getty

From Time Magazine:

Runny nose, persistent chill, fever, fatigue — these symptoms are all familiar evidence of influenza. But what about a heart attack, suffered 60 years later?

Researchers suggest that such distant health problems may be linked to early exposure to the flu — as early as in the womb — according to a new study that analyzed federal survey data collected from 1982 to 1996. Researchers found, for instance, that people who were born in the U.S. just after the 1918 flu pandemic (that is, people who were still in utero when the disease was at its peak) had a higher risk of a heart attack in their adulthood than those born before or long after the pandemic.

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FBI Facial Recognition Software To Automatically Check Driver's License Applicants Against Criminal Database

Have You Seen This Man? via Imperial College London

From Popular Science:

Bringing the "wanted poster in the post office" concept into the 21st century, the FBI has begun using facial recognition software to identify fugitives on North Carolina highways. The software measures the biometric features of thousands of motorists' DMV photos, matching them against mugshots. When the face matches that of a known criminal, the authorities jump into action.

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Biofuel From Sewage

Image: On Q: The Q microbe (pictured), a lollipop-shaped organism that naturally breaks down and converts plant matter into ethanol, is now being used to make biofuel from sewage. Credit: Qteros

From Technology Review:

Qteros forms a partnership to use sewage as a feedstock for making ethanol.

These days, more and more companies are finding that sewage is a veritable "black gold." In recent years, sewage sludge has been mined for electricity, fertilizer, fish food, and gasoline. Now two companies have partnered up to turn sewage into ethanol. While others have worked to produce ethanol from municipal solid waste, sewage from wastewater has been a relatively unmined ethanol source.

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Researchers Probe Computer 'Commonsense Knowledge'

Few can challenge a simple pocket calculator at arithmetic. But even the most sophisticated computer cannot match the reasoning of a youngster. (Credit: iStockphoto)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Oct. 11, 2009) — Challenge a simple pocket calculator at arithmetic and you may be left in the dust. But even the most sophisticated computer cannot match the reasoning of a youngster who looks outside, sees a fresh snowfall, and knows how to bundle up for the frosty outdoors.

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Surprising Ship 'Contrails' Seen From Space

A NASA satellite has captured an image of ship "tracks" forming off North America’s west coast. Credit: NASA image by Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team, Goddard Space Flight Center.

From Live Science:

Although ships sail on the ocean, they can leave tracks in the sky. On Oct. 5, a NASA satellite snapped a shot of this phenomenon forming in a bank of clouds off North America’s west coast.

The white trails look vaguely like the condensation trails, or contrails, left behind by airplanes, but they actually result from ship exhaust.

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The Coming E-Reader Wars

Investing In The e-Reader Battle? Bet On Barnes & Noble -- Wall Street Journal

Crazy? That's what Wall Street thinks—analysts love Amazon, but have little to say about its competitor. But that's why buying Barnes & Noble may be a smart move. Some of the best profits come from going against the crowd.

Everybody loves Amazon's booming stock, which has doubled so far this year. But that run-up in value has made it dangerously expensive. By contrast, few adore Barnes & Noble shares, so they've been left for dead. When you run the numbers, the stock looks remarkably cheap.

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Building A Bridge Of (And To) The Future

HOLDING UP The Neal Bridge is taking the daily onslaught of traffic in Maine.
Craig Dilger for The New York Times

From The New York Times:

PITTSFIELD, Me. — The Neal Bridge is barely a bump in the road for motorists roaring down Route 100 south of this central Maine town. It’s a modest bit of the nation’s infrastructure — two lanes wide and 34 feet long, enough to span a small stream.

The bridge is newer than most, as suggested by the still-black asphalt and the fresh galvanized gleam of the guardrails. But it’s what is underneath that really makes the bridge stand out.

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Peer-to-Peer Passé, Report Finds

From Epicenter/Wired:

Peer-to-peer file sharing has been the bogeyman of the internet, but a new report suggests it’s destined become a fear of the past — replaced by cheap streaming video.

Rising from the ashes in the early 2000s of banned services like Napster, P2P soon became demonized as an imminent threat to software industry, Hollywood and the internet’s backbone, prompting high-profile piracy trials, federal government hearings on traffic management and hand-wringing from ISPs who said torrents of illicit traffic would overwhelm the net.

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Out Of Your Head: Leaving The Body Behind

Peculiar experiences (Image: Christian Lichtenberg/Getty)

From New Scientist:

THE young man woke feeling dizzy. He got up and turned around, only to see himself still lying in bed. He shouted at his sleeping body, shook it, and jumped on it. The next thing he knew he was lying down again, but now seeing himself standing by the bed and shaking his sleeping body. Stricken with fear, he jumped out of the window. His room was on the third floor. He was found later, badly injured.

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"Spider Pill" Camera Bots Could Crawl Your Colon

Spider Bot Cam Spider bot, spider bot, doing whatever a spider ought BBC

From Popular Science:

A tiny camera will be swallowed by patients and inspect their intestines.

People who dislike having medical cameras snake through their body on the ends of long tubing now have a fun alternative. A new remote-controlled spider bot can scuttle around inside the colon or intestine and perform a medical inspection instead.

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Ever Wonder What Every Space Mission From The Last 50 Years Looks Like On One Map?

A Visual History of Space Exploration: National Geographic

From Popular Science:

Well, here it is. National Geographic has plotted the route of every space mission carried out over the last 50 years onto a map of the solar system, giving a nice visual look at the history of space travel.

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The Chemistry of Information Addiction

From Scientific American:

A new experiment reveals why we always want to know the answer.

My mother is a more patient human being after having raised a child who incessantly asked, “Are we there yet?” That information, often out of reach for a frustrated toddler, carries with it a feeling of reward. The majority of us are all too familiar with the urge to know more about the future, whether it is an exam grade, an experimental result, or the status of a new job.

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Flu Vaccines Hit A Wall

Photo: Attacking influenza: Scientists hope that new technologies for making vaccines will lead to quicker availability of vaccines against the human strain of H1N1 that originated from the swine flu virus, shown here. Credit: CDC

From Technology Review:

As new influenza strains emerge, researchers struggle to speed vaccine development.

Making a vaccine against seasonal influenza is a constant catch-up game. Scientists must predict which of the constantly mutating virus strains will be most virulent six months in the future, the amount of time it takes to manufacture the vaccine. The system has worked well enough for the regular flu. But when new, virulent strains emerge--including the current, rapidly spreading swine flu (H1N1)--the traditional approach falls short. Even as consumers clamored for a vaccine, it took seven months and around 48,000 confirmed U.S. cases before the first H1N1 vaccines were shipped to hospitals around the country.

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Farmers Milk Facebook, Twitter For All It's Worth

From McClatchy News:

With a hand-held video camera, a computer and 800 cows, Barbara Martin of Lemoore is letting the world into her life as a dairy operator.

No, it's not a new reality television show. And Martin isn't craving her 15 minutes of fame.

But she is joining a growing number of farmers and others in agriculture who are using social media tools to communicate with each other, send out information and educate the public about agriculture.

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Nitrogen Cycle: Key Ingredient In Climate Model Refines Global Predictions

ORNL's Peter Thornton is helping climate scientists incorporate the nitrogen cycle into global simulations for climate change. (Credit: Image courtesy of DOE/Oak Ridge National Laboratory)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Oct. 11, 2009) — For the first time, climate scientists from across the country have successfully incorporated the nitrogen cycle into global simulations for climate change, questioning previous assumptions regarding carbon feedback and potentially helping to refine model forecasts about global warming.

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Reports Of American Longevity Greatly Exaggerated

(Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times)

From Live Science:

Americans got a bit of good news this month: Half the kids born today in wealthy countries could live at least 100 years. The other half might live long, too.

This respite from otherwise grim news of, say, increasing slaughter and insurgency in Afghanistan, where life expectancy is 44 years, came courtesy of a study published by European researchers in the journal the Lancet.

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Brain Food: Can Maths Really Let You See Into The Future?

From The Guardian:

Meet the professor who can seemingly predict political events using a laptop.

Let's start with some news from the near future. Iran won't build a nuclear bomb. With extra aid money, Pakistan will become more peaceful. And the Copenhagen summit on climate change this December is doomed to failure.

If Bruce Bueno de Mesquita is right, those are the headlines you'll be reading over the next few months. The author of a new book called Predictioneer, he makes big-picture forecasts employing maths, and a laptop that has been so heavily used its letters have worn away.

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Introducing The Most Efficient Solar Power In The World

Image: Randy Montoya

From Discovery Magazine:

It's taken 25 years, but a new solar-thermal plant in New Mexico has finally broken the old efficiency record.

In 1986 solar panels were literally ripped from the White House roof. But political will and financial incentives have reignited the search for efficient, affordable ways to harness the sun’s energy. Two new solar thermal technologies—which focus sunlight to create heat rather than convert it directly to electricity, as photovoltaics do—promise to make solar power practical at vastly different scales.

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The Fusion Illusion -- A Commentary

From The New Atlantis:

To hear President Barack Obama tell it, we need to fundamentally overhaul the way we produce, deliver, and consume energy. After the House of Representatives passed the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill in June, the president said it would “spark a clean energy transformation in our economy. It will spur the development of low carbon sources of energy—everything from wind, solar, and geothermal power to safer nuclear energy and cleaner coal. It will spur new energy savings, like the efficient windows and other materials that reduce heating costs in the winter and cooling costs in the summer. And most importantly, it will make possible the creation of millions of new jobs.” He repeated those sentiments before the G-8 in Italy several weeks later when he stated, “One of my highest priorities as president is to drive a clean energy transformation of our economy.”

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Report: 41 Percent of Personal Computing Software Is Pirated

From Threat Level/Wired Science:

The Business Software Alliance is taking the offensive, sending out millions of takedown notices the first six months of the year in a bid to combat piracy.

Reason: if the BSA is to believed, about 41 percent of all software on personal computers is pirated – socking the industry with some $53 billion in losses. That’s the size of the proposed 2010 budget for the state of Illinois.

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8 Experts Weigh In OnThe Future Of Human Spaceflight

From Popular Mechanics:

The Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Planes Committee is getting ready to release its full report detailing the options for the future of manned missions into space. While the discussion over the future of NASA continues, PM turned to the leading rocketeers, astronauts and manufacturers to weigh in on the debate

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Robots That Eat Bugs and Plants For Power

Crunch'n'Munch EATR will grab plants with its robotic arm, chop them with a mini chainsaw, and burn them in its onboard steam combustion engine to make power. Francis Govers III

From Popular Science:

Controversial robots devour biomass to gain energy independence.

No matter how intelligent a robot might be, it’s nice knowing you can pull its plug to halt the anti-human insurrection. Whoops, not anymore. A new cohort of ’bots that make energy by gobbling organic matter could be the beginning of truly autonomous machines.

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Energy Crisis Is Postponed As New Gas Rescues The World

Oil shale is rock containing deposits of oil and is pictured here burning.

From The L.A. Times

Engineers have performed their magic once again. The world is not going to run short of energy as soon as feared.

America is not going to bleed its wealth importing fuel. Russia's grip on Europe's gas will weaken. Improvident Britain may avoid paralysing blackouts by mid-decade after all.

The World Gas Conference in Buenos Aires last week was one of those events that shatter assumptions. Advances in technology for extracting gas from shale and methane beds have quickened dramatically, altering the global balance of energy faster than almost anybody expected.

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Wide Angle: Genetic Science

From Discovery Magazine:

Discovery Tech explores manipulating genes for our own good.

Not only has the human genome been sequenced, but so too have the genomes of many animals and crops. The sequences represent a genetic blue print of how these organisms function and how they might be repaired when they don't function. In this Wide Angle on Genetic Science, we'll look at the myriad ways, whys and hows researchers are modifying the genes of various life-forms in order to treat disease, modify crops, clone animals and repair tissue.

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Blood Counts Are Clues To Human Disease

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Oct. 12, 2009) — A new genome-wide association study published October 11 in Nature Genetics begins to uncover the basis of genetic variations in eight blood measurements and the impact those variants can have on common human diseases. Blood measurements, including the number and volume of cells in the blood, are routinely used to diagnose a wide range of disorders, including anaemia, infection and blood cell cancers.

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How Loud Is Your iPod?

Some college students listen to their iPods at volumes that may lead to hearing damage, according to a new study Credit: stockxpert

From Live Science:

A teenager equipped with an iPod and earbuds can have his own personal concert — as loud and as long as he likes. But his parents might wonder if the child is listening at levels that could damage his hearing. It's possible, according to a new study of college-aged students.

In the study of 31 college students, more than half of the participants listened to their portable music players at levels that could, over a prolonged period of time, lead to hearing loss, say researchers from the University of Southern Mississippi.

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Computer Program Proves Shakespeare Didn't Work Alone, Researchers Claim

From Times Online:

The 400-year-old mystery of whether William Shakespeare was the author of an unattributed play about Edward III may have been solved by a computer program designed to detect plagiarism.

Sir Brian Vickers, an authority on Shakespeare at the Institute of English Studies at the University of London, believes that a comparison of phrases used in The Reign of King Edward III with Shakespeare’s early works proves conclusively that the Bard wrote the play in collaboration with Thomas Kyd, one of the most popular playwrights of his day.

The professor used software called Pl@giarism, developed by the University of Maastricht to detect cheating students, to compare language used in Edward III — published anonymously in 1596, when Shakespeare was 32 — with other plays of the period.

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Sky Guns For iTunes Market With New Music Download Service

Sky to compete with Apple's iTunes with 'Sky Songs' downloading service

From The Guardian:

Sky is to join the digital music marketplace when it launches a subscription download service that it hopes will persuade millions more consumers to switch to buying albums digitally and threaten the dominance of Apple's iTunes.

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A Cure For Jet Lag? Scientists Identify Brain Cell Which Keeps Us Awake

Photo: The discovery of the brain cell which determines our sleep patterns could pave the way for the introduction of a pill to beat jetlag

From The Telegraph:

A pill that cures jet lag is a step closer today, after scientists discovered how signals from the brain control our biological clocks.

Tests on mice suggested the human body clock - controlled by a region of the brain called the suprachiasmatic nuclei - does not constantly fire electrical pulses to regulate our sleeping patterns, as was previously thought.

Instead, it fires at dusk and remains inactive during the night, then stirring back to life at daybreak.

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Learning To Juggle Grows Brain Networks For Good

Good for the brain (Image: Alex Segre/Rex Features)

From New Scientist:

Juggling boosts the connections between different parts of the brain by tweaking the architecture of the brain's "white matter" – a finding that could lead to new therapies for people with brain injuries.

White matter describes all areas of the brain that contain mostly axons – outgrowths of nerve cells that connect different cells. It might be expected that learning a new, complex task such as juggling should strengthen these connections, but previous work looking for changes in the brains of people who had learned how to juggle had only studied increases in grey matter, which contains the nerve cells' bodies.

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Training To Climb An Everest Of Digital Data

From CNET:

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--It is a rare criticism of elite American university students that they do not think big enough. But that is exactly the complaint from some of the largest technology companies and the federal government.

At the heart of this criticism is data. Researchers and workers in fields as diverse as bio-technology, astronomy and computer science will soon find themselves overwhelmed with information. Better telescopes and genome sequencers are as much to blame for this data glut as are faster computers and bigger hard drives.

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Pallas Is 'Peter Pan' Space Rock

From The BBC:

The Hubble telescope has provided new insight on 2 Pallas, one of the largest asteroids in the Solar System.

The nearly 600km-wide rock is an example of an object that started out on the process of becoming a planet but never grew up into the real thing.

Researchers have published a 3D model of the grapefruit-shaped mini-world in Science magazine.

Hubble's data makes it possible to discern surface features, including what appears to be a big impact crater.

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YouTube: A Billion Views Served Daily

From San Francisco Chronicle:

Chad Hurley, chief executive and co-founder of YouTube, marked today's three-year anniversary of Google's acquisition with a blog post that proclaimed the popular video site is "serving well over a billion views a day" globally.

"This is great moment in our short history and we owe it all to you," he said.

YouTube says that about 70 percent of its traffic originates overseas, with the balance coming from within the United States.

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Feral Children: Are They Really Wild?

Photo: This grainy image is a mug shot of Colton Harris-Moore, a.k.a. the "Barefoot Burglar." Although Harris-Moore has been described as a "feral child," there have been other documented cases of truly "wild" children throughout history. AP Photo/Island County Sheriff's Office via the Everette Herald

From Discovery Magazine:

Living barefoot in the woods and hiding himself in the trees, 18-year-old fugitive Colton Harris-Moore, a.k.a. the "Barefoot Burglar," is making life miserable for the inhabitants of the islands north of Seattle, allegedly burglarizing homes, jacking boats, even stealing small airplanes and crash-landing them.

The teen has managed to elude police in Washington state for the past year and half.

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A Third of Dinosaur Species Never Existed?

Many fossils of young dinosaurs, including T. rex relatives (above, a computer-generated image of a young T. rex), have been misidentified as unique species, paleontologists said in October 2009. That means up to a third of all dinosaur species may have never existed, experts say. Photograph © NGC

From National Geographic:

Many dinosaurs may be facing a new kind of extinction—a controversial theory suggests as many as a third of all known dinosaur species never existed in the first place.

That's because young dinosaurs didn't look like Mini-Me versions of their parents, according to new analyses by paleontologists Mark Goodwin, University of California, Berkeley, and Jack Horner, of Montana State University.

Instead, like birds and some other living animals, the juveniles went through dramatic physical changes during adulthood.

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Physicists Measure Elusive 'Persistent Current' That Flows Forever

Image: Harris made the first definitive measurement of an electric current that flows continuously in tiny, but ordinary, metal rings. (Credit: Jack Harris/Yale University)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Oct. 12, 2009) — Physicists at Yale University have made the first definitive measurements of “persistent current,” a small but perpetual electric current that flows naturally through tiny rings of metal wire even without an external power source.

The team used nanoscale cantilevers, an entirely novel approach, to indirectly measure the current through changes in the magnetic force it produces as it flows through the ring. “They’re essentially little floppy diving boards with the rings sitting on top,” said team leader Jack Harris, associate professor of physics and applied physics at Yale. The findings appear in the October 9 issue of Science.

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Clever New Device Sees Through Walls

Researchers had a person walk around a square of 28 radio transceivers mounted on plastic pipes. The person creates shadows in the radio waves, resulting in the blob-like image (right). Credit: Sarang Joshi and Joey Wilson, University of Utah.

From Live Science:

A new contraption that essentially sees through walls using radio receivers to track moving objects could one day help police and others nab intruders and rescue hostages or fire victims.

Joey Wilson and Neal Patwari of the University of Utah used so-called radio tomographic imaging (RTI), which can detect and track moving people or other objects in an area surrounded by inexpensive radio transceivers that send and receive signals, they announced today.

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Vegetarian Spider Is First Of Its Kind

It isn't entirely clear why B. kiplingi is able to evade acacia ants, whose goal is to protect the shrub from attacks. Credit: Christopher Meehan

From Cosmos:

NEW YORK: A jumping spider found in Central America is the first known species to subsist primarily on plants, according to American scientists.

While many spiders eat nectar and a single species has been observed eating pollen in addition to insects, Bagheera kiplingi dines almost exclusively on 'Beltian bodies', protein- and lipid-rich structures located on the tips of acacia shrub leaves.

Out of about 41,000 known species it is the sole spider to maintain a nearly vegetarian diet.

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Solar Power Outshining Colorado's Gas Industry

From Time Magazine:

(DURANGO, Colo.) — The sun had just crested the distant ridge of the Rocky Mountains, but already it was producing enough power for the electric meter on the side of the Smiley Building to spin backward.

For the Shaw brothers, who converted the downtown arts building and community center into a miniature solar power plant two years ago, each reverse rotation subtracts from their monthly electric bill. It also means the building at that moment is producing more electricity from the sun than it needs.

"Backward is good," said John Shaw, who now runs Shaw Solar and Energy Conservation, a local solar installation company.

Good for whom?

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From Twitter To MySpace, Social Networks Are Now Run By Women Over 35

From Times Online:

Social-networking sites, like much of the internet, were once a playground for young men. They were drowning in obscure jargon, long rants and, of course, pornography. But nowadays, it is a growing brigade of thirty- and fortysomethings who are behind their extraordinary growth.

Famous users such as Sarah Brown are among those non-teenage women who are increasingly turning to sites such as Facebook and Twitter. New figures show that female users now dominate social-networking sites, and those aged 35 and over are among the fastest-growing demographic for many social networks.

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Rogue Satellites To Be Cleared From Earth's Orbit By German Robots

From The Guardian:

German-built robots are to be sent into Earth's orbit to repair 'dead satellites' or push them into outer space.

Robots that rescue failing satellites and push "dead" ones into outer space should be ready in four years, it has emerged. Experts described the development by German scientists as a crucial step in preventing a disaster in the Earth's crowded orbit.

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Pictured: The Independence Day-Shaped Cloud Hovering In The Skies Over Moscow

Luminous: The pale halo-shaped cloud was hovering over Moscow on Wednesday

From The Daily Mail:

In what could have been a scene from the film Independence Day, a luminous ring-shaped cloud could be seen hovering over the city of Moscow last week.

The pale gold 'halo' could be seen above the Russian capital city's Western District on Wednesday, and was captured on film by stunned Muscovites.

Meteorologists rejected any theories of the supernatural however, calling it an optical effect.

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Building A Second Sun: Take $10 Billion, Add Coconuts

From New Scientist:

THE balmy south of France has always been a magnet for sun worshippers. So it is perhaps fitting that here, not far from the Côte d'Azur, an international team of researchers is building a machine to recreate the sun. It will take tens of thousands of tonnes of steel and concrete, plus a whole host of more unusual materials: beryllium, niobium, titanium and tungsten; frigid liquid nitrogen and helium. Oh, and a supply of burnt coconuts.

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Downed Facebook Accounts Still Haven't Returned

From CNET:

Something is really odd here.

As a reporter covering Facebook, I do get the occasional cranky complaints from members who, for one reason or another, are experiencing errors when they try to access their accounts. But it's never been anything like the past week, with a steady stream of e-mails continuing to come in from Facebook members who say they remain shut out of their accounts--despite assurance from Facebook that profiles have not been deleted and that the company is working on the problem.

"This is now seven days and counting," an e-mail sent on Saturday morning read. "It's beyond ridiculous and extremely frustrating."

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Tiny 'Nuclear Batteries' Unveiled

From The BBC:

Researchers have demonstrated a penny-sized "nuclear battery" that produces energy from the decay of radioisotopes.

As radioactive substances decay, they release charged particles that when properly harvested can create an electrical current.

Nuclear batteries have been in use for military and aerospace applications, but are typically far larger.

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Montreal Underground -- A Look Back In History

The Pointe-à-Callière Museum

From Archaeology Magazine:

This past August I traveled to Montreal for Archaeo (Archaeology) Month, which is celebrated throughout the province of Quebec. On my first day in Montreal, I met with Louise Pothier, project manager for the Montreal Museum of Archaeology and History. The museum, better known as Pointe-à-Callière and affectionately referred to as the PAC Musée, is located in Old Montreal on the very spot of the city's birthplace on May 17, 1642, and opened exactly 350 years later on May 17, 1992.

PAC Musée is situated on a point of land where the Little Saint Pierre River once ran into the St. Lawrence River. Chevalier Louis Hector de Callière, the third governor of Montreal, built a home on the site in 1688. The museum is situated atop remains of the first French settlement here, Fort Ville Marie (1642-1674), and its permanent exhibition is titled, "Where Montreal was Born."

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My Comment: This probably does not interest 99% of the readership for this blog .... but as a Montrealer who visited this museum today .... it is so cool.

New Technology Detects Chemical Weapons In Seconds

Preparation of a solution of sensor nanoparticles. (Credit: Image courtesy of Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council)

From Science Daily:

Scientists at Queen's University Belfast are developing new sensors to detect chemical agents and illegal drugs which will help in the fight against the threat of terrorist attacks.

The devices will use special gel pads to 'swipe' an individual or crime scene to gather a sample which is then analysed by a scanning instrument that can detect the presence of chemicals within seconds. This will allow better, faster decisions to be made in response to terrorist threats.

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Birth Rates Rise in Wealthiest Nations

From Live Science:

For decades, demographers have reported that the more developed a country is in terms of wealth, health, and living standards, the lower its citizens' fertility rate — so much so that most rich European and North American nations cannot sustain their populations without immigration. (The United States is a notable exception.) Eco-activists tend to welcome such news, foreseeing an end to overpopulation. But many economists and sociologists worry, because low fertility rates entail population aging, which often brings on socio-economic problems.

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Biggest News You’ve Never Heard: Earth Isn’t Warming

From Christian Science Monitor:

How do you reconcile the early snow in Minneapolis, ski resorts already opening in Nevada, and that August chill in North Dakota with expert warnings about a warming climate?

You don’t. Why? The Earth isn’t warming right now, is why. It may even be cooling down somewhat.

Five major climate centers around the world agree that average global temperatures have not risen in the past 11 years, according to the BBC. In fact, in eight of those years, global average temperatures dipped a tad.

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Laliberte Still Has His Head In The Stars

Canadian billionaire Guy Laliberte smiles shortly after his landing with the members of the mission to the International space station, Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka and NASA astronaut Michael Barratt, not seen, near the town of Arkalyk, Kazakhstan. (THE ASSOCIATED PRESS/Yuri Kochetkov, Pool)

From CNews/Canadian Press:

MONTREAL - Back from his trip in space, Circus magnate Guy Laliberte said Sunday he'll soon be ready to follow up on the outcome of the two-hour extravaganza of poetry, science and dance that he orchestrated from orbit.

"As you know, I was on a personal mission which was to create an event to talk about the situation of water in the world," he said in an interview broadcast Sunday on NASA TV.

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LHC Test Could Lead to Hyperdrive Space Propulsion (Well, In Theory)

Muon Chambers The Atlas Experiment

From Popular Science:

Add one more thing to the list of mysteries, theories, and unsubstantiated ideas that will be confirmed/denied/debunked if CERN ever gets the Large Hadron Collider up and running: hyperdrive spacecraft propulsion.

In 1924, German mathematician David Hilbert published a paper noting a pretty amazing side effect to Einstein's relativity: a relativistic particle moving faster than about half the speed of light should be repelled by a stationary mass (or at least it would appear to be repelled, to an inertial observer watching from afar).

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