Plants And Wasps Are Smarter Than You Think

A nest of the paper wasps used in the study (Polybia aequatorialis), taken in the field near Monteverde, Costa Rica. Colonies of several thousand adult workers live in a paper nest. Workers usually start with tasks inside the nest, then on the surface. They 'graduate' to become food foragers. (Courtesy of Sean O'Donnell/University of Washington)

From The Christian Science Monitor:

Seedlings know when they're from the same plant, and wasps get smarter as they get tougher tasks, studies show.

Plants and pea brains can be smarter than you think. Plants like those that discriminate between siblings and strangers within their own species, that is. And pea brains like the tropical paper wasp that reorganizes its tiny brain to tackle increasingly complex tasks.

These research tidbits illustrate the fact that acquiring and using information is a fundamental aspect of organic life.

Read more ....

Science To 'Stop Age Clock At 50'

From The BBC:

Centenarians with the bodies of 50-year-olds will one day be a realistic possibility, say scientists.

Half of babies now born in the UK will reach 100, thanks to higher living standards, but our bodies are wearing out at the same rate.

To achieve "50 active years after 50", experts at Leeds University are spending £50m over five years looking at innovative solutions.

They plan to provide pensioners with own-grown tissues and durable implants.

New hips, knees and heart valves are the starting points, but eventually they envisage most of the body parts that flounder with age could be upgraded.

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'Quick Test' For Airport Liquids And Liquid Explosives

Photo: Analysis of the results can be carried out on a small computer

From The BBC:

Scientists say they have developed a quick technique for detecting liquids that could be used as explosives.

If commercialised, the new method could potentially end restrictions on liquids carried onto commercial airlines.

The light-based approach uses cheap components and can reliably identify a range of liquids in just one-fifth of a second, the German scientists say.

The work, published in the journal Superconductor Science and Technology, could have additional applications.

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Carl Sagan Goes Techno Trance With Cosmos Video

From Underwire:

A popular new YouTube video is turning Carl Sagan into a funky hipster — even in his traditional professorial corduroy jacket and anachronistic mop-top.

“A Glorious Dawn: (Cosmos Remixed)” features the PBS star and scientist joining fellow genius Stephen Hawking in a new age rap ballad about the universe and humankind’s effort to explore it. Composed by John Boswell for his Colorpulse website, you can download the track for free here.

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Humans Are Still Evolving, Analysis Finds

Data collected as part of a 60-year study suggests that humans are likely to evolve at roughly the same rates as other living things. (Credit: iStockphoto)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Oct. 20, 2009) — Although advances in medical care have improved standards of living over time, humans aren't entirely sheltered from the forces of natural selection, a new study shows.

"There is this idea that because medicine has been so good at reducing mortality rates, that means that natural selection is no longer operating in humans," said Stephen Stearns of Yale University.

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First-Time Internet Use Alters Activity In Older Brains

Images show brain scans of those with minimal prior Internet experience compared to those with a lot of web experience. Note during the second brain scans, which is after Internet training, both Naives and Savvies have similar brain patterns. Credit: UCLA

From Live Science:

Adults with little internet experience show changes in their brain activity after just one week online, a new study finds.

The results suggest Internet training can stimulate neural activation patterns and could potentially enhance brain function and cognition in older adults.

As the brain ages, a number of structural and functional changes occur, including atrophy, or decay, reductions in cell activity and increases in complex things like deposits of amyloid plaques and tau tangles, which can impact cognitive function.

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Darwin's Contribution To Geology Overlooked

Photo: A copy made by John Collier in 1883 of his 1881 portrait of Charles Darwin. Darwin was a geologist too, say experts. Credit: Wikimedia

From Cosmos:

PORTLAND, OREGON: Darwin was more than a biologist; he was first, and foremost, a geologist, say researchers who presented talks at the Geological Society of America's annual meeting.

Darwin is known mostly for his revolutionary work on understanding the process of evolution and natural selection. But Edward Evenson, a glacial geologist who gave a presentation at the meeting in Portland today, said: "I'm here to try to change that perception."

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Better To Live In Country With Rights-Possessing Robots?

Photo: Female Cylons from Battlestar Galactica

From The Future Pundit:

Robin Hanson doesn't want to live in a country where robots are held back from full sentience and autonomy.

On Tuesday I asked my law & econ undergrads what sort of future robots (AIs computers etc.) they would want, if they could have any sort they wanted. Most seemed to want weak vulnerable robots that would stay lower in status, e.g., short, stupid, short-lived, easily killed, and without independent values. When I asked “what if I chose to become a robot?”, they said I should lose all human privileges, and be treated like the other robots. I winced; seems anti-robot feelings are even stronger than anti-immigrant feelings, which bodes for a stormy robot transition.

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High-Stakes Test Looms for Space Shuttle Successor

NASA officials say they plan to install two dampening systems to control vibrations in the Ares I rocket (Illustration: NASA/MSFC)

From New Scientist:

Talk about pressure. As the troubled successor to NASA's space shuttle powers up for its first flight test, a White House panel is weighing up whether to cancel the project.

The Ares I rocket is designed to carry a crew capsule called Orion to Earth orbit, where it could dock with the International Space Station or form part of a mission to the moon. But it has been plagued with budget problems and technical hitches.

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New Dinosaur Extinction Theory Causes Debate

An artist rendering of a space rock streaking toward Earth. Most experts think an impact off the Yucatan Peninsula 65 million years ago was the primary cause of the dinosaur demise. Others think volcanism and climate change may have played a role. A new and controversial idea suggests there was another, larger impact in India that was responsible. Stockxpert

From MSNBC:

The extinction of the dinosaurs has often been traced to a giant space rock impact on the Earth 65 million years ago. But now a scientist is saying experts have blamed the wrong impact. The new thinking was met with sharp criticism from other researchers, however.

Paleontologist Sankar Chatterjee of Texas Tech University says a giant basin in India called Shiva could also be an impact crater from the time of the dinosaurs' demise, and the crash that created it may have been the cause of the mass extinction scientists call the KT (Cretaceous–Tertiary) event, which killed off more than half the Earth's species along with the dinos. This argument runs counter to the widely-held wisdom that the Chicxulub impact on the Yucatan Peninsula off Mexico was behind the cataclysm.

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What Is The Real Cost Of Power Production?

POLLUTION COSTS: The hidden costs of power production include the health effects of air pollution and alternative fuels are no panacea. Corn ethanol has similar or even slightly higher negative impacts than gasoline. © iStockphoto.com / Mayumi Terao

From Scientific American:

Market prices don't reflect hundreds of billions of dollars in hidden costs of energy production to human health and the environment.

Market prices don't reflect hundreds of billions of dollars in hidden costs of energy production to human health and the environment, a National Research Council panel said in a report released today.

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Child-Care Centers And Parents Brace For Flu Season

Najlah Feanny / Corbis

From Time Magazine:

Over the years, day-care and child-care centers have become a security blanket for millions of working parents who need their children looked after during the day. But as an H1N1 epidemic draws closer, these centers look less like protective bastions and more like potential H1N1 incubators.

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2012 Doomsday Not Likely, Mayans Insist

From Discovery:

Apolinario Chile Pixtun is tired of being bombarded with frantic questions about the Mayan calendar supposedly "running out" on Dec. 21, 2012. After all, it's not the end of the world.

Or is it?

Definitely not, the Mayan Indian elder insists. "I came back from England last year and, man, they had me fed up with this stuff."

It can only get worse for him. Next month Hollywood's "2012" opens in cinemas, featuring earthquakes, meteor showers and a tsunami dumping an aircraft carrier on the White House.

Read more ....

In Search Of That Word On The Tip Of Your Tongue

Jennie Pyers signs with a young deaf boy in Nicaragua. Pyers studied bilingual sign language speakers to solve the "tip of the tongue" question. Wellesley College

From USA Today:

On the tip of your tongue, that word you can't dig out. Why not?

The tip of your tongue may be the wrong place to look, psychologists suggest. They find that hearing, sign-language speakers may hold the keys to finding where those words are hiding.

"You know the word, you just can't get it out," says Jennie Pyers of Wellesley (Mass.) College. "Well, it turns out sign-language speakers have the same problem," she says. Only they are called "tip-of-the-finger" glitches, rather than "tip-of the tongue" by psychologists.

Read more ....

How The Moon Produces Its Own Water

Chandrayaan-1 SARA measurements of hydrogen flux recorded on the Moon on 6 February 2009. (Credit: Elsevier 2009 (Wieser et al.), ESA-ISRO SARA data)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Oct. 19, 2009) — The Moon is a big sponge that absorbs electrically charged particles given out by the Sun. These particles interact with the oxygen present in some dust grains on the lunar surface, producing water. This discovery, made by the ESA-ISRO instrument SARA onboard the Indian Chandrayaan-1 lunar orbiter, confirms how water is likely being created on the lunar surface.

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Why Have Sex? To Fend Off Parasites

Indiana University student Kayla King dissects snails under the microscope.
Credit: Kayla King, Indiana University

From Live Science:

Since Darwin’s time, biologists have tried to understand the advantages of sexual reproduction.
This is not trivial because there are clear disadvantages to sex.

Unlike sexual organisms, asexuals do not need a partner to reproduce, can reproduce clonally, and can produce twice as many female offspring. If there were no advantages to sex, and both sexual and asexual individuals were competing for resources, the asexuals would take over in only a few generations.

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Could Early Retirement Kill You?

From The Telegraph:

Full retirement after a life of work could actually kill you, claims new research.

A new study shows that people who give up work completely are less healthy than those who carry on in a part time job.

It found they experience fewer serious diseases and are able to function better day-to-day than those who stop working altogether.

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Are You Ready For The Third Dimension?

Photo: Coming to a home near you: Sky and Channel 4 are set to bring 3D technology into the living room

From The Daily Mail:

Cameras, laptops, computer games, even Channel 4 - the 3D experience is about to leap off the big screen and into your living room...

This Is It, the movie that documents Michael Jackson's final rehearsals for his never-to-be O2 residency, includes 3D movie sequences originally intended to be used in his comeback shows.

It's part of a new generation of 3D movies designed to tempt recession-hit movie-lovers back into the cinema - and it follows this year's string of 3D successes, including Coraline, Monsters vs Aliens and Bolt.

Read more ....

Crystals Hold Super Computer Key

From The BBC:

Tiny crystals could hold the key to creating computers with massive storage capacity, scientists believe.

The crystals could be used as storage devices for desktop computers capable of holding 100-times more data than current systems.

Scientists at the University of Edinburgh have been using low-energy lasers to make salt crystals in gel.

The development could allow users to store a terabyte of data in a space the size of a sugar cube within a decade.

This would be enough to hold the equivalent of 250,000 photographs or a million books.

Read more ....

Energy Out Of The Blue: Generating Electric Power From The Clash Of River And Sea Water

ELECTRIC BLUE: New projects aim to generate energy by harnessing the salinity-balancing effects where freshwater rivers flow into salty seas. © NASA/ROBERT SIMMON

From Scientific American:

Two pilot projects are testing the potential of "salt power," a renewable energy that relies on the differing salinities at river mouths to make watts.

In the hunt for alternatives to polluting and climate-warming fossil fuels, attention has turned to where rivers meet the sea. Here, freshwater and saltwater naturally settle their salinity difference, a phenomenon that two pioneering projects in Europe will try to harness to generate clean energy.

Read more ....

When Is A Species Endangered? Revising The Numbers

An endangered Sumatran tiger wades through a stream
Tom Brakefield / Getty

From Time Magazine:

The planet is in the middle of an extinction crisis, the sixth great wave in its history. But unlike major extinction events of the past — like the Permian-Triassic event 250 million years ago, in which 70% of all terrestrial species were wiped out, probably because of an asteroid impact or a similar natural disaster — this time human beings are the cause. Hard numbers are difficult to find, but many scientists believe Earth's species are going extinct at a rate that is up to 1,000 times higher than before human beings came on the scene.

Read more ....

Barking Dogs Explained

Barking -- With Reason. Animal welfare researchers have uncovered why
city-living domestic dogs may be prone to nuisance barking. iStockPhoto

From Discovery:

Animal welfare researchers have uncovered why city-living domestic dogs may be prone to nuisance barking.

In this month's issue of Australian Veterinary Journal, a team from the University of Queensland's Center for Animal Welfare and Ethics report a case-control survey of 150 dog owners including 72 dogs whose owners had sought treatment for nuisance barking.

Barking can be classified as being a nuisance when it causes distress or interruption to the life of the dogs' owners or neighbors.

Read more ....

In Search Of What Everyone's Clicking

Photo: Real-time search: Wowd indexes pages visited by its users and ranks them based on either their popularity or their freshness. Credit: Wowd

From Technology Review:

A real-time search engine bases its results on users' browsing habits.

Later this week, a new "real-time" and "social" search engine called Wowd will open a beta version of its service to the public. The company says that its search results include only pages that have actually been visited by its users, and that its ranking algorithms offer information based on its freshness and popularity.

Read more ....

Quantcast Quantum Computers Could Tackle Enormous Equations

From U.S. News And World Report:

Trillions of variables may prove no match for envisioned systems.

A new algorithm may give quantum computers a new, practical job: quickly solving monster linear equations. Such problems are at the heart of complex processes such as image and video processing, genetic analyses and even Internet traffic control. The new work, published October 7 in Physical Review Letters, may dramatically expand the range of potential uses for quantum computers.

Read more ....

Edge Of Solar System Is Not What We Expected

From Wired Science:

The edge of the solar system is tied up with a ribbon, astronomers have discovered. The first global map of the solar system reveals that its edge is nothing like what had been predicted. Neutral atoms, which are the only way to image the fringes of the solar system, are densely packed into a narrow ribbon rather than evenly distributed.

Read more ....

In Shaping Our Immune Systems, Some 'Friendly' Bacteria May Play Inordinate Role

A little-known bacterial species called segmented filamentous bacterium, or SFB, can activate the production of specialized immune cells in mice. This scanning electron microscope image of an SFB colony shows a mass of long hair-like filaments created when the bacteria stay attached to each other after they divide. (Credit: Ivaylo Ivanov and Dan Littman (NYU Langone Medical Center) and Doug Wei (Carl Zeiss SMT, Inc.))

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Oct. 19, 2009) — Out of the trillions of "friendly" bacteria -- representing hundreds of species -- that make our intestines their home, new evidence in mice suggests that it may be a very select few that shape our immune responses. The findings detailed in two October 16th reports appearing in the journals Cell and Immunity, both Cell Press publications, offer new insight into the constant dialogue that goes on between intestinal microbes and the immune system, and point to a remarkably big role for a class of microbes known as segmented filamentous bacteria (SFB).

Read more ....

Egyptian Tombs Flooded By 'Faulty' Ancient Methods

This view down a tomb in the Valley of the Kings, Luxor, Egypt, shows fracture traces running down the tomb ceiling. Credit: Katarin Parizek, Penn State

From Live Science:

A trick used by ancient Egyptians to exploit cracks in Earth to make tomb-digging easier has come back to haunt the Valley of the Kings, new evidence suggests.

While the natural fractures were followed to carve out burial sites, several instances show, rare heavy rainfall events can flood the tombs. Archaeologists are racing to map and photograph the tombs to better preserve their contents and figure out ways to divert the rain.

"We have seen evidence of seven separate flood events in four tombs so far," said Penn State researcher Katarin A. Parizek.

Read more ....

Q&A: Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia Founder)

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales

From The Guardian:

'My greatest hope for the next 10 years? That we will, on the internet, continue to forge a new cultural dialogue of reason and respect for the individual'

Jimmy Wales founded Wikipedia.org in January 2001. It is now among the top five most visited sites on the web; in 2006, Wales was named one of the world's most influential people by Time magazine.

Read more ....

Unique Painting Of A Medici Lord Found

Photo: A depiction of an Italian nobleman holding a gold watch attributed to Tommaso Manzuoli

Science Museum Unearths Unknown Portrait Of Medici Lord -- The Telegraph

Art experts at the Science Museum think they may have found the world's oldest painting to feature a watch in a hitherto unknown picture of a member of the influential Medici family.

Since obtaining the painting 33 years ago, it has simply been known as a depiction of an Italian nobleman holding an intriguing golden timepiece.

Read more ....

Hurricane Rick: Mexico Braces For Disaster As Second Strongest Storm On Record Roars Up Pacific Coast

Hurricane Rick maintained its furious strength early Sunday after becoming what forecasters described as the second-strongest storm on record to hit the eastern north Pacific Ocean

From The Daily Mail:

Residents in Cabo San Lucas were preparing for disaster today as the second strongest storm on record in the Pacific bore down on them.

Hurricane Rick went into the record books over the weekend after it roared to the top of the Saffir-Simpson scale, going from a Category One storm to a Category Five monster in an astonishing 36 hours.

The storm is roaring roaring towards the popular tourist town of Cabo San Lucas on the Baja California Peninsula today. Its howling winds have been measured at 145mph - bringing it down to a dangerous Category Four storm.

Read more ....

Scientists Announce Planet Bounty

Artist's impression: Astronomers are finding smaller and smaller planets

From BBC:

Astronomers have announced a haul of planets found beyond our Solar System.

The 32 "exoplanets" ranged in size from five times the mass of Earth to 5-10 times the mass of Jupiter, the researchers said.

They were found using a very sensitive instrument on a 3.6m telescope at the European Southern Observatory's La Silla facility in Chile.

The discovery is exciting because it suggests that low-mass planets could be numerous in our galaxy.

Read more ....

Artificial Black Hole Created in Chinese Lab

Pocket Black Hole The icons depict the shape of the energy-trapping ridges on the disc at the center and the edges via arXiv.org

From Popular Mechanics:

Just because most black holes are solar-system-sized maelstroms with reality-warping gravitational pulls doesn't mean you can't have one in your pocket! That's right, just in time for the holidays comes the pocket black hole. Designed by scientists at the Southeast University in Nanjing, China, this eight-and-a-half-inch-wide disk absorbs all the electromagnetic radiation you throw at it, with none of the pesky time dilation and Hawking radiation associated with the larger, interstellar versions.

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See How The Earth Moves

(Click Above Image to Enlarge)
The image above shows an interferogram, a map of ground movements produced with measurements made remotely by Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR), plotted atop digital topography. United Kingdom geophysicists Richard Walters and John Elliott used measurements acquired by a European Space Agency satellite on February 1 and April 12 to capture ground movements from the April 6 earthquake in central Italy. The color bands (red through blue) represent contours of ground motion toward or away from the satellite, within its line of sight. Moving towards the center of each lobe, each contour represents an additional 2.8 centimeters of ground motion. The image shows that during the earthquake, the region to the northeast of the Paganica fault moved toward the satellite by about 8 centimeters, whereas the region to the southwest moved away by about 25 centimeters. Each pixel in the interferogram represents an area of about 80 meters squared. Walters’ and Elliott’s research is funded by the United Kingdom’s Natural Environmental Research Council. The ESA data is copyrighted.

From The American Scientist:

Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) measurements, collected by satellites circling Earth, can provide big insights into major earthquakes. Richard Walters and John Elliott demonstrated this after a 6.3-magnitude quake struck central Italy in April, killing close to 300 people and severely damaging the medieval town of L’Aquila. By comparing measurements taken before and after the earthquake, the geophysicists pinpointed the responsible fault, measured changes aboveground and calculated likely shifts underground. Walters and Elliott are researchers at the University of Oxford and the United Kingdom’s National Centre for Earth Observation. In an e-mail exchange, Walters explained their studies to American Scientist associate editor Catherine Clabby.

Read more ....

The Lost Prestige of Nuclear Physics

From The New Atlantis:

By the second quarter of the twentieth century, one of the world’s most revered figures was a long-haired, somewhat rumpled European refugee. His public persona combined a Gandhi-like saintliness with the awesome impression that his sleepy-looking, baggy eyes gazed not on the everyday world of ordinary mortals but into far vistas of space and time unseen by others. This suggestion of contact with transcendent reality was central to Albert Einstein’s charisma. It arose from his success in opening the door of human imagination to previously unknown concepts of time and space.

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Commandos Field Test ‘Plasma Knife’

Photo: Quickparts

From The Danger Room:

Nobody ever said the Light Saber was a practical weapon – it’s no match for a good blaster, if you ask me – but it exerts a powerful fascination. Special Operations Command have “completed ongoing testing and field evaluation studies” of the next best thing, according to a Pentagon budget document. It’s a Plasma Knife which cuts through flesh with a “blade” of glowing ionized gas. But rather than being a weapon, the Plasma Knife is a surgical instrument that could save lives.

Read more ....

Labs-On-A-Chip That You Can Shrink To Fit

Shrinking down to size (Image: Maggie Bartlett, NHGRI)

From New Scientist:

INTEL's latest microchip technology has created transistors 22 nanometres wide - a mere 200 times the width of a hydrogen molecule. Carving such tiny features is devilishly difficult and expensive, but in another realm of microchips altogether, something odd is happening: chips are being made on an outsized scale and then shrunk to the required size, avoiding much fiddly hassle.

The shrinking innovation is happening in the field of the "lab-on-a-chip". Such chips are typically plastic slivers scored with serried ranks of fluid-filled microchannels and recessed pools for chemical reactions to occur in; they are often replete with deposits of chemicals, cells and proteins of interest.

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New View Of The Heliosphere: Cassini Helps Redraw Shape Of Solar System

Images from the Ion and Neutral Camera (INCA), part of the Magnetospheric Imaging Instrument on NASA's Cassini spacecraft, suggest that the heliosphere may not have the comet-like shape predicted by existing models. The instrument imaged a population of hot particles that resides just beyond the boundary of where the solar wind collides with the interstellar medium, forming a termination shock. (Credit: JHU Applied Physics Laboratory)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Oct. 18, 2009) — In a paper published Oct. 15 in Science, researchers from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) present a new view of the region of the sun’s influence, or heliosphere, and the forces that shape it. Images from one of the Magnetospheric Imaging Instrument’s sensors, the Ion and Neutral Camera (MIMI/INCA), on NASA’s Cassini spacecraft suggest that the heliosphere may not have the comet-like shape predicted by existing models.

Read more ....

High-Speed 'Other' Internet Goes Global

A newly expanded global Internet, to focus solely on science and education, now includes half of the world's countries. The high-speed fiber-optic network connects users at speeds of 10 Gbps. Credit: GLORIAD.

From Live Science:

A super high-speed global Internet devoted solely to science and education has just expanded to include half the countries of the world, and yes, you at home can be jealous.

The Taj network, funded by the National Science Foundation, now connects India, Singapore, Vietnam and Egypt to the larger Global Ring Network for Advanced Application Development (GLORIAD) global infrastructure, and "dramatically improves existing U.S. network links with China and the Nordic region," according to an NSF statement.

Read more ....

Clean Tech's Hot New Tool

Image: Beaming in: Electron-beam sterilization of the inside of a beverage bottle causes the walls of the bottle to fluoresce when exposed to electron emissions. Credit: Advanced Electron Beams

From Technology Review:

Smaller and more practical electron-beam emitters could save millions of tons of C02 emissions.

Electron-beam emitters that are one-hundreth the size and cost of conventional electron emitters could usher in a wide array of new uses for the devices that could dramatically cut the energy use of industrial processes. Advanced Electron Beams (AEB), a Wilmington, MA, startup, has developed a small, low-powered electron emitter that is the size of a microwave oven, compared to the conference-room equipment now needed for electron-beam processes.

Read more ....

Mars Missions Boosted By Communication Breakthrough

From the Telegraph:

Engineers have found a way to communicate continuously with Mars in a research project to help manned space missions.

Communication with Mars had not been possible for several weeks at a time when the Sun obscured the Earth's view of the planet.

But the University of Strathclyde researchers found a way to allow continuous communication with just one spacecraft.

Read more ....

Scientists Develop 'Marilyn Monroe' Gene To Make You Irresistible (But Sorry, It Only Works On Fruit Flies)

Photo: Researchers have found a way of turning females into the equivalent of Marilyn Monroe by tampering with pheromones

From The Daily Mail:

Scientists have developed a way of turning ordinary males into irresistible sex gods and females into the equivalent of Marilyn Monroe.

The effect is so strong it has been likened to a 'sexual tsunami'.

Males and females that were altered in the experiment even managed to turn their heterosexual peers gay.

Researchers discovered the secret to sex appeal by tampering with pheromones.

There is only one catch - so far, it only works on flies.

Read more ....

Newly Discovered Magnetic Monopole Particles Flow Like Electric Currents

Dy2Ti2O7: This rare, "spin ice", crystal contains the atomic monopoles needed to create magnetricity. via Muon Science Laboratory

From Popular Science:

They're calling it "magnetricity" -- catchy, eh?

In 1931, physicist Paul Dirac hypothesized that on the quantum level, magnetic charge must exist in discrete packets, or quanta, in the same way that electric energy exists in a photon. This implies the existence of magnetic monopoles: particles that have a single magnetic charge, or polar identity -- north or south.

For 78 years, Dirac's speculation interested only hardcore theorists, because the conjecture failed to find any expression in observed phenomena. All magnets had two poles, one north and one south, inextricably attached to each other.

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Bites Of Passage

From The National:

In the past few decades, the Asian tiger mosquito has travelled from its natural home in Southeast Asia to the ends of the earth, becoming one of the world’s most invasive species. Tom Scocca reports from the frontlines of the battle to halt the winged invasion.

The picnic cooler, resting up against the back side of a row house in Trenton, New Jersey, was an artefact designed solely for the use of human beings. It had been invented to meet a particular and exclusive set of needs, unique to 21st-century Homo sapiens: to allow the transport of cold beverages to locales without refrigeration – and, once there, to allow those humans, while drinking, to free up their opposable thumbs by setting their beverages down in the wilderness without a spill. For this, humans needed more than a picnic cooler; they needed one whose lid was inset with four cup holders.

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There’s No Place Like Home

From Newsweek:

Fewer Americans are relocating than at any time since 1962. That's good news for families, communities ... and even the environment.

On almost any night of the week, Churchill's Restaurant is hopping. The 10-year-old hot spot in Rockville Centre, Long Island, is packed with locals drinking beer and eating burgers, with some customers spilling over onto the street. "We have lots of regulars—people who are recognized when they come in," says co-owner Kevin Culhane. In fact, regulars make up more than 80 percent of the restaurant's customers. "People feel comfortable and safe here," Culhane says. "This is their place."

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A World Redrawn When America Showed Up On A Map, It Was The Universe That Got Transformed

Image: Nicholas Copernicus (Getty Images)

From Boston.com:

NEARLY FIVE CENTURIES ago, the Polish astronomer Nicholas Copernicus went public with one of the most important arguments ever made in the history of ideas. The earth did not sit immobile at the center of the universe, he wrote. It revolved around the sun.

It was the mother of all paradigm shifts, dismantling a model of the universe that had been dogma since antiquity. When he published his theory, in “On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres” (1543), Copernicus provided a wealth of data on the movements of celestial bodies in support of his case. But what’s often overlooked is that he began his argument from the ground up, by focusing not on the heavens but the earth. In particular, he began with a geographical revelation, prompted by something he had recently come across on a new map.

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Bouncing Back: How We Deal With Bereavement

Bouncing back (Image: Michael Blann/Stone)

From New Scientist:

WHAT is the best way of coping with the death of a loved one? Why do some people grieve more intensely than others? Such questions are traditionally left to counsellors and self-help gurus, but George Bonanno, a clinical psychologist at Columbia University in New York, is on a mission to answer them empirically. He has done a good job, interviewing thousands of bereaved people over decades and monitoring how they get through their troubled times.

Yet Bonanno's bottom line - that people are often much more resilient than we're led to believe - is rather unremarkable. Studies of Londoners during the Blitz and New Yorkers after 9/11 showed that few people suffer serious reactions to traumatic events.

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Suppose 21st Century Disasters Like 19th Century

Redoubt Volcano from the east, with a massive eruption plume produced by pyroclastic flows on April 21, 1990(photo by R. Clucas)

From Future Pundit:

We remember the 20th century because we've all lived in some part of it (unless of course a 9 year older is reading this) and seen lots of video about it. The century was well covered by modern media. We know less of the 19th century and some of its major natural events are not widely known.

As compared to the 19th century the 20th century was pretty calm from the standpoint of big natural changes. What I'm going to do with this post: Imagine that the 21st century turns out to be like the 19th century in terms of the severity of climate, volcanic, and other natural events.

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Technology Brings New Insights To One Of The Oldest Middle Eastern Languages Still Spoken

Tablets uncovered at Persepolis in Iran are covered with writing in Aramaic. The archive, being studied at the University of Chicago, provides new insights on the language, which has been written and spoken in the Middle East continuously since ancient times. (Credit: Oriental Institute, University of Chicago)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Oct. 16, 2009) — New technologies and academic collaborations are helping scholars at the University of Chicago analyze hundreds of ancient documents in Aramaic, one of the Middle East’s oldest continuously spoken and written languages.

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Brilliant! Roof Tiles Change Color To Save Energy

A blast from a heat gun has turned most of the black tile in this image white. The prototype tile, developed by recent MIT graduates, is designed to turn dark in cold weather and white in warm weather. Credit: Patrick Gillooly

From Live Science:

On a blazing summer day, a black roof gets miserably hot, while a white roof reflects the sun and keeps a home cooler. In winter, the warmth generated by a solar-radiation-absorbing black roof can save energy.

That's well-known and simple enough. Unfortunately, you can't have it both ways. Well ...

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Quantcast New Technology Aimed At Increasing Oil Production

From US News And World Report/AP:

HOUSTON—Imagine having a nice ripe orange, ready for squeezing, but being able to get out only a small amount of juice. There's got to be more, you just can't get at it.

That's the frustration of the global oil business.

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Merging Video With Maps

Image: Drive-through: New navigation software uses panoramic images to create a video preview of the route. As the video plays, users can also follow the route on the map (shown here in green and on the next page, larger image). Credit: Microsoft

From Technology Review:

A new system uses panoramic images to create navigation videos that highlight turns and landmarks.

A novel navigation system under development at Microsoft aims to tweak users' visual memory with carefully chosen video clips of a route. Developed with researchers from the University of Konstanz in Germany, the software creates video using 360-degree panoramic images of the street that are strung together. Such images have already been gathered by several different mapping companies for many roads around the world. The navigation system, called Videomap, adjusts the speed of the video and the picture to highlight key areas along the route.

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