Facial Profiling

From Slate:

Can you tell if a man is dangerous by the shape of his mug?

On Nov. 27, 2008, Indian police interrogators came face to face with the only gunman captured alive in last year's bloody Mumbai terror attacks. They were surprised by what they saw. Ajmal Kasab, who had murdered dozens in the city's main railway station, stood barely 5 feet tall, with bright eyes and apple cheeks. His boyish looks earned him a nickname among Indians—"the baby-faced killer"—and further spooked a rattled public. "Who or what is he? Dangerous fanatic or exploited innocent?" wondered a horrified columnist in the Times of India. No one, it seems, had expected the face of terror to look so sweet.

Read more ....

Killer Algae: Key Player In Mass Extinctions

Pond covered with algae. (Credit: iStockphoto)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Oct. 20, 2009) — Supervolcanoes and cosmic impacts get all the terrible glory for causing mass extinctions, but a new theory suggests lowly algae may be the killer behind the world's great species annihilations.

Today, just about anywhere there is water, there can be toxic algae. The microscopic plants usually exist in small concentrations, but a sudden warming in the water or an injection of dust or sediment from land can trigger a bloom that kills thousands of fish, poisons shellfish, or even humans.

Read more ....

3 Detroit Marathon Deaths Likely A Fluke

From Live Science:

The deaths of three runners at Sunday's Detroit Marathon were tragic, but probably not representative of any increasing danger inherent in the sport.

In fact, the deaths are likely to be a statistical fluke, doctors say.

A 26-year-old half-marathon runner, and two other runners — a 36-year-old and 65-year-old — died during the event. Though autopsy results are pending, experts say the most likely cause of death while running such a strenuous race is one related to heart disease.

Read more ....

China Works For Mars And Moon Missions

From RIA Novosti:

MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti commentator Alexander Peslyak) - The launch of a Russian Phobos Grunt probe to Mars on October 16 has been delayed until 2011.

The delay also affects China's first mission to Mars. The 240-pound Chinese Yinghou-1 spacecraft was to be mounted atop the Russian spacecraft for transport to the Martian orbit, where it was to be released before the Russian spacecraft landed on Phobos.

Read more ....

Toxic Algae 'Wiped Out Dinosaurs'

From The Telegraph:

Toxic algae rather than a massive asteroid may have wiped out the dinosaurs, scientists have claimed.

Previous studies had claimed an asteroid impact produced devastating climate changes and rising sea levels which caused the mass extinctions over the earth's 4.5 billion year existence.

But a team of American geologists and toxicologists claim algae commonly found naturally around the world could be the culprit that led to the demise of the dinosaurs.

Read more ....

The Next Stephen Hawking: String Theory Pioneer Gets Cambridge Post

Michael Green: succeeds Stephen Hawking. Photograph: Cambridge University

From The Guardian:

Michael Green, one of the pioneers of string theory, takes prestigious role at University of Cambridge.

A Cambridge physicist who pioneered the idea that everything in the universe is made up of tiny vibrating strings of energy is to succeed Stephen Hawking in the most prestigious academic post in the world.

Professor Michael Green, a fellow of the Royal Society and co-founder of the fiendishly complex idea of string theory, was offered the position of Lucasian professor of mathematics following a meeting at the university this month.

Read more ....

Chimps Are Happy To Help Each Other - But Only If They Are Asked

Lending a hand: One chimp passes a tool to another so they can reach a juice box

From The Daily Mail:

While chimpanzees are willing to help each other, they need to be prompted before they will offer assistance.

A study published in PLoS One showed chimps would share tools with each other, but usually only if requested. They were far less ready to spontaneously lend a hand like humans.

Researchers at Kyoto University in Japan were studying the evolution of altruism. Initially many scientist thought it developed from an ultimate perspective - 'I will help you now because I expect there to be some long-term benefit to me'.

Read more ....

Kepler's Revolutionary Achievements In 1609 Rival Galileo's

Image: Catastrophe Averted: In a page from Kepler's Astronomia Nova, the astronomer works through the theretofore unexplained orbit of Mars. Owen Gingerich

From Scientific American:

The International Year of Astronomy marks the 400th anniversary of German astronomer Johannes Kepler's breakthroughs as well as those of his better-known Italian contemporary.

Four hundred years ago this year, two events marked what scientists and historians today regard as the birth of modern astronomy. The first of them, the beginning of Galileo's telescopic observations, has been immortalized by playwrights and authors and widely publicized as the cornerstone anniversary for the International Year of Astronomy. Through his looking glass, the Italian astronomer saw the mountains and valleys of the moon, the satellites of Jupiter, and sunspots—observations that would play a huge role in discrediting the prevailing, church-endorsed view of an Earth-centered cosmos.

Read more ....

Fireball Picture: Meteor Explodes Over The Netherlands

From National Geographic:

October 15, 2009—When amateur photographer Robert Mikaelyan went out to snap an old Dutch sugar factory on Tuesday, he captured a rare treat: a huge exploding fireball in the sky.

Hundreds of people in the Netherlands and Germany reported seeing the fireball streak across the twilight skies around 7 p.m. local time on October 13.

Mikaelyan managed to capture several shots of the fireball as it swung low over the northern city of Groningen and began to break apart into smaller chunks.

Read more ....

Scientists Try To Calm '2012' Hysteria

Amanda Peet, with Morgan Lily and Liam James, stars in "2012," opening next month. The movie's viral marketing campaign has blended seamlessly with websites spreading doomsday theories. (Columbia Pictures)

From The L.A. Times:

As an upcoming action movie fuels Internet rumors, several scientists make public statements: The world will not end in 2012, and Earth is not going to crash into a rogue planet.

Is 2012 the end of the world?

If you scan the Internet or believe the marketing campaign behind the movie "2012," scheduled for release in November, you might be forgiven for thinking so. Dozens of books and fake science websites are prophesying the arrival of doomsday that year, by means of a rogue planet colliding with the Earth or some other cataclysmic event.

Read more ....

'Double Food Output To Stop World Starving,' Say Scientists

From the Independent:

Royal Society wants green revolution to deal with global population rise of 3 billion.

Global food production needs to be increased by between 50 and 100 per cent if widespread famine is to be avoided in the coming decades as the human population expands rapidly, leading scientists said.

A second "green revolution" is needed in agriculture to feed the extra 3 billion people who will be added to the existing population of 6 billion by 2050.

Read more ....

West Antarctic Ice Sheet May Not Be Losing Ice As Fast As Once Thought

The West Antarctic ice sheet rests on a bed well below sea level and is drained by much larger outlet glaciers and ice streams that accelerate over distances of hundreds of kilometers before reaching the ocean, often through large floating ice shelves. (Credit: NASA/LIMA)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Oct. 20, 2009) — New ground measurements made by the West Antarctic GPS Network (WAGN) project, composed of researchers from The University of Texas at Austin, The Ohio State University, and The University of Memphis, suggest the rate of ice loss of the West Antarctic ice sheet has been slightly overestimated.

Read more ....

Plants Recognize Rivals and Fight, Play Nice with Siblings

Harsh Bais, University of Delaware assistant professor of plant and soil sciences, and doctoral student Meredith Bierdrzycki with Arabidopsis plants in the laboratory at the Delaware Biotechnology Institute. Credit: University of Delaware.

From Live Science:

Plants can't see or hear, but they can recognize their siblings, and now researchers have found out how: They use chemical signals secreted from their roots, according to a new study.

Back in 2007, Canadian researchers discovered that a common seashore plant, called a sea rocket, can recognize its siblings – plants grown from seeds from the same plant, or mother. They saw that when siblings are grown next to each other in the soil, they "play nice" and don't send out more roots to compete with one another.

Read more ....

Rocket Science For Kids

A pupil looks through a telescope at an afterschool astronomy club at Alexandra Park school, north London. Photograph: Rogan Macdonald

From The Guardian:

In the corner of a north London classroom, a huddle of year 7s are fizzing with excitement as they talk to each other about rocket science. Yes, you read that right. Some wander across the room to talk to the maths teacher about the forces required to propel the rockets they are building, while others start bundling up tiny parachutes into their rocket designs. A few more are busily adding fins to the sides of their rocket.

Read more ....

Meet Future Woman: Shorter, Plumper, More Fertile

Tall, slim, and soon to be a museum piece.
(Image: Hugh Kretschmer / Stone + / Getty)

From New Scientist:

Women of the future are likely to be slightly shorter and plumper, have healthier hearts and longer reproductive windows. These changes are predicted by the strongest proof to date that humans are still evolving.

Medical advances mean that many people who once would have died young now live to a ripe old age. This has led to a belief that natural selection no longer affects humans and, therefore, that we have stopped evolving.

Read more ....

U.S. Military Create Live Remote-Controlled Beetles To Bug Conversations

Researchers at UC Berkeley have implanted surveillance equipment into beetles
that allows them to control where they fly

From The Daily Mail:

Spies may soon be bugging conversations using actual insects, thanks to research funded by the US military.

The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has spent years developing a whole host of cyborg critters, in the hopes of creating the ultimate 'fly on the wall'.

Now a team of researchers led by Hirotaka Sato have created cyborg beetles which are guided wirelessly via a laptop.

Read more ....

Total Recall Achieved

From Scientific American:

Activating a small fraction of neurons triggers complete memory.

Just as a whiff of pumpkin pie can unleash powerful memories of holiday dinners, the stimulation of a tiny number of neurons can evoke entire memories, new research in mice suggests.

Memories are stored in neurons distributed across a host of brain regions. When something triggers a memory, that diffuse information is immediately and cohesively reactivated, but it's unclear how the circuit gets kicked into full gear.

Read more ....

2009 Orionid Meteor Shower Peak Begins

Halley's comet streaks through the twilight sky on January 9, 1986, in an image from the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. The annual Orionids meteor shower, created by debris left behind from Halley's comet, will peak on October 21, 2009. Photograph courtesy NOAO/AP

From National Geographic:

Earth is currently plowing through space debris left behind by a visitor that last swung by during the Reagan Administration.

Spawned by Halley's comet, which last buzzed the planet in 1986, the tiny space rocks are the seeds of the annual Orionid meteor shower.

At its peak before sunrise Wednesday morning, the Orionids shower should produce 20 to 25 meteors an hour—a "relatively decent show," according to astronomer Anita Cochran, of the University of Texas at Austin's McDonald Observatory.

Read more ....

Is Barnes & Noble's Nook a Kindle killer?

(Credit: Barnes & Noble)

From Crave/CNET:

While information on Barnes & Noble's new e-book reader, the Nook, has been trickling out for several days, the company unveiled the new $259 device on its Web site Tuesday a few hours before the official launch event in New York.

As previously reported, the Nook, billed as the first Android-powered e-book reader, features not only a 6-inch E-ink screen but a color touch screen that allows you to navigate content and also can turn into a virtual keyboard for searches.

Read more ....

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.

Read more ....

'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.

Read more ....

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.

Read more ....

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.

Read more ....

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.

Read more ....

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."

Read more ....

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.

Read more ....

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.

Read more ....

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.

Read more ....

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.

Read more ....

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.

Read more ....

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.

Read more ....

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.

Read more ....

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.

Read more ....

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.

Read more ....