Rooting for NASA's Ares I Rockets: Analysis

From Popular Mechanics:

A week of spaceflight tests, large and small, reminds us why NASA’s much maligned launch vehicle is important. If it fails, we lose the moon.

This week, all eyes were on NASA as it conducted the first flight of the Ares I, the first launch vehicle the agency designed since the Space Shuttle. October also witnessed progress in other space launches, some of which are seen as possible replacements for the towering NASA rocket. But a comparison of the milestones met in the last two weeks shows why NASA’s Constellation program remains important, and is exceedingly difficult to replace.

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The Ares Lift-Off: Learning From Space Shuttle Mistakes

From Time Magazine:

With the future of the space agency up in the air, NASA can certainly use the good P.R. that will flow from Wednesday's picture perfect test launch of its Ares I-X prototype rocket which is being designed to replace the aging Space Shuttle and ignite a new era in human space exploration. Mission managers took quick advantage of changing weather conditions to blast the rocket through a small hole in upper level clouds passing briefly over Launch Pad 39B.

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Junk DNA Mechanism That Prevents Two Species From Reproducing Discovered

When two populations of a species become geographically isolated from each other, their genes diverge from one another over time. Eventually, when a male from one group mates with a female from the other group, the offspring will die or be born sterile, as a cross between a horse (left) and a donkey (right) produce a sterile mule. At this point, they have become two distinct species. (Credit: iStockphoto)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Oct. 27, 2009) — Cornell researchers have discovered a genetic mechanism in fruit flies that prevents two closely related species from reproducing, a finding that offers clues to how species evolve.

When two populations of a species become geographically isolated from each other, their genes diverge from one another over time.

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Volcanic Eruptions Caused Ancient Warming And Cooling

Photo courtesy of US Geological Survey; Hawaiian Volcanoes Observatory, Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, August 10, 2002

From Live Science:

Volcanic eruptions were responsible for a deadly ice age 450 million years ago, as well as — in an ironic twist — a period of global warming that preceded it, a new study finds.

The finding underscores the importance of carbon in Earth's climate today, said study researcher Matthew Saltzman of Ohio State University.

The ancient ice age featured glaciers that covered the South Pole on top of the supercontinent of Gondwana (which would eventually break apart to form the present-day continents of the southern hemisphere). Two-thirds of all species perished in the frigid climate.

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In Germany, A Better Vaccine For Politicians?

Andreas Rentz / Getty

From Time Magazine:

Critics are calling it a two-tier health system — one for the politically well connected, another for the hoi polloi. As Germany launched its mass-vaccination program against the H1N1 flu virus on Monday, the government found itself fending off accusations of favoritism because it was offering one vaccine believed to have fewer side effects to civil servants, politicians and soldiers, and another, potentially riskier vaccine to everyone else. The government had hoped that Germans would rush to health clinics to receive vaccinations against the rapidly spreading disease, but now rising anger over the different drugs may cause many people to shy away.

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Liftoff For NASA's Ares I-X

Ares Test 1

From Popular Science:

Ares I-X roared off its launch pad at 11:30 EST at Cape Canaveral. This marks success for NASA's second launch attempt to get the Ares I-X rocket off the ground after weather delayed the launch on Tuesday.

Update 9:58 EST: NASA now aims for launch around 11 EST. Surveillance aircraft report that weather should be "acceptable" at that time, and NASA pegs the chance of weather interference at just 20 percent.

Update 10:43 EST: Engineering teams are all reporting a "go" for launch, and the launch director reports no constraints to launch. Countdown is set to pick up at 10:56 EST.

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Grandmothers: Good For Girls, Bad For Boys

From The Independent:

The importance of grandmothers in the lives of their grandchildren is underlined in a study published today.

But the research showed that it was only granddaughters who were likely to do better with their paternal grandmothers involved in their early lives. In contrast, the presence of paternal grandmothers had a detrimental effect on the survival of their grandsons.

The discovery supports the idea that grandmothers have played an important role in human evolution and could explain why human females – alone among the animal kingdom – live well beyond their reproductive age.

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How Maths Makes The World Go Round

Maths makes it: genetic breeding yields a better class of carrot

From The Telegraph:

Whether you’re searching for oil, the lost chord or a better kind of carrot, mathematics is the key, says Ian Stewart.

Like many amateur guitarists, I’d always wondered how to play the opening chord of A Hard Day’s Night. Over the years, I spent hours trying to reconstruct it, but there was something very odd about it: no matter how hard I tried, I could never get it quite right.

In the end, the key to the mystery turned out not to be music, but mathematics. Five years ago fellow Beatles fan and mathematician Jason Brown of Dalhousie University analysed the chord using a method called Fourier analysis, which splits sounds into their basic components. It turns out that the Beatles used a piano as well as their guitars.

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Why It Pays To Have A Younger, Smarter Wife

Beyonce Knowles, 28, has had a better education than her husband Jay-Z, 39,
as he did not gain a high school diploma

From The Daily Mail:

Forget impressing her with candlelit dinners, romantic weekends away and endless compliments.

The secret to a happy marriage is as simple as choosing a wife who is smarter than you and at least five years younger.

Scientists have developed a distinctly unromantic formula to predict how compatible a couple are, based on their ages, education and relationship history.

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Industrial Robot Hones Virtual Autopsies

Getting under the skin, virtually (Image: University of Bern)

From New Scientist:

THE small industrial robot that dominates the room is in many ways much like any other. A robotic arm smoothly wields grippers and probes - always accurate and never tired. But rather than working on cars or computers, this robot is processing human corpses.

A team of forensic pathologists at the University of Bern in Switzerland reckon it could make autopsies more accurate and also less distressing for families.

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Climate Pap Shows Human Impacts

From The BBC:

A map designed to show the predicted effects of a 4C rise in global average temperature has been unveiled by the UK government.

It shows a selection of the impacts of climate change on human activity.

These include extreme temperatures, drought, effects on water availability, agricultural productivity, the risk of forest fire and sea level rise.

The map is based on peer-reviewed science from the Met Office's Hadley Centre and other scientific groups.

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A New Royal Maya Tomb Emerges From The Tunnels Beneath Copán's Acropolis

Archaeologists Molly Fierer-Donaldson and Nereyda Alonso perch on a wooden platform as they lift artifacts from the tomb of the early Maya king discovered beneath the Oropéndola temple. (Courtesy Proyecto Oropéndola)

From Archaeology:

A new royal Maya tomb emerges from the tunnels beneath Copán's Acropolis.

The Maya kings of Copán were not interested in moving mountains. They preferred to build their own, like the pyramid now known as Temple 16. Rising 100 feet above the city's Great Plaza, it is the highest point among a group of holy buildings that archaeologists have dubbed "the Acropolis." Inside an excavation tunnel deep beneath the pyramid's surface, the face of the sun-king scowls at me from the wall of his temple. The city's ancient rulers built their temples--one on top of the next--to suit the needs of the moment. The moment I am visiting occurred shortly after A.D. 540 when the first of four temples was built around a small plaza at the top of the Acropolis.

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Volcanoes Played Pivotal Role In Ancient Ice Age, Mass Extinction

Researchers at Ohio State University have discovered that volcanoes played a pivotal role in a deadly ice age that occurred nearly half a billion years ago. This photograph shows volcanic ash beds -- formed around 455 million years ago -- layered in the rock of the Nashville Dome area in central Tennessee. (Credit: Photo by Matthew Saltzman, courtesy of Ohio State University)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Oct. 26, 2009) — Researchers here have discovered the pivotal role that volcanoes played in a deadly ice age 450 million years ago.

Perhaps ironically, these volcanoes first caused global warming -- by releasing massive amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

When they stopped erupting, Earth's climate was thrown off balance, and the ice age began.

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Fighting The Flu: Do Hand Sanitizers Work?

From Live Science:

With the amount of bottles of alcohol-based hand sanitizer available for public use at hospitals, schools, day-care facilities and malls now outnumbering the billions of viruses and bacteria on even the dirtiest of human hands, you may be wondering if this stuff actually works.

Is it better than hand washing? Does it create mutant strains of alcoholic germs? Might my retirement savings have actually increased had I invested in the makers of Purell last year?

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The 10 Best Educational Websites

From Times Online:

Online information has come on leaps and bounds since the days of the CD-ROM encyclopedia. We bring you the top education sites.

If you bought a computer a few years ago, it would invariably come with a free CD-Rom encyclopedia. At the time it seemed like a life-changer, but after an hour or two spent looking at ancient wildlife clips and a timeline about the Romans, the excitement wore off. Today’s internet equivalents are bigger, faster and more interactive, whether you’re helping youngsters with their homework or cramming for the pub quiz.

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Revealed: Why Children Of Older Men Are More Likely To Have Health Problems

Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones. Photo James Fraser

From The Independent:

Oxford study identifies mutant cells affecting sperm.

Scientists may have discovered the reason why older men are at greater risk than younger men of fathering a child who develops serious health problems such as congenital deformities, autism, or schizophrenia.

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Nasa's Ares 1-X Rocket Launch Postponed Due To Bad Weather

Ares 1-X at the launchpad in Florida. The rocket's launch has been delayed by 24 hours
Photo: NASA

From The Telegraph:

The launch of Nasa’s latest rocket, the Ares 1-X, has been postponed for 24 hours due to bad weather.

Nasa announced the news on its website and on Twitter, saying: “Ares I-X has scrubbed for today due to bad weather. :-( More details soon about next attempt.”

The launch was scheduled for between midday and 4pm GMT, but has been delayed by 24 hours, according to another Twitter post saying: “Ares I-X flight test now targeted for tomorrow Oct. 28 at 8 a.m. EDT/noon GMT. 4hr launch window. Weather 60% go”.

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Most Dramatic Internet Shake-Up In 40 Years To Allow Web Addresses In Languages From Arabic To Japanese

A Chinese internet user browses for information on Google. Soon internet addresses will be available in Chinese script along with Arabic and Cyrillic

From The Daily Mail:

International domain names or addresses that can be written in non-English characters are expected to be approved this week.

This will spark one of the biggest changes to the internet in its four-decade history.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN - the non-profit group that oversees domain names - is holding a meeting this week in Seoul.

The ICANN board will decide if will allow entire internet addresses to be in scripts that are not based on Latin letters.

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Monster Supernovae May Explain Galaxy's Mystery Haze

The mysterious WMAP haze (Image: WMAP)

From New Scientist:

WHAT is causing a mysterious "haze" of radiation at the centre of the Milky Way? It may be a load of monster supernovae kicking out radiation which is then amplified by magnetic stellar winds and turbulence near the galaxy's core.

In 2003, the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe found a patch of particularly energetic microwave radiation in the centre of our galaxy - dubbed the "WMAP haze". It was proposed that this could be caused by collisions of a new type of dark-matter particle.

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Colossal 'Sea Monster' Unearthed

From The BBC:

The fossilised skull of a colossal "sea monster" has been unearthed along the UK's Jurassic Coast.

The ferocious predator, which is called a pliosaur, terrorised the oceans 150 million years ago.

The skull is 2.4m long, and experts say it could belong to one of the largest pliosaurs ever found: measuring up to 16m in length.

The fossil, which was found by a local collector, has been purchased by Dorset County Council.

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Asteroid Over Indonesia Triple Hiroshima Bomb Power

Stocktrek Images/Getty Images

From Future Pundit:

An asteroid over Indonesia exploded too high up to cause ground damage but with enormous force.

On 8 October an asteroid detonated high in the atmosphere above South Sulawesi, Indonesia, releasing about as much energy as 50,000 tons of TNT, according to a NASA estimate released on Friday. That's about three times more powerful than the atomic bomb that levelled Hiroshima, making it one of the largest asteroid explosions ever observed.

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Warning Over 'Monster' 20ft Great White Shark Which Bit Another Great White In Half

We're going to need a bigger boat: The remains of a 14ft great white shark that was bitten nearly in half by what authorities - judging from the size of the bite marks - estimated was a 20ft monster

From The Daily Mail:

A 'monster' great white shark measuring up to 20 ft long is on the prowl off a popular Queensland beach, according to officials.

Swimmers were warned to stay out of the water off Stradbroke Island after the shark mauled another smaller great white which had been hooked on a baited drum line.

The 10-foot great white was almost bitten in half.

The fictional shark at the centre of the Steven Spielberg blockbuster Jaws was estimated to be just five feet longer.

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Like Hungry Teen, Life On Earth Had Big Growth Spurts

The Sequoia tree, the largest living thing on Earth, dwarfs humans and our ancient one-celled ancestors. Jane Wooldridge/Miami Herald/MCT

From McClatchy News:

WASHINGTON — Twice in the Earth's history, living creatures underwent astonishing growth spurts, and each time, new organisms emerged that were a million times larger than anything that had existed before.

Scientists say that's the way life on our planet expanded from tiny single-celled microbes billions of years ago to the ponderous whales and lofty sequoia trees that are today's biggest living things.

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Link Between Alcohol And Cancer Explained: Alcohol Activates Cellular Changes That Make Tumor Cells Spread

Researchers have identified a cellular pathway that may explain the link between alcohol consumption and cancer. (Credit: iStockphoto)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Oct. 27, 2009) — Alcohol consumption has long been linked to cancer and its spread, but the underlying mechanism has never been clear. Now, researchers at Rush University Medical Center have identified a cellular pathway that may explain the link.

In a study published in a recent issue of Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, the researchers found that alcohol stimulates what is called the epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition, in which run-of-the-mill cancer cells morph into a more aggressive form and begin to spread throughout the body.

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Why 'Sleeping On It' Helps

From Live Science:

We're often told, "You should sleep on it" before you make an important decision. Why is that? How does "sleeping on it" help your decision-making process?

Conventional wisdom suggests that by "sleeping on it," we clear our minds and relieve ourselves of the immediacy (and accompanying stress) of making a decision. Sleep also helps organize our memories, process the information of the day, and solve problems. Such wisdom also suggests that conscious deliberation helps decision making in general. But new research (Dijksterhuis et al., 2009) suggests something else might also be at work — our unconscious.

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Enzyme Blocker May Reverse Nerve Damage

The research could lead to a viable treatment option for a range of neurodegenerative disorders, says an expert (Source: iStockphoto)

From ABC News:

Blocking the action of a single enzyme prevents injured nerve cells dying and enables them to regrow, say scientists in the US.

Their findings, to be published this week in the early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, could have implications for sufferers of spinal injury and stroke, as well as neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease.

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How Arlington National Cemetery Came To Be

From The Smithsonian:

The fight over Robert E. Lee's beloved home—seized by the U.S. government during the Civil War—went on for decades

One afternoon in May 1861, a young Union Army officer went rushing into the mansion that commanded the hills across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C. "You must pack up all you value immediately and send it off in the morning," Lt. Orton Williams told Mary Custis Lee, wife of Robert E. Lee, who was away mobilizing Virginia's military forces as the country hurtled toward the bloodiest war in its history.

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Time Travel Through The Brain

From Technology Review:

Over the last 100 years, the way we visualize and understand the complexity of the brain has evolved.

Over the 100-year history of modern neuroscience, the way we think about the brain has evolved with the sophistication of the techniques available to study it. Improvements in microscope design and manufacture, together with the development of cell-staining techniques, afforded neuroscientists their first glimpse at the specialized cells that make up the nervous system. Microscopes with more magnifying power enabled them to probe nerve cells in greater detail, revealing distinct compartments. Newer techniques expose the connections between nerve cells, revealing the complex organization of the brain.

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Awesome Pictures Of Saturn

From 20 degrees above the ring plane, Cassini's wide angle camera shot 75 exposures in succession for this mosaic showing Saturn, its rings, and a few of its moons a day and a half after exact Saturn equinox, when the sun's disk was exactly overhead at the planet's equator. The images were taken on Aug. 12, 2009, at a distance of approximately 847,000 km (526,000 mi) from Saturn. (NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute)

Saturn At Equinox -- Boston.com

Checking in with NASA's Cassini spacecraft, our current emissary to Saturn, some 1.5 billion kilometers (932 million miles) distant from Earth, we find it recently gathering images of the Saturnian system at equinox. During the equinox, the sunlight casts long shadows across Saturn's rings, highlighting previously known phenomena and revealing a few never-before seen images. Cassini continues to orbit Saturn, part of its extended Equinox Mission, funded through through September 2010. A proposal for a further extension is under consideration, one that would keep Cassini in orbit until 2017, ending with a spectacular series of orbits inside the rings followed by a suicide plunge into Saturn on Sept. 15, 2017. (previously: 1, 2, 3). (23 photos total)

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Science Proves That Women Will Look Like Their Mothers When They Get Older

Generations ... Joy Whiting, daughter Amanda Masters and granddaughter Minnie.
Source: The Daily Telegraph

From The Daily Telegraph:

IT'S a question many women ask ... will they look like their mothers when they get older. Now science has provided the answer ... they will.

Plastic surgeons have used new technology to study the ageing process.

For the first time, surgeons in the US used 3D photographic images to quantify the differences in 29 pairs of mothers and daughters who were perceived as similar.

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Solar Superpower: Should Europe Run On Sahara Sun?

More energy than we could ever possibly need, but how can we tap into it?
(Image: Chris Anderson/Aurora/Plainpicture)

From New Scientist:

EVERY two weeks, the sun pours more energy onto the surface of our planet than we use from all sources in an entire year. It is an inexhaustible powerhouse that has remained largely untapped for human energy needs. That may soon change in a big way. If a consortium of German companies has its way, construction of the biggest solar project ever devised could soon begin in the Sahara desert. When completed, it would harvest energy from the sun shining over Africa and transform it into clean, green electricity for delivery to European homes and businesses.

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Augmented Reality Goggles Make Marine Mechanics More Efficient

AR Goggles Seeing the world differently through augmented reality, and becoming more efficient to boot Steven Feiner and Steven Henderson

From Popular Science:

Jarheads work almost 50 percent faster wearing heads-up display goggles that replace technical manuals.

New augmented reality goggles are helping Marine mechanics perform maintenance on vehicles in about half the usual time. The futuristic headgear displays precise instructions on top of real-world settings, and shows how to complete certain tasks, such as wiring up an ignition coil.

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My Comment: Something tells me that this headgear must cost a fortune.

Bumper Brains -- A Commentary

Credit: Andrew Lee/COSMOS

From Cosmos Magazine:

Science can help us stretch the limits of the human mind: but should we embrace brain enhancement, despite the risks?

AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA in San Diego, researcher Mark Tuszynski and his colleagues have been studying the use of genetically modified neurons in the treatment of Alzheimer's disease. In 2001, the scientists implanted neurons carrying extra copies of a gene that codes for nerve growth factor, or NGF, into the brains of patients.

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Mantis Shrimp Eyes Could Show Way To Better DVD And CD players

A mantis shrimp takes a peep from it's burrow in the Sulu sea.
(Credit: iStockphoto/Richard Ng)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Oct. 26, 2009) — The remarkable eyes of a marine crustacean could inspire the next generation of DVD and CD players, according to a new study from the University of Bristol published today in Nature Photonics.

The mantis shrimps in the study are found on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia and have the most complex vision systems known to science. They can see in twelve colours (humans see in only three) and can distinguish between different forms of polarized light.

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Investigator Checks Out Haunted House For Sale

A haunted house in Cuchillo, New Mexico, being sold on eBay. Credit: Benjamin Radford

From Live Science:

There is no shortage of people seeking to turn ghosts into gold and spooks into silver. Hundreds of amateur ghost-hunting groups across the country offer tours of local haunts, allegedly spirit-infested hotels, mansions, cemeteries, and so on.

Ghosts generate a lot of green.

One of the most enterprising ghost entrepreneurs is an artist named Josh Bond, who lives in the tiny New Mexican town of Cuchillo. Bond is offering a genuine haunted house for sale — on eBay.

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New Processor Will Feature 100 Cores

From Gadget Lab:

Forget dual-core and quad-core processors: A semiconductor company promises to pack 100 cores into a processor that can be used in applications that require hefty computing punch, like video conferencing, wireless base stations and networking. By comparison, Intel’s latest chips are expected to have just eight cores.

“This is a general purpose chip that can run off-the-shelf programs almost unmodified,” says Anant Agarwal, chief technical officer of Tilera, the company that is making the 100-core chip. “And we can do that while offering at least four times the compute performance of an Intel Nehalem-Ex, while burning a third of the power as a Nehalem.”

The 100-core processor, fabricated using 40-nanometer technology, is expected to be available early next year.

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Getting It Wrong: Surprising Tips On How To Learn

CAN TWO WRONGS MAKE A RIGHT?: Not knowing the answer can be a good thing.
Magdalena Tworkowska

From Scientific American:

New research makes the case for hard tests, and suggests an unusual technique that anyone can use to learn.

For years, many educators have championed “errorless learning," advising teachers (and students) to create study conditions that do not permit errors. For example, a classroom teacher might drill students repeatedly on the same multiplication problem, with very little delay between the first and second presentations of the problem, ensuring that the student gets the answer correct each time.

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Best & Worst Destinations Rated, 2009

Photograph by Andrew H. Brown, National Geographic Stock

From National Geographic:

Still waters in Norang Fjord, shown in an undated picture, reflect the "well-preserved Norwegian rural life" that helped the region take top honors in the sixth annual "Destinations Rated" scorecard compiled by the National Geographic Society's Center for Sustainable Destinations.

The center convened an independent panel of 437 experts in fields from historic preservation and sustainable tourism to travel writing and archaeology to assess 133 iconic places around the world.

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End Of An Era For Early Websites

From BBC News:

A service that gave many people their first taste of building and owning a web page is set to close.

Yahoo-owned GeoCities once boasted millions of users and was the third most popular destination on the web.

The free site has since fallen out of fashion with users, who have switched to social networks.

Yahoo, which acquired the site for $3.57bn (£2.17bn) in 1999 at the height of the dotcom boom, said sites would no longer be accessible from 26th October.

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Video: Army’s Robot-Man Walks Like the Real Thing

From The Danger Room:

The makers of the eerily lifelike robotic mule have a new creation: a machine that walks around like a real human being. Boston Dynamics is building the “Petman” prototype for the U.S. Army, to test out protective clothing.

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LHC Reawakens, Sending Proton Beams Running At The Speed of Light

Recovery: Repairwork in an above-ground warehouse on the French-Swiss border Cern's damaged magnets underwent repairs at a nearby above-ground site. This man is working on the end of a dipole magnet, which contains six conductors, each of which carried 8,000 amps but were capable of conducting up to 13,000. In superconducting magnets like this one, the internal materials are kept at some of the lowest temperatures imaginable, decreasing resistance and allowing them to generate electricity with virtually no loss of heat. Courtesy Cern

From Popular Science:

Over the weekend, Cern ran particle beams through the Large Hadron Collider for the first time since it was shut down last September. After a helium leak caused magnets to overheat, operations at the LHC were suspended for cleanup and repairs. After tests on October 23 and 25, scientists hope to have the LHC running again in full by November.

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What Dangers Lurk in WWII-Era Nuclear Dumps?

Marker for the first nuclear test at Los Alamos

From Discover Magazine:

Here’s one direct and obvious effect of the economic stimulus package passed in February: The toxic sites where scientists ushered in the nuclear age are getting cleaned up. In Los Alamos, New Mexico, a dump that contains refuse of the Manhattan Project and that was sealed up decades ago is finally being explored, thanks to $212 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

But experts aren’t sure what they’ll find inside the dump. At the very least, there is probably a truck down there that was contaminated in 1945 at the Trinity test site, where the world’s first nuclear explosion seared the sky and melted the desert sand 200 miles south of here during World War II [The New York Times]. It may also contain explosive chemicals that could have become more dangerous over the years of burial.

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My Comment: Long after the war has ended, it's left overs are still affecting us.

A Few Coffees A Day Keeps Liver Disease At Bay

Credit: iStockphoto

From Cosmos Magazine/AFP:

WASHINGTON DC: Researchers at the U.S. National Cancer Institute have found another good reason to go to the local espresso bar: several cups of coffee a day could halt the progression of liver disease.

Sufferers of chronic hepatitis C and advanced liver disease, who drank three or more cups of coffee per day, slashed their risk of the disease progressing by 53% compared to patients who drank no coffee, the study led by medical scientist Neal Freedman showed.

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Controversial Study Suggests Vast Magma Pool Under Washington State

From McClatchy News:

WASHINGTON -- A vast pool of molten rock in the continental crust that underlies southwestern Washington state could supply magma to three active volcanoes in the Cascade Mountains -- Mount St. Helens, Mount Rainier and Mount Adams -- according to a new study that's causing a stir among scientists.

The study, published Sunday in the magazine Nature Geoscience, concluded that the magma pool among the three mountains could be the "most widespread magma-bearing area of continental crust discovered so far."

Other scientists dismiss the existence of an underground vat of magma covering potentially hundreds of square miles as "farfetched" and "highly unlikely." Rather than magma heated to 1,300 to 1,400 degrees, some think it could be water.

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Biofuel Displacing Food Crops May Have Bigger Carbon Impact Than Thought

MBL senior scientist Jerry Melillo and his colleagues have found that carbon emissions from land-use change caused by the displacement of food crops and pastures by a global biofuels program may be twice as much as emissions from lands directly devoted to biofuels production. (Credit: Chris Neill, MBL)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Oct. 25, 2009) — A report examining the impact of a global biofuels program on greenhouse gas emissions during the 21st century has found that carbon loss stemming from the displacement of food crops and pastures for biofuels crops may be twice as much as the CO2 emissions from land dedicated to biofuels production. The study, led by Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) senior scientist Jerry Melillo, also predicts that increased fertilizer use for biofuels production will cause nitrous oxide emissions (N2O) to become more important than carbon losses, in terms of warming potential, by the end of the century.

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Fraud, Errors And Misconceptions In Medical Research

From Live Science:

Three years after being charged for fraud, misusing state funds and violating bioethics laws, disgraced South Korean stem cell researcher Hwang Woo-suk was convicted today on fraud charges, according to Reuters (The Washington Post said he was cleared of fraud but convicted on other charges).

Whichever, the court determined he has repented and so handed down a 2-year suspended sentence, according to media reports.

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Yahoo Mail Outages Plague Some Users

From CNET:

Yahoo Mail users reported some problems Monday morning, with the service inaccessible for some and spotty for others.

Techcrunch noticed a Twitter spike in reports of problems with Yahoo Mail, and another company called Downrightnow also reported problems accessing the service over the last several hours. Several CNET employees reported that they were able to access their in-boxes, but mine is unavailable. Yahoo Messenger and Yahoo's home page appeared to be working fine.

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Ten Years After Napster, Music Industry Still Faces the (Free) Music

From Epicenter:

A full decade after Napster taught the world to share, the music industry’s resistance to new business models continues to obstruct some of the very services that could preserve it, albeit in a smaller, more efficient form.

The future of music over the next ten years depends on finding the right mix between “free” and “paid,” luring fans away from file sharing networks by offering them services that are faster, easier, and more convenient without asking them to subsidize the industry’s return to CD era profits.

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Does Economics Violate The Laws Of Physics?

ECONOMIC GROWTH: Does constant economic growth contradict the laws of physics?
© iStockphoto.com

From Scientific American:

SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- The financial crisis and subsequent global recession have led to much soul-searching among economists, the vast majority of whom never saw it coming. But were their assumptions and models wrong only because of minor errors or because today's dominant economic thinking violates the laws of physics?

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Comets Didn't Wipe Out Sabertooths, Early Americans?

North America's Great Lakes (pictured in an aerial shot on May 4, 2002) were created during glacial retreats and advances over millions of years—including the brief cold snap called the Younger Dryas, which occurred about 12,900 years ago. What caused the cold snap, though, has proved controversial: Recent research has weakened a theory that a giant comet caused the drop in temperatures and wiped out much of North America's wildlife, scientists said in October 2009. Photograph courtesy Jacques Descloitres, MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA/GSFC

From National Geographic:

A comet impact didn't set off a 1,300-year cold snap that wiped out most life in North America about 12,900 years ago, scientists say.

Though no one disputes the frigid period, more and more researchers have been unable to confirm a 2007 finding that says a collision triggered the change, known as the Younger Dryas.

Read more ....

S Korea Clone Scientist Convicted

Photo: Hwang Woo-suk was a hero in South Korea until the revelations of fraud.

From BBC:

A South Korean court has convicted the disgraced cloning scientist Hwang Woo-suk of embezzlement over his stem cell research.

He was given a two-year sentence suspended for three years.

The 56-year-old scientist's work had raised hopes of finding cures for diseases such as Alzheimer's.

But his research was declared bogus in 2005, and he was put on trial the following year for embezzlement and accepting money under false pretences.

Hwang's research made him a South Korean hero until revelations that it was false shocked the nation.

Read more ....

Who Killed All Those Honeybees? We Did

iStockphoto

From Discovery:

The great bee die-off is not such a mystery after all: Industrial agriculture has stressed our pollinators to the breaking point.

It was mid-July, and Sam Comfort was teetering at the top of a 20-foot ladder, desperately trying to extract a cluster of furious honeybees from a squirrel house in rural Dutchess County, New York. Four stingers had already landed on his face, leaving welts along the fringe of his thick brown beard. That morning, the owner of the squirrel house had read an article in the local paper about Comfort’s interest in collecting feral honey­bees, so he called and invited him over. Commercial bee colonies, faced with massive mortality rates, are not faring so well these days, and unmanaged hives like this one could be their salvation. Comfort hurried over, eager to capture the hive’s queen and bring her home for monitoring and, if she fares well, breeding.

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