Software Listens For Hints Of Depression

Image: Signal processing: Researchers at Cogito Health are developing mathematical models to detect vocal cues that may signal depression. The last graph represents the software’s confidence level in determining depression, from the beginning to the end of a vocal recording. In this example, the data shows a very high likelihood of depression. Credit: Cogito Health

From Technology Review:

A large-scale trial will test whether software can identify depressed patients.

It's a common complaint in any communication breakdown: "It's not what you said, it's how you said it." For professor Sandy Pentland and his group at MIT's Media Lab, the tone and pitch of a person's voice, the length and frequency of pauses and speed of speech can reveal much about his or her mood.

While most speech recognition software concentrates on turning words and phrases into text, Pentland's group is developing algorithms that analyze subtle cues in speech to determine whether someone is feeling awkward, anxious, disconnected or depressed.

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Darwinian Evolutionary Theory Will Help Find Alien Life, Says NasaSscientist

Darwin's theory of evolution can help us find life on alien planets, says a Nasa scientist Photo: WIKIMEDIA COMMONS - IVO SHANDOR

From The Telegraph:

Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution may give pointers in the search for alien life, says a Nasa astrobiologist.

In a talk marking the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species, a Nasa scientist said that Darwinian evolution will be the driving force of life anywhere in the universe, and we should use its predictions to decide where to look.

Dr John Baross, a researcher at the Nasa Astrobiology Institute, said: "I really feel that Darwinian evolution is a defining feature of all life.

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The Monster Devouring Us: Even The Men Who Created The Internet Are Beginning To Fear Its Power To Destroy Our Freedom

Caught in the web: The internet can track our location and habits and information stored from accessing websites could be used against you

From The Daily Mail:

Fast-forward 40 years. It is November 2049 and privacy is a distant memory.

Every telephone call you make, every text you send on your mobile phone, every email and videocall, every financial transaction is recorded, stored, analysed and can potentially be used against you.

Each waking hour you are also deluged with marketing calls and sales pitches - which pop up on your mobile, your hand-held computer and even in your car.

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Veterans Return To Iraq – Virtually

From The Independent:

Computer simulations could help soldiers with post traumatic stress disorder.

The haunting sound of an Islamic call to prayer echoes around you as you walk through the Iraqi town, litter blowing across the street and market traders standing next to their stalls. Glance down and your rifle comes into view, look to the right and you spot the Black Hawk helicopter.

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Can We Manipulate The Weather?

Unseasonal snowfall in Beijing, which scientists claim is the result of their geoengineering, November 2009. Photograph: ADRIAN BRADSHAW/EPA

From The Guardian:

Chinese scientists claim to be able to control the weather. But is so-called geoengineering more than wishful thinking? And, if so, should we be worried?

The unseasonal snow that fell on Beijing for 11 hours on Sunday was the earliest and heaviest there has been for years. It was also, China claims, man-made. By the end of last month, farmland in the already dry north of China was suffering badly due to drought. So on Saturday night China's meteorologists fired 186 explosive rockets loaded with chemicals to "seed" clouds and encourage snow to fall. "We won't miss any opportunity of artificial precipitation since Beijing is suffering from a lingering drought," Zhang Qiang, head of the Beijing Weather Modification Office, told state media.

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The Future Of Cars ( Preview )

Alina Novopashna, Corbis

From Scientific American:

Industry leaders look way down the road.

Key Concepts

* The car fleet of 2030 will use a patchwork quilt of different fuels and power trains, with some cars meant for short hops and city driving.
* As the years go by, vehicles will become increasingly connected to one another electronically,
for crash prevention and social networking. Driver distraction will be an ongoing concern.
* Whether cars that run on hydrogen fuel cells will be common in 20 years remains an open question.

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Ares' Continued Technical Problems And Money Troubles: Guest Analysis

From Popular Mechanics:

Space analyst Rand Simberg argues here that last week's test flight of the Ares I-X rocket, NASA's planned, vaunted crew-launch system, did little to stem the controversy over the program. The space agency claims that the flight was a success, providing data needed to retire some of the risk in the development of the eventual booster. But the flight was hardly flawless, Simberg says, and may have uncovered a previously unknown (or, at any rate, undiscussed) risk. Even with all of its technical issues—thrust oscillation, reduced performance margin, a gantry collision risk and now a risk during stage separation—the real problem of the program, Simberg argues, remains how much it will cost.

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As Space Collision Threat Looms, Pentagon Upgrades Its Monitoring of Satellites

Space Junk An artist's impression of space debris in low-Earth orbit. The U.S. government wants a better surveillance system to keep track of the thousands of space junk pieces. ESA

From Popular Science:

The U.S. Air Force has upgraded its ability to predict possible satellite collisions, as the risk from space debris increases.

Satellites currently must dodge an ever-growing gauntlet of other satellites and clouds of space debris, and this year the Pentagon has quietly upgraded its surveillance accordingly. The U.S. military announced yesterday that it now tracks 800 maneuverable satellites, compared to less than 100 prior to a February collision between an active U.S. satellite and a retired Russian communications satellite.

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Metabolic Syndrome Is A Killer

From Future Pundit:

High cholesterol isn't as dangerous as a combination of obesity, high blood pressure, and high blood sugar (insulin resistant diabetes).

The team, led by Assistant Clinical Professor of Public Health at Warwick Medical School Dr Oscar Franco, has discovered that simultaneously having obesity, high blood pressure and high blood sugar are the most dangerous combination of health factors when developing metabolic syndrome.

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Dark Matter And Dark Energy Make Up 95 Percent Of Universe, Detailed Measurements Reveal

The QUaD collaboration uses the 2.6-meter telescope shown here to view the temperature and polarization of the cosmic microwave background, a faintly glowing relic of the hot, dense, young universe. (Credit: Image courtesy of Nicolle Rager Fuller, NSF)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Nov. 3, 2009) — A detailed picture of the seeds of structures in the universe has been unveiled by an international team co-led by Sarah Church of the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology, jointly located at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University, and by Walter Gear, of Cardiff University in the United Kingdom. These measurements of the cosmic microwave background -- a faintly glowing relic of the hot, dense, young universe -- put limits on proposed alternatives to the standard model of cosmology and provide further support for the standard cosmological model, confirming that dark matter and dark energy make up 95% of everything in existence, while ordinary matter makes up just 5%.

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10 Failed Doomsday Predictions

Comets feature prominently in at least a couple notable doomsday scenarios. In fact nature may eventually destroy us with an icy space rock, but so far none of the predictions related to comets ­ or any other doomsday prognostications ­ have come true. Credit: stockxpert

From Live Science:

With the upcoming disaster film "2012" and the current hype about Mayan calendars and doomsday predictions, it seems like a good time to put such notions in context.

Most prophets of doom come from a religious perspective, though the secular crowd has caused its share of scares as well. One thing the doomsday scenarios tend to share in common: They don't come to pass.

Here are 10 that didn't pan out, so far:

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Ten Inventions That Changed The World

Winner: With 9581 votes, the medical X-ray radiograph was deemed the most important invention in the Science Museum.

From New Scientist:

To mark its centenary, in June the Science Museum in London had its curators select the 10 objects in its collection that had made the biggest mark on history. These then went to a public vote to find the most important invention of past centuries. Visitors to the museum and online voters cast nearly 50,000 votes. Find out the winners below.

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Stealthy Nanoparticles Attack Cancer Cells

Image: Cancer killers: Drug-laden nanoparticles (shown in pink) developed by BIND Biosciences have accumulated in a prostate-cancer cell (shown in green; cell nucleus in blue). The particles were designed to target prostate cancer cells. Scientists hope such particles will reduce side effects associated with chemotherapy. Credit: BIND Biosciences

From Technology Review:

Drugs embedded in special polymers can more effectively shrink tumors.

In a small manufacturing space on a Cambridge, MA, street dotted with biotech companies, Greg Troiano tinkers with a series of gleaming metal vats interweaved with plastic tubes. The vats are designed to violently shake a mix of chemicals into precise nanostructures, and Troiano's task, as head of process development at start-up BIND Biosciences, is to make kilograms of the stuff--a novel drug-infused nanoparticle. The company hopes the new drug-delivery system will diminish the side effects of chemotherapy while increasing its effectiveness in killing cancer.

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Guzzling Food Makes You Fat

Eating quickly makes you put on weight Photo: GETTY

From The Telegraph:

Eating quickly makes you put on weight because your stomach does not have time to tell your brain it is full, scientists find.

Researchers found that "wolfing down" your food slows and restricts the release of a special "full up" hormone in your stomach.

That means that you eat more food before the brain realises that your body has already had enough to eat.

The decreased release of these hormones, can often lead to overeating, the researchers concluded.

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Meet Aida, The In-Car Robot Who Will Take The Stress Out Of Driving

Aida is embedded into the car's dashboard. The technology is being developed by MIT and Volkswagen

From The Daily Mail:

Driving could soon be a far more pleasant experience thanks to a personal in-car robot being developed by researchers.

The Affective Intelligent Driving Agent (AIDA) will be able to tell you the best route home based on traffic reports, remind you to pick up petrol and suggest places you may like to visit.

The robot, which sits on the dashboard, is being developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in collaboration with Volkswagen.

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EXCLUSIVE: Secrets of Google's 3-D Mars, Moon

From National Geographic:

Want to meet a Martian or spark lunar conflict? Two former NASA specialists give tips for making the most of Google's 3-D space offerings—and offer hints for finding some little-known gems.

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How Astronomers Fill In Uncharted Areas Of The Universe

This image of the remnants of an exploded star was taken by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, astronomers. By studying it, astronomers gained a better understanding of new details about the role of supernova remnants as the Milky Way's super-efficient particle accelerators. (NASA/CXC/University of Ultrech/J.Vink/AFP)

From Christian Science Monitor:

Thanks to new tools, scientists are quickly mapping the stars.

Astronomers are filling in the blank spaces on their 3-D map of our universe thanks to their ability to sense almost every conceivable form of electromagnetic radiation. Those blanks include remote regions of space and time when the first stars formed and when young galaxies began to group themselves into gravitationally bound clusters.

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Great White Sharks At Times Enter San Francisco Bay

A large white shark approaches the tagging boat. The shark's head is visible right behind the boat, with the iconic dorsal fin behind that and the tip of the tail marking its full length. (Courtesy Stanford University/Susie Anderson)

From Mercury News:

Windsurfers, fishing boats and cargo ships aren't the only traffic in San Francisco Bay. Great white sharks are there sometimes too.

In what is believed to be the first scientific confirmation of white sharks in San Francisco Bay, researchers from Stanford University, the University of California-Davis and other organizations put satellite and acoustic tags on 179 white sharks in Northern California waters between 2000 and 2008. They found that most of the sharks migrated thousands of miles every year, from California to as far away as Hawaii, and five swam underneath the Golden Gate Bridge in 2007 and 2008 and into bay waters.

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Species' Extinction Threat Grows

From BBC:

More than a third of species assessed in a major international biodiversity study are threatened with extinction, scientists have warned.

Out of the 47,677 species in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, 17,291 were deemed to be at serious risk.

These included 21% of all known mammals, 30% of amphibians, 70% of plants and 35% of invertebrates.

Conservationists warned that not enough was being done to tackle the main threats, such as habitat loss.

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Angry Faces: Facial Structure Linked To Aggressive Tendencies, Study Suggests

New research finds that a quick glance at someone's facial structure may be enough for us to predict their tendency towards aggression. (Credit: iStockphoto/Thomas Perkins)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Nov. 2, 2009) — Angry words and gestures are not the only way to get a sense of how temperamental a person is. According to new findings in Psychological Science, a quick glance at someone's facial structure may be enough for us to predict their tendency towards aggression.

Facial width-to-height ratio (WHR) is determined by measuring the distance between the right and left cheeks and the distance from the upper lip to the mid-brow. During childhood, boys and girls have similar facial structures, but during puberty, males develop a greater WHR than females.

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How The World's Largest Cruise Ship Floats

The world's largest cruise ship departed from Turku, Finland, on Oct. 30 en route to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., where it will make its U.S. debut. Credit: Oasis of the Seas.

From Live Science:

The world's largest cruise ship is making its first transatlantic crossing from Finland to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., where it will make its U.S. debut. Though colossal, the ship relies on the same physical principles as its smaller brethren to stay afloat.

The massive ship, called the Oasis of the Seas and built by STX Finland for Royal Caribbean International, stands 20 stories high, is as long as four football fields, and can accommodate 5,400 guests at double occupancy.

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50 Years Of Space Exploration In One Handy Graphic

From Oh Gizmo!:

Created by Sean McNaughton and Samuel Velasco for National Geographic, this beautifully illustrated map includes the almost 200 missions to space from the past 50 years, showing which of our celestial neighbors we like to visit the most. The National Geographic website has an interactive version you can pan and zoom around on, but if you’d like to make yourself a nice little wallpaper you can find a full-sized version of it on Flickr.

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Study Gives Clearer Picture Of How Land-Use Changes Affect U.S. Climate

This map shows observation minus reanalysis (OMR) trends in the continental United States from 1979-2003. The trends are associated with land use and land-use changes. Researchers from Purdue and the universities of Colorado and Maryland conducted a study that showed land use can affect surface temperatures locally and regionally. Units are in degrees Celsius per decade. (Image courtesy of Souleymane Fall) - click to enlarge

From Watts Up With That?

Researchers say regional surface temperatures can be affected by land use, suggesting that local and regional strategies, such as creating green spaces and buffer zones in and around urban areas, could be a tool in addressing climate change.

A study by researchers from Purdue University and the universities of Colorado and Maryland concluded that greener land cover contributes to cooler temperatures, and almost any other change leads to warmer temperatures.

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Drink Responsibly: Which Is Better For The Planet, Beer Or Wine?

From Slate:

I'm hosting a dinner party next week, and I'll be serving both beer and wine alongside the meal. But it got me wondering: Which has the lower carbon footprint? Beer has to be kept refrigerated, which requires energy, but shipping wine in those heavy bottles can't be good for the planet, either.

It's hard to come up with a simple answer for this one, because so many factors affect the calculation: Where was your beverage made? What's it packaged in, and how did that package get to you? How was it stored at the point of sale? Accounting for all these variables can make your head spin, but the best available research suggests that parsing out the difference might not be worth the headache.

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Critique Of The Path To Sustainable Energy 2030

From the Next Big Future:

Brave New Climate reviews the work of Mark Z. Jacobson (Professor, Stanford) and Mark A. Delucchi (researcher, UC Davis) entitled “A path to sustainable energy by 2030” (p 58 – 65 Scientific American Nov 2009; they call it WWS: wind, water or sunlight).

Jacobson and Delucchi argue that, by the year 2030:
Wind, water and solar technologies can provide 100 percent of the world’s energy, eliminating all fossil fuels.

Carbon Emissions from Expected Wars Based on Militarization of Technology Similar to Energy Sources

They also state:

Nuclear power results in up to 25 times more carbon emissions than wind energy, when reactor construction and uranium refining and transport are considered.

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80 Min Exercise Per Week Prevents Visceral Weight Gain

From Future Pundit:

Fat around your internal organs is thought to be a much bigger risk factor for heart disease than fat near the surface of the skin. Well, if you go on a diet, exercise, get your weight down, and then eventually go off the diet continued exercise will prevent the resulting weight gain from happening where the risk factor is greatest.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - A study conducted by exercise physiologists in the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Department of Human Studies finds that as little as 80 minutes a week of aerobic or resistance training helps not only to prevent weight gain, but also to inhibit a regain of harmful visceral fat one year after weight loss.

The study was published online Oct. 8 and will appear in a future print edition of the journal Obesity.

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The Fourth Part Of The World: The Epic Story Of History’s Greatest Map By Toby Lester

From Times Online:

In 2003, the US Library of Congress spent $10m on a beautiful world map, created in 1507. The price was justified by a single, magical name, inscribed in capitals on a strange tract of blank space in the far west: “AMERICA”. As Toby Lester tells in this boundlessly engaging book, this map was not just the first to give America a name, it was the very first to show it as a continent, separated from Asia by a new ocean.

Advertising its purchase, Congress called the map “America’s birth certificate”; Lester rates its importance much less narrowly. It charts an astonishing shift in world-view, he argues, from the Europe-centred, God-driven world of the Middle Ages to the brave new imperial vision of the early modern age.

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Robots That Care

Image: With extroverts, robots can speak forcefully; with introverts, they are more soothing.

From The New Yorker:

Advances in technological therapy.

Born in Belgrade, in what was then Yugoslavia, Maja Matarić originally wanted to study languages and art. After she and her mother moved to the United States, in 1981, her uncle, who had immigrated some years earlier, pressed her to concentrate on computers. As a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Matarić wrote software that helped robots to independently navigate around obstacles placed randomly in a room. For her doctoral dissertation, she developed a robotic shepherd capable of corralling a herd of twenty robots.

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America's Natural Gas Revolution -- A Commentary

From Wall Street Journal:

A 'shale gale' of unconventional and abundant U.S. gas is transforming the energy market.

The biggest energy innovation of the decade is natural gas—more specifically what is called "unconventional" natural gas. Some call it a revolution.

Yet the natural gas revolution has unfolded with no great fanfare, no grand opening ceremony, no ribbon cutting. It just crept up. In 1990, unconventional gas—from shales, coal-bed methane and so-called "tight" formations—was about 10% of total U.S. production. Today it is around 40%, and growing fast, with shale gas by far the biggest part.

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Sahara Sun 'To Help Power Europe'

From The BBC:

A sustainable energy initiative that will start with a huge solar project in the Sahara desert has been announced by a consortium of 12 European businesses.

The Desertec Industrial Initiative aims to supply Europe with 15% of its energy needs by 2050.

Companies who signed up to the $400bn (£240bn) venture include Deutsche Bank, Siemens and the energy provider E.On.

The consortium, which will be based in Munich, hopes to start supplying Europe with electricity by 2015.

Read more .....

10 Neat Facts About Google

From Neatorama:

Sure, everybody knows that Google was created by Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin who became gazillionaires. But did you know that Google's first storage device was cobbled together with LEGO? Or that Google's first investor wrote a $100,000 check even before the company officially existed? Or that it has its own "official" Google dog?

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African Desert Rift Confirmed As New Ocean In The Making

New research confirms that the volcanic processes at work beneath the Ethiopian rift are nearly identical to those at the bottom of the world's oceans, and the rift is indeed likely the beginning of a new sea. (Credit: Imagery (c) 2009 TerraMetrics. Map data (c) 2009 Europa Technologies / Courtesy of Google Maps)

From Live Science:

Science Daily (Nov. 3, 2009) — In 2005, a gigantic, 35-mile-long rift broke open the desert ground in Ethiopia. At the time, some geologists believed the rift was the beginning of a new ocean as two parts of the African continent pulled apart, but the claim was controversial.

Now, scientists from several countries have confirmed that the volcanic processes at work beneath the Ethiopian rift are nearly identical to those at the bottom of the world's oceans, and the rift is indeed likely the beginning of a new sea.

Read more ....

Caffeine Cuts Into Sleep, Even Hours Later

From Live Science:

Add one more insult to the injury of working the night shift: Drinking coffee during work hours may just keep you awake during the day.

"Caffeine is the most widely used stimulant to counteract sleepiness, yet it has detrimental effects on the sleep of night-shift workers who must slumber during the day, just as their biological clock sends a strong wake-up signal," said Julie Carrier, a University of Montreal psychology professor. "The older you get, the more affected your sleep will be by coffee."

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The Story Behind Our Photo of Grieving Chimps

Cameroon—At the Sanaga-Yong Chimpanzee Rescue Center, more than a dozen residents form a gallery of grief, looking on as Dorothy—a beloved female felled in her late 40s by heart failure—is borne to her burial.

From National Geographic:

The November issue of National Geographic magazine features a moving photograph of chimpanzees watching as one of their own is wheeled to her burial. Since it was published, the picture and story have gone viral, turning up on websites and TV shows and in newspapers around the world. For readers who’d like to know more, here’s what I learned when I interviewed the photographer, Monica Szczupider.

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Oh No, Not This Kilimanjaro Rubbish Again!

Mount Kilimanjaro - Trees put moisture into the air via evapotranspiration, upslope winds precipitate it on Kilimanjaro. Image: Wikimedia

From Watts Up With That?

Gore started this. Note to journalists everywhere: IT’S THE EVAPOTRANSPIRATION STUPID!

See this article to understand why linking snow on Kilimanjaro to small changes in global temperature is just flat wrong. The plains around Kilimanjaro have gone through years of deforestation. Less trees > less evapotranspiration > less snow.

Don’t believe me? Here’s news of a recent study from Portsmouth University Of Mt. Kilimanjaro ice waving us good-bye due to deforestation. Here’s another peer reviewed study from UAH saying the same thing.

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Sniffing Out Swine Flu

From Slate:

Researchers hope to create a better way to diagnose swine flu and other ailments.

Crude methods of detecting swine flu have so far provoked hand-wringing and no small amount of ridicule. Planeloads of travelers to China have had laser beams aimed at their foreheads, landing some under quarantine (and spurring a YouTube minifest of airport videos). This summer, Slate reported on a camp that tried to prescreen kids for flu by checking campers for fevers—and failed to detect a sick child whose physician parent brought his temperature down with Tylenol, fueling an outbreak. Meanwhile, people infected with the virus can pass it on before they develop symptoms; others never develop fever at all.

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San Francisco Bay Bridge Re-Opened

From The Next Big Future:

The San Francisco Bay Bridge was re-opened at 9AM Monday, Nov 2, 2009

An anti-vibration system has been put in place to limit stresses and additional supports installed to prevent any rods – in case they snap off again – from falling on traffic.

Initial daily inspections will be conducted of the repair system. The eyebars will also be inspected every three months. Other future inspections may require full bridge closures.

Read more ....

Clever Fools: Why A High IQ Doesn't Mean You're Smart

There's more to intelligence than just IQ. (Image: David C Ellis/Getty)

From New Scientist:

IS GEORGE W. BUSH stupid? It's a question that occupied a good many minds of all political persuasions during his turbulent eight-year presidency. The strict answer is no. Bush's IQ score is estimated to be above 120, which suggests an intelligence in the top 10 per cent of the population. But this, surely, does not tell the whole story. Even those sympathetic to the former president have acknowledged that as a thinker and decision-maker he is not all there. Even his loyal speechwriter David Frum called him glib, incurious and "as a result ill-informed". The political pundit and former Republican congressman Joe Scarborough accused him of lacking intellectual depth, claiming that compared with other US presidents whose intellect had been questioned, Bush junior was "in a league by himself". Bush himself has described his thinking style as "not very analytical".

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T. Rex Teens Fought, Disfigured Each Other

Dino Fight. This graphic illustration depicts the moment that "Jane," the T. rex found at Montana's Hell Creek Formation in 2001, was disfigured by another teenage T. rex.
Illustration by Erica Lyn Schmidt

From Discovery:

Tyrannosaurus rex's reputation as a fierce, battle-hungry carnivore can now also apply to teenagers of this Late Cretaceous dinosaur, according to a new study.

The evidence comes from "Jane," who died when she was just a T. rex teen. Her fossils, found at Montana's Hell Creek Formation in 2001, reveal that another T. rex teenager severely bit her in the head, breaking her snout to the point of disfigurement.

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Glaciers Disappearing From Kilimanjaro

Scientists say Mount Kilimanjaro's glaciers, which cap Africa's highest peak,
may be gone within two decades.

From CNN:

(CNN) -- The ice and snow that cap majestic Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania are vanishing before our eyes.

If current conditions persist, climate change experts say, Kilimanjaro's world-renowned glaciers, which have covered Africa's highest peak for centuries, will be gone within the next two decades.

"In a very real sense, these glaciers are being decapitated from the surface down," said Lonnie Thompson, professor of earth sciences at Ohio State University. Thompson is co-author of a study on Kilimanjaro published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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Secure Computers Aren’t So Secure

istockphoto.com

From MIT News:

Even well-defended computers can leak shocking amounts of private data. MIT researchers seek out exotic attacks in order to shut them down.

You may update your antivirus software religiously, immediately download all new Windows security patches, and refuse to click any e-mail links ostensibly sent by your bank, but even if your computer is running exactly the way it’s supposed to, a motivated attacker can still glean a shocking amount of private information from it. The time it takes to store data in memory, fluctuations in power consumption, even the sounds your computer makes can betray its secrets. MIT researchers centered at the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab’s Cryptography and Information Security Group (CIS) study such subtle security holes and how to close them.

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Security Measures Lead To False Sense Of Security: Scientists Dispute Use Of National Security Tools

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Nov. 2, 2009) — Many of the security tools used by national governments lack scientific underpinning. This was posited by a team of thirteen international behavioural scientists, including Bruno Verschuere and Geert Crombez (Ghent University), in a recent publication in the Open Access Journal of Forensic Psychology.

The team denounces the current situation regarding the use of tools and methods to protect national security.

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My Comment: This is a small study, but its conclusions are disturbing and disheartening when one realizes the amount of monies and energies that have gone into making these procedures work in the first place.

Human Evolution: Where We Came From

Analyses of a partial skeleton of a female Ardipithecus ramidus nicknamed Ardi, suggest the early human would have stood at just under 4 feet (1.2 meters) tall with both primitive traits, such as a small brains size similar to living chimpanzees and those shared with later hominids, such as bipedal posture. Credit: © 2009, J.H. Matternes.

From Live Science:

The dawn of humanity remains a fascinating mystery. What started our distant ancestors on the evolutionary path that led to us?

Spectacular fossils and a host of other data uncovered in the last decade are revealing key details to solving this riddle. As often than not, however, these clues raise as many questions as they answer.

Read more ....

How The Ancient Nazca Civilisation Sealed Its Own Fate By Cutting Down Forests C

An ancient geoglyph of a hummingbird (colibri in Spanish) on the edge to the Nazca plains was probably inscribed here as an offering for water/fertility in the fields that lie below

From The Daily Mail:

The mysterious people who etched the strange network of 'Nazca Lines' across deserts in Peru hastened their own demise by clearing forests 1,500 years ago, according to British scientists.

The Nazca people, famed for giant animal drawings most clearly visible from the air, became unable to grow enough food in nearby valleys because the lack of trees made the climate too dry.

Archaeologists examining the remains of the Nazca, who once flourished in the valleys of south coastal Peru, discovered a sequence of human-induced events which led to their 'catastrophic' collapse around 500 AD.

Read more ....

Petroleum's Long Good-bye

Credit: David Rosenberg/Getty Images

From Technology Review:

For the next few decades at least, liquid hydrocarbons--gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel--will continue to be the mainstays of transportation. They're cheap; refueling is fast; and their energy density, crucial to long-distance travel, is hard to beat.

"Advanced technology is going to happen slowly," says Daniel Sperling, the director of the Institute for Transportation Studies at the University of California at Davis and a member of the California Air Resources Board. "The focus needs to be on making conventional technology more efficient."

Read more ....

Psychic 'Mind-Reading' Computer Will Show Your Thoughts On Screen

From The Daily Mail:

A mind-reading machine that can produce pictures of what a person is seeing or remembering has been developed by scientists.

The device studies patterns of brainwave activity and turns them into a moving image on a computer screen.

While the idea of a telepathy machine might sound like something from science fiction, the scientists say it could one day be used to solve crimes.

Read more ....

European Water Mission Lifts Off

From The BBC:

A European satellite is set to provide major new insights into how water is cycled around the Earth.

The Smos spacecraft will make the first global maps of the amount of moisture held in soils and of the quantity of salts dissolved in the oceans.

The data will have wide uses but should improve weather forecasts and warnings of extreme events, such as floods.

A Russian Rokot launcher carrying Smos lifted off from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Russia at 0450 (0150 GMT) on Monday.

Read more ....

Long-Range Taser Raises Fears Of Shock And Injury

A new, long-range Taser weapon could be launched from standard 40-millimetre grenade launchers (Image: SGT April L. Johnson/US DoD)

From New Scientist:

INCREASING the distance between yourself and a potentially dangerous assailant is always a good idea - even if your ultimate aim is to render them insensible. That appears to be the thinking behind a Pentagon project, now in its final stages, to perfect a projectile capable of delivering an electric shock to incapacitate a person tens of metres away. It will be fired from a standard 40-millimetre grenade launcher.

Read more ....

My Comment: A useful weapon if your goal is to incapacitate and capture a certain target.

Lions Had A Taste For Human Flesh

Hungry for Humans. In 1898, two man-eating lions terrorized railway workers, claiming 35 lives. The remains of the two lions are now on display at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. Getty Images

From Discovery News:

The nightly attacks by two man-eating lions terrified railway workers and brought construction to a halt in one of east Africa's most notorious onslaughts more than a hundred years ago. But the death toll, scientists now say, wasn't as high as previously thought.

Over nine months the two voracious hunters claimed 35 lives -- no small figure, but much less than some accounts of as many as 135 victims.

It was 1898, when laborers from India and local natives building the Uganda Railroad across Kenya became the prey for the pair, a case that has been the subject of numerous accounts and at least three movies.

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Inside One Of The World's Largest Data Centers

From CNET:

CHICAGO--On the outside, Microsoft's massive new data center resembles the other buildings in the industrial area.

Even the inside of the building doesn't look like that much. The ground floor looks like a large indoor parking lot filled with a few parked trailers.

It's what's inside those trailers, though, that is the key to Microsoft's cloud-computing efforts. Each of the shipping containers in the Chicago data center houses anywhere from 1,800 to 2,500 servers, each of which can be serving up e-mail, managing instant messages, or running applications for Microsoft's soon-to-be-launched cloud-based operating system--Windows Azure.

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Web Could Run Out Of Addresses Next Year, Warn Web Experts

We could run out of web addresses in the next two years, unless businesses and government organisations heed the advice of the European Commission Photo: GETTY

From The Telegraph:

Businesses urgently need to upgrade to IPv6, a new version of the internet's addressing protocol that will hugely increase the number of available addresses.

A survey, conducted by the European Commission, found that few companies are prepared for the switch from the current naming protocol, IPv4, to the new regime, IPv6. Web experts have warned that we could run out of internet addresses within the next two years unless more companies migrate to the new platform.

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This Is One Cool Video Of A Saw And A Finger

Electric Dreams

On the small screen Amazon's Kindle is one of 40 electronic readers using E-Ink technology. (Photograph by Tim Llewellyn)

From Boston.com:

One Cambridge company has built its success on Kindle. But can it stave off competitors and make good on its vision of revolutionizing everything from credit cards to clothing?

The hottest technology company in the Boston area sits in a low-slung 100-year-old converted factory in the West Cambridge Industrial Park, not far from the Concord Avenue rotary. Inside its modest lobby hangs a 2-by-4-foot display. Messages scroll across it: “Welcome to E-Ink . . . the time is now 2:58 p.m. ’’ It’s 30 minutes slow.

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