Jaxa's vision of a space solar power system (SSPS) Photo: AFP
From The Telegraph:
Japan’s space agency is planning to construct a solar power station in space and use it to beam energy down to Earth using lasers.
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (Jaxa) hopes that the ambitious plans will help ease the country’s energy problems as well as providing a solution for global warming.
A select group of companies and researchers have been given the task of designing and building the Space Solar Power System (SSPS).
The debut of the video game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 looks sure to become the most successful product launch in the history of entertainment, with global first-day sales estimated at $500 million.
Less than 24 hours after launch, first day sales of the controversial and violent new game are set to exceed the previous record set by Grand Theft Auto IV in 2008 by $200 million.
The game is expected to sell more than 3 million copies in the UK alone, with the online retailers Amazon and Play.com both reporting record sales.
Microsoft is using Wolfram Alpha to help power certain results, such as this search for the fat content of french fries. (Credit: CNET News)
From CNET:
Unlike when you stand over your coworker's desk, Microsoft's Bing search engine actually works better when you hover.
One of the key features of the would-be rival to Google is that when you hover to the right of a result, you can get a preview of what to expect. As part of an update this week, Bing's hover result will now feature more information including a thumbnail preview of the site in question.
(GENEVA) — In its first study of women's health around the globe, the World Health Organization said Monday that the AIDS virus is the leading cause of death and disease among women between the ages of 15 and 44.
Unsafe sex is the leading risk factor in developing countries for these women of childbearing age, with others including lack of access to contraceptives and iron deficiency, the WHO said. Throughout the world, one in five deaths among women in this age group is linked to unsafe sex, according to the U.N. agency.
Science Daily (Nov. 11, 2009) — Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have discovered a mechanism that controls the brain's ability to create lasting memories. In experiments on genetically manipulated mice, they were able to switch on and off the animals' ability to form lasting memories by adding a substance to their drinking water. The findings, which are published in the scientific journal PNAS, are of potential significance to the future treatment of Alzheimer's and stroke.
This digital image shows how autonomous underwater explorers (AUEs) will be used to provide new information about the oceans. Credit: SIO
From Live Science:
Swarms of soup-can-sized robots will soon plunge into the ocean seeking data on poorly understood phenomena from currents to biology.
With $2.5 million in new funding from the National Science Foundation, researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography will create and deploy fleets of autonomous underwater explorers (AUEs) to explore the depths. Tens or hundreds of pint-sized robots would be deployed along with one the size of a soccer ball, in setups repeated wherever they are needed.
Scientists build new materials using inspiration from complex biological forms.
Joanna Aizenberg, a materials scientist at Harvard University, has scoured the natural world for clues to biological building codes. She aims to decipher some of Mother Nature’s unique designs, including dirt-resistant sea urchins and sea sponges made of super-strong light-conducting glass, to develop novel materials that, like these organisms, can self-assemble and sense and respond to their environment.
A nuclear bomb test is shown in Nevada, Aug. 18, 1957. Nuclear or near nuclear war/engagement between any two nations could have a hand in human extinction, research concludes. Getty Images
From Discovery News:
It would take a combination of severe and catastrophic events to drive the hardy human race to extinction, research concludes.
Humans could become extinct, a new study concludes, but no single event, aside from complete destruction of the globe, could do us in, and all extinction scenarios would have to involve some kind of intent, either malicious or not, by people in power.
The determinations suggest that the human race itself will ultimately determine its fate.
The A160 hummingbird, just one of many DARPA project that have found military or commercial use (Image: DARPA)
From New Scientist:
ON 6 December 1957 a hollow aluminium sphere the size of a small melon burst from a blazing fireball, rose a mere metre or so above Florida before landing with a thump. The US was in trouble. A month earlier, the Soviet Union had sent a 500-kilogram capsule bearing a dog called Laika into space. But here was the US unable to even notch up its first foray into orbit.
President Dwight Eisenhower responded by creating a new research agency tasked with ensuring such "technological surprises" like Sputnik would never be sprung on the US again. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), conceived in February 1958 not only still exists, it has consistently made the US military the most advanced on Earth and unleashed life-changing technologies such as the internet, GPS and the computer mouse along the way.
London Calling Your Internet activities are no longer for your eyes only Simdaperce
From Popular Science:
UK netizens may find their online activities under ever-greater scrutiny in the near future. The UK government has pushed ahead with a proposal to require monitoring of Internet usage, including social networks such as Facebook and conversations within online games.
The new UK law would require communication firms to hold records of who contacted whom, rather than the actual contents of online conversation. About £2 billion ($3.34 billion) would go toward compensating the firms for the technical challenge of collecting the data. Read more ....
Filming a manta at a 'cleaning station'. Injured rays are frequent visitors so their wounds can be cleaned by tiny, butterfly fish
From The Daily Mail:
Gliding through the oceans like ghosts, these mysterious manta rays have been captured in unique footage filmed off the coast of Mozambique.
Biologist Andrea Marshall is shown performing a ballet-like dance with the inquisitive giant fish, which she described as 'the most beautiful underwater birds.'
What foods can be grown with the least environmental impact?
From Slate:
Which fruits, vegetables, and other crops have the smallest environmental footprints?
I know you can buy local or buy organic, but I've heard that some crops are simply more resource-intensive than others, regardless of how or where they are grown. So what's the key to picking foods that have the smallest environmental footprint?
Workers feel ten years younger after they retire, according to a study that highlights the physical toll of lengthy careers.
Researchers analysed almost 15,000 employees and found that they felt increasingly less well in the years leading up to retirement, but significantly better after they stopped work.
The team behind the study said it showed that working conditions must be improved for older people if they are to be persuaded to remain economically active.
A highly focused laser beam (at right) is used to apply mechanical force (shown as a double headed arrow) to a microsphere (white) coated with histocompatibility protein. The microsphere abuts the surface of a single T cell, shown in gray (top). Activation of the T cell is measured by a change in calcium levels within the cell, which are shown by green colorization (left, prior to force application; bottom, after force application). The direction of force must be tangential, rather than perpendicular, to the T cell surface in order to trigger a rise in calcium levels. Without an application of force, the binding of the histocompatibility protein produces no such rise. (Credit: Please credit Dana-Farber Cancer Institute)
From Science Daily:
Science Daily (Nov. 10, 2009) — The immune system's T cells have the unique responsibilities of being both jury and executioner. They examine other cells for signs of disease, including cancers or infections, and, if such evidence is found, rid them from the body. Precisely how T cells shift so swiftly from one role to another, however, has been a mystery.
Though you might not be able to run away from your problems, moving to another state could be good for the soul. New research suggests U.S. states with wealthier, better educated and more tolerant residents are also happier on average.
The reasoning is that wealthy states can provide infrastructure and so it's easier for residents to get their needs met. In addition, states with a greater proportion of artists and gays would also be places where residents can freely express themselves.
This photo of U2 lead singer Bono, shot during U2's Rose Bowl show on October 25, by amateur photographer Bruce Heavin, was taken with a Canon PowerShot G11, and is representative of the high-quality pictures that ticket-holders can easily take these days at concerts and other events with point-and-shoot cameras. Note the people in the picture snapping their own images of Bono. (Credit: Flickr user Bruce Heavin)
From CNET:
At last month's huge U2 show at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif., how could you tell the difference between the professional photographers and your average amateurs?
Answer: the professionals were the ones whisked away after Bono and friends finished their third song, and the amateurs were still there, happily shooting to their heart's content.
Nearly every person at any show these days is going to have some form of camera with them, be it a point-and-shoot, an iPhone or some other camera phone, and it seems that there is almost no way to imagine keeping all those devices out.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Review—Heard Of It? -- Popular Mechanics
Analysts expect Modern Warfare 2's first week sales to breach $500 million. To provide perspective, The Dark Knight made $155.34 opening weekend. A movie ticket is certainly cheaper than a video game, but half a billion dollars, any way you spin it, screams mainstream hit.
So, if you're reading this, we can assume you're one of three types: One, someone who's already bought Modern Warfare 2; Two, someone who's boycotting Modern Warfare 2 for any of a number of reasons, but will still probably buy it; Or three, a non-gamer who buys three or four titles a year and has been struck with curiosity by an unavoidable hype machine, including but not limited to television commercials, online take over ads and word of mouth.
My Comment: When I was young I was into these games .... no more now. But the young .... especially the young soldiers that I know .... for their own reasons they love these games.
So the above is my little contribution to those who may wonder what their "young" soldier will want for Christmas.
On a side note .... the Onion has done a great spoof on this fad. Check out the video below. (Hat Tip: Small Wars Journal)
Starscream Gets An Etonian Makeover courtesy of the UK Ministry of Defense
From Popular Science:
In February, the Ministry of Defense (MOD) in Great Britain unveiled its plans for modernizing its military. Curiously similar to the US Army's recently killed Future Combat System, the British program looks to bring a new generation of unmanned vehicles, advanced sensors and energy weapons to the battlefield.
However, unlike its American counterpart, it looks like this project is a go.
Don't panic! Although the asteroid passed within 9,000 miles of Earth it measured just 23ft across and wouldn't have dented the surface (artist's illustration)
From The Daily Mail:
You almost certainly missed it - and luckily it missed you - but an asteroid has come within 8,700 miles of hitting the Earth.
Astronomers spotted the object only 15 hours before its closest approach to our planet last Friday.
Its orbit brought it 30 times nearer than the Moon, which is 250,000 miles away.
Photo: Identifying a plant's DNA "barcode" will help tell is if it is being illegally traded
From The BBC: Hundreds of experts from 50 nations are set to agree on a "DNA barcode" system that gives every plant on Earth a unique genetic fingerprint.
The technology will be used in a number of ways, including identifying the illegal trade in endangered species.
The data will be stored on a global database that will be available to scientists around the world.
The agreement will be signed at the third International Barcode of Life conference in Mexico City on Tuesday.
No, but sometimes they hunt down more than they can eat.
During this fall's inaugural wolf-hunting season in Montana, hunters killed the matriarch of a Yellowstone wolf pack that researchers had been studying for more than a decade. Park officials suspect that her mate and three other pack members were also killed. A Los Angeles Timesstory about the hunt claims that wolves are known to kill for "pure pleasure." Do wolves really attack their prey just for the fun of it?
MEPs and Council representatives propose safeguards for internet access before restrictions can be imposed.
Europe’s MEPs and Council representatives on Wednesday night agreed that restrictions on access to the internet within the EU may “only be imposed if they are appropriate, proportionate and necessary within a democratic society”.
The two sides agreed in May that the internet is essential for the exercise of fundamental rights such as the right to education, freedom of expression and access to information.
The moment a 12ft leopard seal catches the penguin Photo: AMOS NACHOUN/BARCROFT
From The Telegraph: A diver has captured the moment a 12ft leopard seal - with its mouth wide open displaying its two-inch long razor sharp teeth - prepared to lunch on a penguin.
The animal was photographed in the shallows of Antarctica's freezing Southern Ocean.
The agile leopard seal of Pleneau Island near Port Lockroy is part of a group that congregate each year on the Antarctic Peninsula to feed.
The RS103-130, which is a deep red in colour, stays "crispy" for up to 14 days if kept in a fruit bowl - unlike most apples. Alamy
From The Independent:
Ever since somebody suggested that eating one a day kept the doctor away, the health benefits of the apple have been trumpeted by grandmothers and government ministers alike. The fruit's only drawback is its tendency to lose its glossy sheen and crunchy texture within a few days – a problem that a team of scientists in Australia now claims to have solved.
For the past 20 years, researchers at Queensland Primary Industries and Fisheries (QPIF), a department of the Queensland government, have been developing a new variety of apple which they claim can stay fresh for months.
Left to right: Assistant Professor Brian Mann, graduate student Samuel Stanton, and undergraduate student Clark McGehee. (Credit: Duke Photography)
From Science Daily:
Science Daily (Nov. 9, 2009) — By taking advantage of the vagaries of the natural world, Duke University engineers have developed a novel approach that they believe can more efficiently harvest electricity from the motions of everyday life.
Energy harvesting is the process of converting one form of energy, such as motion, into another form of energy, in this case electricity. Strategies range from the development of massive wind farms to produce large amounts of electricity to using the vibrations of walking to power small electronic devices.
On Nov. 18 the California Energy Commission is scheduled to vote on a proposal that would require retailers by 2011 to limit sales of TV sets to those that consume about a third less power than they do today.
Since the public hearing on Oct. 3, industry groups have turned up the volume in opposition to the new guidelines. If passed, the best value in home theater HDTVs will disappear from California shelves and, some analysts figure, will ultimately cut consumer choices across the country.
In a case that raises questions about online journalism and privacy rights, the U.S. Department of Justice sent a formal request to an independent news site ordering it to provide details of all reader visits on a certain day.
The grand jury subpoena also required the Philadelphia-based Indymedia.us Web site "not to disclose the existence of this request" unless authorized by the Justice Department, a gag order that presents an unusual quandary for any news organization.
Google's Caffeine initiative to perk up search results is leaving the sandbox.
First revealed as a "secret project" in early August, Caffeine is intended to speed up search results and improve their accuracy. Google's Webmaster Central blog at the time described Caffeine as "the first step in a process that will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions."
Ringside for a global fight, viewers will gain an up-close perspective in the new Solomon Victory Theater at the World War II museum in New Orleans. (The National World War II Museum)
From Christian Science Monitor:
The New Orleans National World War II Museum uses immersive tech to boost teaching power – and also entertain.
There are those who served at the battlefront and witnessed first-hand the ugliness of war. And there are the rest of us who experience it from behind exhibition glass.
This month in New Orleans, however, The National World War II Museum is opening the doors to a new $60 million complex that will feature as its centerpiece a 35-minute film designed to virtually transport viewers 70 years into the past through technology marketed as “4-D cinematics,” including special lighting, fog, stage snow, moving props, surround sound, and digital animation.
Ten nuclear power stations are to be built in Britain at a cost of up to £50 billion as the Government tries to prevent the threat of regular power cuts by the middle of the coming decade.
The nuclear industry welcomed the plans, but critics said that ministers had acted too late to avoid an energy crunch caused by the closure of ageing coal-fired stations.
Although the sites were known to be in line for development, the announcement signals the Government’s increasing ambition for nuclear power.
Compared with soda, juice carries more calories and as much sugar. There's also evidence that high consumption increases the risk of obesity, especially among kids.
To many people, it's a health food. To others, it's simply soda in disguise.
That virtuous glass of juice is feeling the squeeze as doctors, scientists and public health authorities step up their efforts to reduce the nation's girth.
Chronic pain affects more than 70 million Americans, which makes it more widespread than heart disease, cancer and diabetes combined. It costs the economy more than $100 billion per year. So why don’t more doctors and researchers take it seriously?
Photo: Hundreds of bleached bones and skulls found in the desolate wilderness of the Sahara desert may be the remains of the long lost Cambyses' army, according to Italian researchers. Alfredo and Angelo Castiglioni
From MSNBC:
50,000 soldiers believed buried by a cataclysmic sandstorm in 525 B.C.
The remains of a mighty Persian army said to have drowned in the sands of the western Egyptian desert 2,500 years ago might have been finally located, solving one of archaeology's biggest outstanding mysteries, according to Italian researchers.
Bronze weapons, a silver bracelet, an earring and hundreds of human bones found in the vast desolate wilderness of the Sahara desert have raised hopes of finally finding the lost army of Persian King Cambyses II. The 50,000 warriors were said to be buried by a cataclysmic sandstorm in 525 B.C.
It used to be wetter (Image: Sergio Pitamitz/Getty)
From New Scientist:
Wet spells in the Sahara may have opened the door for early human migration. According to new evidence, water-dependent trees and shrubs grew there between 120,000 and 45,000 years ago. This suggests that changes in the weather helped early humans cross the desert on their way out of Africa.
The Sahara would have been a formidable barrier during the Stone Age, making it hard to understand how humans made it to Europe from eastern Africa, where the earliest remains of our hominin ancestors are found.
Fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) breeding in a test tube. (Credit: iStockphoto/Joe Pogliano)
From Science Daily:
Science Daily (Nov. 7, 2009) — A group of drunken fruit flies have helped researchers from North Carolina State and Boston universities identify entire networks of genes -- also present in humans -- that play a key role in alcohol drinking behavior.
This discovery, published in the October 2009 print issue of the journal Genetics, provides a crucial explanation of why some people seem to tolerate alcohol better than others, as well as a potential target for drugs aimed at preventing or eliminating alcoholism. In addition, this discovery sheds new light on many of the negative side effects of drinking, such as liver damage.
Our non-verbal cues tell a lot about our personalities, particularly when the subject has a more natural pose (right) rather than a neutral one (left). Here, in this spontaneous photo, the subject shows a less energetic stance. Credit: Laura Naumann.
From Live Science:
Those photos you post on Facebook could paint an accurate picture of your personality, new research on first impressions suggests.
And perhaps as expected, the more candid a shot the more nuances of your personality show through.
"In an age dominated by social media where personal photographs are ubiquitous, it becomes important to understand the ways personality is communicated via our appearance," said study researcher Laura Naumann of Sonoma State University. "The appearance one portrays in his or her photographs has important implications for their professional and social life."
Image: National Institute of General Medical Sciences
From Discover Magazine:
For decades, RNA was seen as a simple slave to DNA. Newer research shows it has an active and critical role in every disease from Alzheimer's to cancer.
One of the great revolutions in modern science rests on the elongated backside of a grotesque, mutant worm. Inexpensive and easy to manipulate in the lab, Caenorhabditis elegans develops from egg to adult in three days and produces a few hundred offspring three days after that. Virtually all of the worms are hermaphrodites, containing both male and female sex organs and capable of making sperm and eggs, so each creature can fertilize itself. And because the worm is transparent and the adult has only 959 cells, development of every stage from egg to adult can be observed under the microscope and documented with near perfect detail while the worm is alive, an achievement accomplished in the 1970s by Sidney Brenner, a University of Cambridge researcher and legend in the field.
Battlefield Swarm Say, from here the soldiers look like ants ... Strategic Simulations, Inc./University of Granada
From Popular Science:
The Spanish army is using ant colony algorithms to plot the best paths through future battlefields.
Moving through real-life battlefields inevitably proves trickier than playing a game of Minesweeper, but Spanish researchers and army officers have converted the video game Panzer General into a simulator that can test troop maneuver algorithms based on ant colony behavior.
Plans to purposefully re-engineer the world's climate got their first serious committee hearing yesterday.
The idea that we might be able to "geoengineer" the planet to purposefully change the climate has clearly moved from the fringes into the mainstream. Momentum has been building in recent years: an essay in an academic journal by a Nobel Prize winning scientist in 2006, articles in the Wall Street Journal and Foreign Policy, a largely private gathering of researchers at Harvard.
But will it ask you to turn your head to one side as well? Photo: ANDREW CROWLEY
From The Telegraph:
Your mobile phone may soon be able to diagnose respiratory illnesses in seconds when you cough into it.
Software being developed by American and Australian scientists will hopefully allow patients simply to cough into their phone, and it will tell them whether they have cold, flu, pneumonia or other respiratory diseases.
Whether a cough is dry or wet, or “productive” or “non-productive” (referring to the presence of mucus on the lungs), can give a doctor information about what is causing that cough, for example whether it is caused by a bacterial or a viral infection.
Battling for your business: Should you go for Apple software for your computer or wait for Google?
From The Daily Mail:
There's no escaping it: Windows Vista was a disaster. Launched in 2007, Microsoft's follow-up to the massively successful Windows XP software, which powers the vast majority of the world's computers, met with lukewarm reviews and terrible customer satisfaction ratings.
It was simply too demanding of the computers it ran on – and the people who used it. Which is why Microsoft is going to great lengths to prove its new operating system, Windows 7, isn't just better than Vista – it's also simpler.
The Red Planet experiences periodic global duststorms
From BBC:
The US and European space agencies have signed the "letter of intent" that ties together their Mars programmes.
The agreement, which was penned in Washington DC, gives the green light to scientists and engineers to begin the joint planning of Red Planet missions.
The union will start with a European-led orbiter in 2016, and continue with surface rovers in 2018, and then perhaps a network of landers in 2018.
Sniffing out life on Titan (Image: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona/SPL)
From New Scientist:
IF LIFE is to be found beyond our home planet, then our closest encounters with it may come in the dark abyss of some extraterrestrial sea. For Earth is certainly not the only ocean-girdled world in our solar system. As many as five moons of Jupiter and Saturn are now thought to hide seas beneath their icy crusts.
To find out more about these worlds and their hidden oceans, two ambitious voyages are now taking shape. About a decade from now, if all goes to plan, the first mission will send a pair of probes to explore Jupiter's satellites. They will concentrate on giant Ganymede and pale Europa, gauging the depths of the oceans that almost certainly lie within them.
NCDC has compiled the October temperatures and it ended up the 3rd coldest in 115 years. As we have shown it was cold over almost all the lower 48. Indeed only Florida came in above normal. There is no [NOAA/NCDC] press release out yet but it should be interesting.
Science Daily (Nov. 9, 2009) — Researchers at the Kavli Institute for Nanosciences at Delft University of Technology, have succeeded in getting hold of the environment of a quantum particle. This allows them to exercise greater control over a single electron, and brings the team of researchers, led by Vidi winner and FOM workgroup leader Lieven Vandersypen, a step closer still to the super-fast quantum computer.
The first specimen of Paranthropus boisei, also called Nutcracker Man, was reported by Mary and Louis Leakey in 1959 from a site in Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania. Credit: Nicolle Rager Fuller, National Science Foundation.
From Live Science:
As the only remaining primate built to stride the world on two legs, it would be easy to assume that our extinct relatives were much like us, if perhaps hairier with smaller brains.
But fossils reveal evolution could take our relatives in bizarre directions, involving skulls resembling nutcrackers and miniature bodies resembling the hobbits of Lord of The Rings.
"These fossils tell us that human evolution was a long process of experimentation, not the outcome of a long process of fine-tuning leading just to us," said paleoanthropologist Ian Tattersall at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Read more ....
Image: Space Elevator Games. The LaserMotive vehicle gets weighed in.
From Discover Magazine:
A laser-powered robot took a climb up a cable in the Mohave Desert in Wednesday, and pushed ahead the sci-fi inspired notion of a space elevator capable of lifting astronauts, cargo, and even tourists up into orbit. The robot, built by LaserMotive of Seattle, whizzed up 2,953 feet (nearly 1 kilometer) in about four minutes, which qualifies the team for at least $900,000 of the $2 million in prizes offered in the NASA-backed Space Elevator Games.
Debate Erupts in Geology Circles Geologist will drill seven boreholes in the caldera at Campi Flegrie in around Naples, Italy, in an attempt to better predict volcanic disasters like the one that destroyed Pompeii in A.D. 79. Critics say the drilling could trigger that very volcanic disaster. Wiki Commons
From Popular Science:
Scientific research has helped humankind avoid or mitigate many of nature’s best attempts to send us to a violent end, but what do researchers do when the pursuit of research could trigger the very disaster from which science is trying to protect us? That’s the question facing geologists in Naples, Italy that will begin sinking seven four-kilometer bore holes into the Campi Flegrei caldera, the site of a “supercolossal” volcanic eruption 39,000 years ago.
News breaks faster on Twitter than just about anywhere else, and Google wants in on that speed. The search giant's recent deal to include Twitter updates in its search results is a key part of the company's strategy for improving its core product. In a visit to Cambridge, MA, last week, Google's CEO Eric Schmidt said that the biggest changes coming to its algorithms have to do with efforts, like the Twitter deal, to integrate real-time search.
Jaxa's vision of a space solar power system (SSPS) Photo: AFP 
