How The Brain Hard-Wires Us To Love Google, Twitter, And Texting. And Why That's Dangerous.

From Slate:

Seeking. You can't stop doing it. Sometimes it feels as if the basic drives for food, sex, and sleep have been overridden by a new need for endless nuggets of electronic information. We are so insatiably curious that we gather data even if it gets us in trouble. Google searches are becoming a cause of mistrials as jurors, after hearing testimony, ignore judges' instructions and go look up facts for themselves. We search for information we don't even care about. Nina Shen Rastogi confessed in Double X, "My boyfriend has threatened to break up with me if I keep whipping out my iPhone to look up random facts about celebrities when we're out to dinner." We reach the point that we wonder about our sanity. Virginia Heffernan in the New York Times said she became so obsessed with Twitter posts about the Henry Louis Gates Jr. arrest that she spent days "refreshing my search like a drugged monkey."

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National Security Agency's Surveillance Data Could Fill Two States by 2015

Data, Delicious Data I see you Warner Bros.

From Popular Science:

Where will the NSA house its secret yottabytes?

We always knew that the National Security Agency collects a lot of surveillance data from satellites and by other means, but we never quite imagined it was this much: the NSA estimates it will have enough data by 2015 to fill a million datacenters spread across the equivalent combined area of Delaware and Rhode Island. The NSA wants to store yottabytes of data, and one yottabyte comes to 1,000,000,000,000,000 GB.

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Friday The 13th Superstitions Get Rare Workout In 2009

Traditionally an omen of ill fortune, a black cat crosses a Palermo, Italy, street in an undated photo. Unlike its feline fellow resident of the bad luck hall of fame, Friday the 13th doesn't have nine lives—it can't even exist more than three times a year, thanks to the eccentricities of the calendar. Photograph by William Albert Allard/NGS

From National Geographic:

Today, Friday the 13th superstitions are fraying nerves for the third time in 2009.

Luckily for paraskevidekatriaphobics—people who harbor Friday the 13th superstitions—three Friday the 13ths are the yearly maximum, at least as long as we continue to mark time with the Gregorian calendar, which Pope Gregory XIII ordered the Catholic Church to adopt in 1582.

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Pursuit Of Pleasure Drives Human Decisions

Chemical in the brain plays a key role in choices

From The Telegraph:

The pursuit of pleasure drives the everyday decisions that direct people's lives, research suggests.

Scientists discovered that a reward chemical in the brain plays a key role in choices such as where to go on holiday.

They believe the ''pleasure principle'' may be at the heart of most human decision making.

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There Is More Water On The Moon Than What We Thought

Lunar Impactor Finds Clear Evidence Of Water Ice On Moon -- Wired Science

There is water on the moon, NASA confirmed today, and lots of it.

In the first look at results from the LCROSS mission, which sent a probe crashing into the Cabeus crater near the moon’s south pole, NASA’s main investigator said their instruments clearly detected water, despite the underwhelming plume.

Within the field of view of their instruments, the team measured approximately 220 pounds or about 26 gallons of water. Next, the team will try to understand how the compounds they saw in the plume relate to what’s actually embedded in the lunar regolith at the bottom of the permanently shadowed crater.

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More News On The Discovery Of Water On the Moon

NASA discovers 'significant' amount of water on moon -- Washington Post
NASA sees "significant quantities" of water on the moon -- Ars technica
Splash! NASA moon strikes found significant water -- AP
Water Found on Moon, Scientists Say -- New York Times
NASA Moon Crash Found 'Significant Amount' of Water -- FOX News
Water found on Moon after Nasa 'bombing' mission -- The Telegraph

Rosetta Probe Makes Final Earth Flyby As It Sling-Shots Towards Speeding Comet

From The Daily Mail:

This spectacular image of our home planet was captured by Europe's Rosetta probe as it made its third and final flyby of Earth.

The outline of Antarctica is visible under the clouds in the illuminated crescent. Pack ice in front of the coastline caused the very bright spots on the image.

The Earth image was taken by the-board camera OSIRIS yesterday, from a distance of 393,000 miles.

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Pollination In The Pre-Flower-Power Era

The long, tubular proboscis (arrow, left image) sported by some species of scorpionflies suggests that the insects were pollinating ancient plants including conifers (right) millions of years before flowers evolved. Credit: Photo: Wenying Wu; Illustration: Mary Parrish/National Museum of Natural History

From Science News:

Scorpionflies may have aided plant reproduction long before blossoms evolved.

An obscure group of scorpionflies with specialized mouthparts may have pollinated ancient plants millions of years before flowers evolved, a new study suggests.

Fossils indicate that before flowers evolved about 130 million years ago, most plants with seeds were wind-pollinated. Yet the pollen grains of some plants that lived in the prefloral era were too big to be wind-dispersed, say Conrad Labandeira, a paleoentomologist at Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. Also, he notes, pollen receptors were hidden deep within some of those plants and wouldn’t have been readily exposed to windborne pollen.

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ESA Spacecraft May Help Unravel Cosmic Mystery

Cassini-Huygens swings by Earth and accelerates towards Saturn. (Credit: ESA)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Nov. 13, 2009) — When Europe's comet chaser Rosetta swings by Earth on Nov. 13 for a critical gravity assist, tracking data will be collected to precisely measure the satellite's change in orbital energy. The results could help unravel a cosmic mystery that has stumped scientists for two decades.

Since 1990, scientists and mission controllers at ESA and NASA have noticed that their spacecraft sometimes experience a strange variation in the amount of orbital energy they exchange with Earth during planetary swingbys. The unexplained variation is noticed as a tiny difference in speed gained or lost during the swingby when comparing that predicted by fundamental physics and that actually measured after the event.

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Friday The 13th: Your Luck Is About To Change

From Live Science:

If Friday the 13th is unlucky, then 2009 has been an unusually unlucky year. But your luck is about to change. Today is the last of three Friday the 13ths you'll have to endure this year.

The other two were in February and March. Such a rare triple-threat occurs only once every 11 years.

The origin of the link between bad luck and Friday the 13th is murky. The whole thing might date to Biblical times (the 13th guest at the Last Supper betrayed Jesus). By the Middle Ages, both Friday and the number 13 were considered bearers of bad fortune. In modern times, the superstition permeates society.

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Tiny Mutation Led To Human Speech

Human speech is thought to have emerged 100,000 to 200,000 years ago, some five million years after chimps and humans took divergent paths on the tree of evolution. Photo: iStockphoto

From Cosmos:

PARIS: Two minute evolutionary changes in a gene that is otherwise identical in humans and chimps could explain why we have fully fledged power of speech while other primates do not.

The findings may also point to new drug targets for hard-to-treat diseases that disrupt speech, such as schizophrenia and autism, said a study detailed in the British journal Nature today.

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Behind The CDC's Soaring H1N1 Death Totals

From Time Magazine:

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released on Thursday updated estimates of the number of H1N1 infections and deaths in the U.S. According to the new figures, about 4,000 Americans, including 540 children, have died of H1N1 flu, and 2 million people have been infected since April, when the novel flu virus first surfaced. The new death toll, which encompasses data through Oct. 17, represents a tripling of CDC estimates issued just last week; the number of deaths in children quadruples last week's figures. But the increase does not mean that the disease has suddenly become more deadly or severe, according to health officials, who say they are not surprised by the higher numbers.

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Undercurrent Of Doubt Over Electric Motors

A loophole in EU targets on cutting CO2 emissions means that the more electric cars are produced, the more SUVs manufacturers can sell. Reuters

From The Independent:

Greener power generation needed if electric vehicles are really to reduce emissions.

Electric cars , which emit no carbon dioxide from their tailpipe, are not the answer some people think they are to environmental transport problems, a new report claims today.

The idea that a wholesale switch to electric transport would automatically reduce CO2 emissions and dependence on oil is a myth, says the analysis prepared for the Environmental Transport Association (ETA).

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His Facebook Status Now? ‘Charges Dropped’

Facebook has become more than a diversion for Rodney Bradford. Damiano Beltrami

From The New York Times:

Where’s my pancakes, read Rodney Bradford’s Facebook page, in a message typed on Saturday, Oct. 17, at 11:49 a.m., from a computer in his father’s apartment in Harlem.

At the time, the sentence, written in indecipherable street slang, was just another navel-gazing, cryptic Facebook status update — words that were gobbledygook to anyone besides Mr. Bradford.

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Mars Rover Battles For Its Life

Last chance to lift NASA's spirit (Image: Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

From New Scientist:

NASA's twin Mars rovers have outlasted their planned three-month missions for so long that they seem indestructible. Nearly six years on, their presence on the Red Planet is taken for granted, as if they are immutable parts of the Martian landscape.

But we may soon have to confront a new reality. Spirit, which has always suffered more hardships than Opportunity, is facing its toughest challenge yet. When New Scientist went to press, the rover was set to begin a risky push to free itself from a sand trap it has been mired in for six months. Mission engineers say it may not survive the attempt. "She's in a very precarious situation, and we don't know for sure if we're going to get her out," says rover driver Scott Maxwell of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.

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Robo-Negotiator Talks Down Armed Lunatic

You Want My Hydraulic Fluid! Take My Hydraulic Fluid! Via OK.gov

From Popular Science:

Hostage situations are often described like explosive devices, as ticking time bombs waiting to go off. And just as bomb disposal units have robots to help with their job, now police negotiators have a bot of their own for defusing a different kind of explosive situation.

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Warning Of Extra Heart Dangers From Mixing Cocaine And Alcohol

A man snorting cocaine. Photograph: Andy Drysdale/ADR

From The Guardian:

A third chemical – cocaethylene – builds up in the liver over a number of years among those who mix the two drugs. And this is now having major health consequences.

"I first took coke when I was 18 and at university. I remember two friends who did chemistry told me I should get really drunk first because it would mix into this new chemical in my blood and make me even higher," a 30-year-old woman who works in publishing told the Observer yesterday.

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Great Pacific Garbage Patch Keeps Getting Bigger

In a remote patch of the Pacific Ocean, hundreds of miles from any national boundary, the detritus of human life is collecting in a swirling current so large that it defies precise measurement. Photo: Mario Aguilera/New York Times

From Future Pundit:

We are letting far too much plastic end up in the oceans.

ABOARD THE ALGUITA, 1,000 miles northeast of Hawaii — In this remote patch of the Pacific Ocean, hundreds of miles from any national boundary, the detritus of human life is collecting in a swirling current so large that it defies precise measurement.

In 1804, a little over 200 years ago, the planet had a human population of 1 billion people. Back then the oceans seemed immense and beyond the capacity of humans to change. Yet by 1850 whale hunting peaked due to over harvesting and we've since drastically drawn down the stocks of other ocean-going creatures such as cod and salmon.

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High-performance Plasmas May Make Reliable, Efficient Fusion Power A Reality

Artist's rendering of a tokamak plasma. The plasma is confined by the combination of strong magnetic field in the toroidal direction (around the hole in the "donut" as shown by the black arrow) generated by external coils (not shown) and the magnetic field from a large current flowing in the same toroidal direction. The plasma is held inside a sealed metal structure that is evacuated and lined with special material to keep the plasma pure and handle the heat exhaust. (Credit: Image courtesy of American Physical Society)

From The Science Daily:

Science Daily (Nov. 12, 2009) — In the quest to produce nuclear fusion energy, researchers from the DIII-D National Fusion Facility have recently confirmed long-standing theoretical predictions that performance, efficiency and reliability are simultaneously obtained in tokamaks, the leading magnetic confinement fusion device, operating at their performance limits. Experiments designed to test these predictions have successfully demonstrated the interaction of these conditions.

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Origin of Household Dust Pinned Down

A new computer model that simulates how dust comes into and out of homes found that most indoor dust originates outside. The model may help communities figure out how to best clean up contaminated waste sites. Credit: Stockxpert.

From Live Science:

No matter how much you clean, dust always comes back, and you might have wondered how it all gets there. Now, researchers have created a new computer model to explain what happens.

Most dust originates outdoors and comes in through the air, rather than trampled in on people's shoes, at least in a group of homes in the Midwestern United States, they found.

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U.S. Army Orders Bridges Made Of Recycled Plastic

An M1A1 70-ton tank crosses a bridge made from Axion's thermoplastic composite at Camp Mackall in North Carolina. (Credit: Photo Courtesy of U.S. Army/Dawn Elizabeth Pandoliano)

From CNET News:

Axion International Holdings has won a $957,000 contract to provide the U.S. Army with two bridges made from a thermoplastic composite and recycled plastic, the company announced Wednesday evening.

The two bridges, which are replacing old wooden ones, will be constructed at Fort Eustis in Virginia from a proprietary Recycled Structural Composite (RSC) developed by Axion in conjunction with scientists at Rutgers University.

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Flu Spray vs. Shot: Is One Better?

From Discovery News:

My four-year-old got her swine flu vaccination yesterday. At the time, I was relieved when the school nurse pulled out a spray rather than a syringe.
Flu-spray-278x225

There were no tears -- or at least fewer than if she had gotten a shot.

But then I started to wonder -- is this really as good as the real thing ... that is, the needle?

Apparently I'm not alone. My neighborhood parent list serve has been peppered with posts from parents wondering the same thing.

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Lithium Clue For Planet-Hunters

Planets grow in the dusty discs that form around infant stars

From The BBC:

Astronomers may have found a way to identify those Sun-like stars most likely to harbour orbiting planets.

A survey of stars known to possess planets shows the vast majority to be severely depleted in lithium.

To date, scientists have detected just over 420 worlds circling other stars using a range of techniques.

Garik Israelian and colleagues tell the journal Nature that future planet hunts could be narrowed by going after stars with particular compositions.

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4 High-Tech Surprises From The USS New York

USS New York makes her way up the Hudson River.

From Popular Mechanics:

The USS New York, commissioned this month in its namesake city, is the Navy's newest warship. It's a Landing Platform Dock ship, which means it brings Marines to wherever they are needed. The 700 marines on the ship travel ready for combat, and that means landing hovercraft (called Landing Craft Air Cushions), attack helicopters, tanks, amphibious vehicles and V-22 Ospreys come along for the ride. The aircraft launch from the ship and are maintained in hangars on and below the flight deck. The New York has the most famous hull in the world—the Navy integrated 7.5 tons of steel from the fallen World Trade Center towers into the bow. But that is not the only interesting detail of this new vessel's design. Here are four high-tech surprises the USS New York has in store for enemies.

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In SUSY We Trust: What The LHC Is Really Looking For

From New Scientist:

AS DAMP squibs go, it was quite a spectacular one. Amid great pomp and ceremony - not to mention dark offstage rumblings that the end of the world was nigh - the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world's mightiest particle smasher, fired up in September last year. Nine days later a short circuit and a catastrophic leak of liquid helium ignominiously shut the machine down.

Now for take two. Any day now, if all goes to plan, proton beams will start racing all the way round the ring deep beneath CERN, the LHC's home on the outskirts of Geneva, Switzerland.

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When the DoD's Fantasy Projects Get Real: DARPA Monitors Student Minds, SOCOM Wants Robo-Go-Fast Boats, And More

Robot At The Helm? courtesy of the Department of Defense

From Popular Science:

Three times a year, the Department of Defense (DoD) solicits help from the small business community to transform their high-tech research projects into actual, usable products. While the businesses use this opportunity to fight for some of that sweet, sweet government pork, for us, it's a chance to get a look at the next generation of advanced military gear. With the new solicitations out today, we're counting down the most intriguing projects that the DoD wants to get out of the lab and onto the battlefield.

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My Comment: Everyone comes out of the woodwork for these type of shows .... myself included.

October USA – Temperature 3rd Coldest On Record, Wettest Ever On Record

From Watts Up With That?

Temperature Highlights – October

* The average October temperature of 50.8°F was 4.0°F below the 20th Century average and ranked as the 3rd coolest based on preliminary data.
* For the nation as a whole, it was the third coolest October on record. The month was marked by an active weather pattern that reinforced unseasonably cold air behind a series of cold fronts. Temperatures were below normal in eight of the nation’s nine climate regions, and of the nine, five were much below normal. Only the Southeast climate region had near normal temperatures for October.

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Psychic Spies In The Military

Psychic Spies: Any Truth in 'Men Who Stare at Goats?' -- ABC News

Movie, Book Claim Military Officers Dabbled in the Paranormal

Major Paul H. Smith calls it his "Men in Black" moment.

It was 1983 and he was working as a Middle East analyst at Fort Meade, Md., when a fellow intelligence officer approached him with a highly-classified, so-called "black project."

They couldn't tell him what it was. They just said that as an intelligent, accomplished, open-minded and creative person, he fit the profile.

Intrigued, Smith agreed to take the tests thrown at him. And when the results confirmed his competence for the top-secret task, he was invited to try his hand at a new mission: To uncover details about places and activities around the world without stepping off of a U.S. military base.

"We're basically asking you to become a psychic spy," Smith, now retired, said he was told.

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My Comment: The Americans may have extensively studied this field of interest .... it pales when compared to what the Russians were doing.

Receptor Controls Long Term Memory Formation

From Future Pundit:

A drug that turns off the nogo receptor 1 blocks long term memory formation in mice. Imagine a drug that did the same thing in humans. It would have all sorts of uses and abuses.

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.

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EPA Study Says Mercury-Tainted Fish Found In 49% Of U.S. Lakes And Reservoirs

From The Bloomberg:

Fish with potentially harmful levels of mercury were found in 49 percent of U.S. lakes and reservoirs studied, the Environmental Protection Agency said.

Lakes in almost half of the states had fish contaminated by toxic chemicals such as mercury, polychlorinated biphenyls or pesticides, the EPA said in a statement Tuesday on a study conducted from 2000 to 2003.

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Star Trek-like Replicator? Electron Beam Device Makes Metal Parts, One Layer At A Time

Electron beam freeform fabrication process. (Credit: NASA)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Nov. 11, 2009) — A group of engineers working on a novel manufacturing technique at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., have come up with a new twist on the popular old saying about dreaming and doing: "If you can slice it, we can build it."

That's because layers mean everything to the environmentally-friendly construction process called Electron Beam Freeform Fabrication, or EBF3, and its operation sounds like something straight out of science fiction.

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One Key Found For Living To 100

From Live Science:

Scientists have zeroed in on one apparent key to long life: an inherited cellular repair mechanism that thwarts aging and perhaps helps prevent disease. Researches say the finding could lead to anti-aging drugs.

The study involves telomeres, the ends of chromosomes that have been likened to the plastic tips that prevent shoelaces from unraveling. Telomeres were already known to play a key role in aging, and their discovery led to this year's Nobel Prize in medicine.

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Universities Reject Kindle Over Inaccessibility For The Blind

Photo: Kindle DX. (Credit: Amazon)

From The CNET:

The National Federation of the Blind is applauding the decisions of Syracuse University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison not to Amazon.com's Kindle DX as a textbook replacement.

The universities cited the Kindle's inaccessibility to the blind as the problem.

The federation said Wednesday that while it appreciates the Kindle's text-to-speech feature, the "menus of the device are not accessible to the blind...making it impossible for a blind user to purchase books from Amazon's Kindle store, select a book to read, activate the text-to-speech feature, and use the advanced reading functions available on the Kindle DX."

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Super-Sniffing Bees Combat Colony Pest

Government scientists have developed a population of honeybees that can root out the Varroa mite, a main culprit in a honeybee die-off. Getty Images

From Discovery News:

Government-developed honeybees are equipped with a keen sniffing ability to root out a deadly parasite.

In an effort to stem a massive bee die-off, government scientists have developed a population of honeybees that can root out a main culprit in the epidemic -- a parasite that feeds on pupae in nests and spreads viruses within hives.

U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists hope the population of Varroa mite-detecting honeybees could potentially improve the health of the overall honeybee population.

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Sniff Test To Preserve Old Books

From The BBC:

The key to preserving the old, degrading paper of treasured, ageing books is contained in the smell of their pages, say scientists.

Researchers report in the journal Analytical Chemistry that a new "sniff test" can measure degradation of old books and historical documents.

The test picks up and identifies the chemicals that the pages release as they degrade.

This could help libraries and museums preserve a range of precious books.

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Will Probe's Upcoming Fly-By Unlock Exotic Physics?

The Rosetta probe will fly by Earth on Friday (Illustration: ESA/C. Carreau)

From New Scientist:

What's causing spacecraft to mysteriously accelerate? The Rosetta comet chaser's fly-by of Earth on 13 November is a perfect opportunity to get to the bottom of it.

The anomaly emerged in 1990, when NASA's Galileo spacecraft whizzed by Earth to get a boost from our planet's gravity and gained 3.9 millimetres per second more than expected. And the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft had an unexpected increase of about 1.8 millimetres per second during a previous fly-by of Earth in 2005.

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The Milky Way As You've Never Seen It Before: The Colourful Centre Of Our Galaxy In All Its Glory

Unprecedented: A beautiful composite image of the Milky Way centre using observations from the Hubble Space Telescope, the Spitzer Space Telescope, and the Chandra X-ray Observatory

From The Daily Mail:

Colourful, swirling clouds of cosmic dust interspersed with glowing star clusters are revealed in this extraordinary image of the Milky Way.

The dazzling image combining reds, yellows, blues and purples, was created by layering stunningly detailed pictures from the Hubble Space Telescope, the Spitzer Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory on top of each other.

The Milky Way is at the centre of our own galaxy and this image shows its core. The image was created to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Galileo Galilei's first demonstration of his telescope.

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Convicted Murderer Sues Wikipedia, Demands Removal of His Name

From The Threat Level:

Wikipedia is under a censorship attack by a convicted murderer who is invoking Germany’s privacy laws in a bid to remove references to his killing of a Bavarian actor in 1990.

Lawyers for Wolfgang Werle, of Erding, Germany, sent a cease-and-desist letter (.pdf) demanding removal of Werle’s name from the Wikipedia entry on actor Walter Sedlmayr. The lawyers cite German court rulings that “have held that our client’s name and likeness cannot be used anymore in publication regarding Mr. Sedlmayr’s death.”

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The Vatican Joins The Search For Alien Life

From The Telegraph:

The Vatican's Pontifical Academy of Sciences is holding its first ever conference on alien life, the discovery of which would have profound implications for the Catholic Church.

The Pontifical Academy of Sciences is holding a conference on astrobiology, the study of life beyond Earth, with scientists and religious leaders gathering in Rome this week.

For centuries, theologians have argued over what the existence of life elsewhere in the universe would mean for the Church: at least since Giordano Bruno, an Italian monk, was put to death by the Inquisition in 1600 for claiming that other worlds exist.

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As Alternative Energy Grows, NIMBY Turns Green

An offshore wind farm in north Wales, U.K. (Credit: Vestas)

From CNET:

Painting the Golden Gate Bridge yellow might cause less fuss than trying to install a wind farm off Cape Cod's historic coast.

But when you're trying to build where the wind is strongest or the sun is brightest, you never know what obstacles you may run into.

In Massachusetts, a proposed wind farm called Cape Wind was dealt a blow last Friday that will delay what would be the first offshore wind farm in the U.S. The Massachusetts Historical Commission agreed with local Indian tribes who claim that the location for the wind farm should be considered for listing in the National Historic Register because the Wampanoags' history and culture are "inextricably linked to Nantucket Sound," according to the opinion.

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Laser-plasma Accelerators Ride On Einstein's Shoulders

Example of a laser wakefield simulated in a “Boosted Frame”. Electrons (colored tubes) are injected and accelerated by surfing the wave (blue surfaces) generated by a laser pulse. (Credit: Image courtesy of American Physical Society)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Nov. 11, 2009) — Using Einstein's theory of special relativity to speedup computer simulations, scientists have designed laser-plasma accelerators with energies of 10 billion electron volts (GeV) and beyond. These systems, which have not been simulated in detail until now, could in the future serve as a compact new technology for particle colliders and energetic light sources.

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Researchers Plan Ice Cream That's Good For You

From Live Science:

In what might seem to defy the laws of comfort foods, researchers are setting out to concoct a healthy, yes healthy, ice cream.

If the food scientists are successful, ice cream would become another so-called functional food, alongside whole oat products and foods made with soy protein, which have scientifically established health benefits beyond basic nutrition. (The United States doesn't currently have a formal definition for functional foods.)

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Contact Lenses That Respond To Light

Photo: Seeing the light: A new contact lens technology responds to UV light. The contact lens on the left (blue) contains photochromic dyes that darken the lens in the presence of UV light. The contact lens on the right (clear) contains no dyes. Credit: Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology

From Technology Review:

UV-responsive dyes embedded in contact lenses can quickly adapt.

Transition lenses--which darken automatically in response to bright sunlight--have been available for eyeglasses for 40 years. But adapting this flexibility to contact lenses has proven challenging. Now researchers in Singapore have developed UV-responsive, or photochromic, lenses that darken when exposed to ultraviolet light, protecting the eyes against the sun's damaging rays, and return to normal in UV's absence.

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Dream Of Solar Sailing In Space Lives On In New Project

An artists rendering of a solar sail is shown in this undated publicity image from The Planetary Society released to Reuters. Backers of a failed mission to launch the world's first solar-sail spacecraft unveiled plans on Monday to try again five years later with a smaller, swifter satellite to test the limits of sunlight propulsion. (Handout/REUTERS)

From Christian Science Monitor:

The US-based Planetary Society this week announced its second attempt to launch a small spacecraft with sails propelled by sunlight.

Its designers call it LightSail-1. And if it works as advertised, the solar sail project would represent a baby step toward humanity’s first starship.

This week, the California-based Planetary Society announced a new project to launch a small spacecraft propelled by a solar sail. In principle, the idea is simple: Use the sail to intercept sunlight, which presses on the sail much like wind on canvas. (The same pressure keeps the sun from collapsing under its own gravity.)

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Veterans Day: Why It's Today, How It's Changed & More

President Barak Obama lays a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns as part of Veterans Day services at Arlington National Cemetery, Nov. 11, 2009. VA courtesy photo

From National Geographic:

At Veterans Day celebrations and events around the country, the United States is honoring the men and women of the nation's armed forces.

So why is November 11 Veterans Day? Who is it for? And how has it changed?

In keeping with Veterans Day tradition, U.S. President Barack Obama today laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia, saying, "While it is important and proper that we mark this day, it is far more important we spend all our days determined to keep the promises that we've made to all who answer this country's call."

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My Comment: I know that the day is almost over, but this is a neat summary of what exactly is Veteran's Day.

Microsoft Cuts Off Thousands Of Xbox Players Caught Downloading Pirated Games

Popular: More than 34 million Xbox 360 consoles have been sold worldwide.
Microsoft is now clamping down on piracy

From The Daily Mail:

Microsoft is clamping down on piracy by banning up to one million customers from using its services if they are caught playing illegal games.

The technology giant said gamers who install hardware to play pirated games on the Xbox 360 console would be barred from using its Live service.

The online service allows multiple players to compete against each other over the internet and is central to the Xbox 360's popularity.

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Dinosaurs Could Have Been Hot To Trot, Say US Scientists

From The Scotsman:

LARGE two-legged dinosaurs, such as Tyrannosaurus rex, were energetic athletes with warm blood running through their veins, it was claimed today.
New evidence suggests that the ancient reptiles were endothermic – or warm-blooded – like their modern descendants, birds.

Far from being lumbering slow beasts, they were likely to have been agile and active.

But warm blood would have come at a price, because it requires more food. If food became scarce 65 million years ago, this could have been a contributory factor in their extinction.

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Japan Plans Giant Solar Power Station In Space

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).

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Modern Warfare 2 On Course To Sell $500m Within 24hrs Of Launch

From Times Online:

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.

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Bing Getting A Fall Refresh

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.

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AIDS Leading Cause Of Death In Women

From Time Magazine:

(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.

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Scientists Decipher The Formation Of Lasting Memories

From Science Daily:

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.

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