Report: Countries Prepping For Cyberwar

Countries armed with "cyberweapons," according to McAfee.
(Credit: McAfee)

From CNET:

Major countries and nation-states are engaged in a "Cyber Cold War," amassing cyberweapons, conducting espionage, and testing networks in preparation for using the Internet to conduct war, according to a new report to be released on Tuesday by McAfee.

In particular, countries gearing up for cyberoffensives are the U.S., Israel, Russia, China, and France, the says the report, compiled by former White House Homeland Security adviser Paul Kurtz and based on interviews with more than 20 experts in international relations, national security and Internet security.

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'Universal' Programmable Two-Qubit Quantum Processor Created

NIST postdoctoral researcher David Hanneke at the laser table used to demonstrate the first universal programmable processor for a potential quantum computer. A pair of beryllium ions (charged atoms) that hold information in the processor are trapped inside the cylinder at the lower right. A colorized image of the two ions is displayed on the monitor in the background. (Credit: J. Burrus/NIST)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Nov. 16, 2009) — Physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have demonstrated the first "universal" programmable quantum information processor able to run any program allowed by quantum mechanics -- the rules governing the submicroscopic world -- using two quantum bits (qubits) of information. The processor could be a module in a future quantum computer, which theoretically could solve some important problems that are intractable today.

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Attractiveness Based Partly on Skin Color

Participants in the study changed the skin color of the faces in images (right), making the skin redder, yellower and brighter (from top to bottom), saying those looked healthier than faces that are less red, less yellow and less bright (left). Credit: www.perceptionlab.com at the University of St. Andrews.

From Live Science:

When it comes to an attractive face, color can make all the difference, suggests a new study.

The research focused on facial skin color among Caucasians, finding a light, yellowish complexion looks the healthiest. The skin color could indicate a healthy diet of fruits and vegetables, whose pigments are known to change the skin's hue, researchers suggest.

(The researchers predict the results would hold for other ethnicities as well.)

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Civilian Supercomputer Shatters Nuke Simulator’s Speed Record

From Wired Science:

The retooled Jaguar supercomputer blew away the competition on the latest list of the 500 fastest computers in the world, clocking an incredible 1.759 petaflops — 1,759 trillion calculations per second.

The machine, housed at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, added two more cores with the aid of almost $20 million in stimulus spending. With the new processors, the Cray XT5 plowed past the Top500 competition. It’s more than 69 percent faster than the previous record holder, Los Alamos National Laboratory’s IBM Roadrunner, and is more than twice as powerful as the third-fastest computer on the list.

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Astronomers Name Scottish Park One Of World's Best Stargazing Sites

The night sky as seen in Galloway Forest Park, which has
been awarded 'dark skies' status. Photograph: PR

From The Guardian:

Galloway Forest Park awarded 'dark skies' status and praised for accessibility to public.

A vast stretch of forest in south-west Scotland boasting unrivalled views of the millions of stars in the galaxy was today named as one of the best places in the world to stargaze.

Galloway Forest Park, a 300 square mile tract of conifer forests and hills, became one of the first places outside the US to be given status as a "dark skies park" by astronomers at the International Dark Skies Association.

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Climate Change Gives Ancient Trees Growth Spurt

Wiltshire's Ancient Trees. Photo from The BBC

From The New Scientist:

Rising temperatures are causing some of the oldest trees on Earth to grow faster, new research suggests. But scientists are divided over whether or not the change will benefit the climate, as it may simply cause the trees to die more quickly.

Previous research (pdf) suggested that Great Basin bristlecone pines located in the mountains of western US are growing more rapidly. But the reason for the growth spurt – and whether or not it is unusual – was unclear.

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Bacteria 'Glow Near Landmines'

From The Telegraph:

Bacteria that glow green in the presence of explosives could provide a cheap and safe way to find hidden landmines, according to British scientists.

The bugs can be mixed into a colourless solution that forms green patches when sprayed on to ground where mines are buried.

Researchers who created the bacteria at the University of Edinburgh believe the microbes could be dropped from the air on to danger areas.

Within a few hours, they would react to traces of explosives leaking from the devices buried underground.

Each year, between 15,000 and 20,000 people are killed or injured by landmines and unexploded ordnance, according to the charity Handicap International.

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British Scientists Testing Ukrainian 'Super Flu' That Has Killed 189 People

Ukraine's Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko (L) visits flu victims
at a hospital in the western Ukrainian city of Lutsk

From The Daily Mail:

British scientists are examining the strain of swine flu behind a deadly Ukrainian outbreak to see if the virus has mutated.

A total of 189 people have died and more than one million have been infected in the country.

Some doctors have likened the symptoms to those seen in many of the victims of the Spanish flu which caused millions of deaths world-wide after the World War One.

An unnamed doctor in western Ukraine told of the alarming effects of the virus.

He said: 'We have carried out post mortems on two victims and found their lungs are as black as charcoal.

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China Joins Supercomputer Elite

From The BBC:

China has become one of a handful of nations to own one of the top five supercomputers in the world.

Its Tianhe-1 computer, housed at the National Super Computer Center in Tianjin was ranked fifth on the biannual Top 500 supercomputer list.

The machine packs more than 70,000 chips and can compute 563 trillion calculations per second (teraflops).

It is used for petroleum exploration and engineering tasks such as simulating aircraft designs.

However, the fastest machine is the US-owned Jaguar supercomputer, which now boasts a speed of 1.759 petaflops.

One petaflop is the equivalent of 1,000 trillion calculations per second.

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Fishing Quota Will Lead To Extinction Of Bluefin Tuna, Warn Conservationists

From Times Online:

Conservationists have accused the organisation charged with ensuring the survival of the bluefin tuna of pushing the fish to extinction.

Members of the International Convention for the Conservation of Atlantic Tuna (ICCAT) voted to allow 13,500 tonnes of tuna to be caught next year, which scientists say will lead to the disappearance of the fish from the Mediterranean within two years.

The European Union was blamed for having blocked plans at the Brazil conference for a moratorium on catching the fish in the Mediterranean.

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Scientists Test First Universal Programmable Quantum Computer

Quantum Processor Beryllium ions to lasers: you spin me right round J. Burrus/NIST

From Popular Science:

Quantum computing uses spooky physics to run faster and more powerfully than traditional computers.

Physicists have been taking baby steps toward creating a full-fledged quantum computer faster and more powerful than any computer in existence, by making quantum processors capable of performing individual tasks. Now a group at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has developed the world's first universal programmable quantum computer that can run any program that's possible under the rules of quantum mechanics.

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Improving Security With Face Recognition Technology

This photo shows how to determine discriminative anatomical point pairings using Adaboost for 3-D face recognition. (Credit: University of Miami)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Nov. 15, 2009) — A number of U.S. states now use facial recognition technology when issuing drivers licenses. Similar methods are also used to grant access to buildings and to verify the identities of international travelers. Historically, obtaining accurate results with this type of technology has been a time intensive activity. Now, a researcher from the University of Miami College of Engineering and his collaborators have developed ways to make the technology more efficient while improving accuracy.

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Just Thinking of a Loved One Can Reduce Physical Pain

From Live Science:

They say love hurts. But it can also make people feel better.

In an offbeat study, researchers applied "moderately painful heat stimuli" to the forearms of 25 women while each held the hand of her boyfriend, the hand of a male stranger, or squeezed a ball. The women reported less pain when holding their boyfriends' hands.

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Surprising Discovery Explains Formation Of New Memories

From U.S. News And World Report:

Short-term memory may depend in a surprising way on the ability of newly formed neurons to erase older connections. That's the conclusion of a report in the November 13th issue of the journal Cell, a Cell Press publication, that provides some of the first evidence in mice and rats that new neurons sprouted in the hippocampus cause the decay of short-term fear memories in that brain region, without an overall memory loss.

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Time-Travelling Browsers Navigate The Web's Past

19 October 1996: Plane maker Boeing had what was,
for the time, a very image-intensive home page

From New Scientist:

Finding old versions of web pages could become far simpler thanks to a "time-travelling" web browsing technology being pioneered at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

Bookmarking a page takes you to its current version – but earlier ones are harder to find (to see an award-winning 1990s incarnation of newscientist.com, see our gallery of web pages past, right). One option is to visit a resource like the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. There, you key in the URL of the site you want and are confronted with a matrix of years and dates for old pages that have been cached. Or, if you want to check how a Wikipedia page has evolved, you can hit the "history" tab on a page of interest and scroll through in an attempt to find the version of the page on the day you're interested in.

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Scientists Identify Gene That Can Help You Live To 100

From The Telegraph:

A gene that can help you live to 100 has been identified by scientists.

Researchers studying a group of people with an average age of 97 found they had all inherited a gene that appears to prevent cells ageing.

They found that the 86 people studied and their children had higher levels of an enzyme called telomerase which is known to protect the body's DNA from degrading.

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Last Ice Age Took Just SIX Months To Arrive

Photo: Climate catastrophe: Rapid climate change was the subject of the Hollywood blockbuster The Day After Tomorrow

From The Daily Mail:

It took just six months for a warm and sunny Europe to be engulfed in ice, according to new research.

Previous studies have suggested the arrival of the last Ice Age nearly 13,000 years ago took about a decade - but now scientists believe the process was up to 20 times as fast.

In scenes reminiscent of the Hollywood blockbuster The day After Tomorrow, the Northern Hemisphere was frozen by a sudden slowdown of the Gulf Stream, which allowed ice to spread hundreds of miles southwards from the Arctic.

Geological sciences professor William Patterson, who led the research, said: 'It would have been very sudden for those alive at the time. It would be the equivalent of taking Britain and moving it to the Arctic over the space of a few months.'

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Starvation 'Wiped Out' Giant Deer

From The BBC:

The giant deer, also known as the giant Irish deer or Irish elk, is one of the largest deer species that ever lived.

Yet why this giant animal, which had massive antlers spanning 3.6m, suddenly went extinct some 10,600 years ago has remained a mystery.

Now a study of its teeth is producing tantalising answers, suggesting the deer couldn't cope with climate change.

As conditions became colder and drier in Ireland at the time, fewer plants grew, gradually starving the deer.

The discovery is published in the journal Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology.

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Leonid Meteor Showers Tonight

The Leonid meteor shower streaks over Joshua Tree
during a spectacular display in 2001. (Newscom)

Leonid Meteor Shower Times: When You Should Look Skyward -- Christian Science Monitor

In 2009, the Leonid meteor shower will strike between 3:30 a.m. and 5:30 a.m. Eastern time.

The Leonid meteor shower is back in town Tuesday morning. Every November, Earth gets a spritz of meteor light in the night sky. While Asia will get the best show this year, early birds in North America can enjoy a few dozen Leonid meteors per hour.

Thinking of getting up early? Americans, set your clocks to 3:30 a.m. East Coast time. The shower will run from then until about 5:30 a.m. However, no matter where you live, you may luck out and catch a stray meteor anytime between 1 a.m. and dawn.

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Shuttle Atlantis Lifts Off for 11-Day Mission

From The New York Times:

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. — The shuttle Atlantis vaulted into orbit Monday and set off after the International Space Station, carrying 15 tons of spare parts and equipment as a hedge against failures after the shuttle fleet is retired next year.

“We’re looking for the long-term outfitting of station,” said the shuttle commander, Col. Charles O. Hobaugh of the Marines.

With Colonel Hobaugh and Capt. Barry E. Wilmore, a Navy pilot, at the controls, Atlantis’s twin solid-fuel boosters ignited with a blast of fire at 2:28 p.m., Eastern time, instantly pushing the winged spacecraft away from pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center.

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More News On Today's Shuttle Launch

Shuttle Atlantis takes off on station delivery mission -- CNET
NASA launches shuttle Atlantis to space station -- Reuters
Space shuttle Atlantis lifts off on supply mission -- AP
Space Shuttle Atlantis Blasts off on Delivery Mission -- FOX News
Atlantis heads for ISS with spare parts: Last shuttle blast of year -- The Register

Weapons Manufacturer Unveils Black Box for Guns

Black Box Gun Tracking gun and user performance since 2009 FN Herstal

From Popular Science:

The gadget would record details of every shot fired to track both weapon and user performance.

Military and police higher-ups can now see just how many shots a particular weapon fired during the course of a battle or incident. The Register reports that a new black box device designed for rifles and submachine guns could report on ammo usage and weapon jamming, as well as who shot whom at what time.

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Why NCAR’s Meehl Paper On High/Low Temperature Records Is Bunk

This graphic shows the ratio of record daily highs to record daily lows observed at about 1,800 weather stations in the 48 contiguous United States from January 1950 through September 2009. Source NCAR

From Watts Up With That?

One wonders why the story of a new paper covered on WUWT: NCAR: Number of record highs beat record lows – if you believe the quality of data from the weather stations did not include the 1930’s and 1940’s and earlier, conspicuously missing from the NCAR graphic above.

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United States Using Less Water Than 35 Years Ago

Crop irrigation. The largest uses of fresh surface water were power generation and irrigation. (Credit: USDA - Natural Resources Conservation Service)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Nov. 16, 2009) — The United States is using less water than during the peak years of 1975 and 1980, according to water use estimates for 2005. Despite a 30 percent population increase during the past 25 years, overall water use has remained fairly stable according to a new U.S. Geological Survey report.

Assistant Secretary of the Interior Anne Castle announced the report, Estimated Use of Water in the United States in 2005, as part of her keynote speech on October 29 at the Atlantic Water Summit in the National Press Club.

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Texting A Pain In The Neck, Study Suggests

From Live Science:

Texting long messages can be a pain in the neck — literally.

The repetitive action of working your fingers across the number pad of your cell phone can cause some of the same chronic pain problems previously confined to those who'd spent a lifetime typing, a new study suggests.

The possible connection is particularly worrying given how much teens and young adults — and increasingly those in professional settings — are texting nowadays, said Judith Gold of Temple University in Philadelphia, who carried out one of the first studies on the potential connection.

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Using CO2 To Extract Geothermal Energy

Photo: Hot air: The Soultz-sous-Fôrets geothermal plant in Alsace, France, pumps water into fractured rock to extract heat and thus generate electricity. Researchers backed by $16 million in federal stimulus funds seek to prove that such geothermal plants could generate 50 percent more heat by cycling carbon dioxide underground instead.
Credit: Géothermie Soultz

From Technology Review:

Carbon dioxide captured from power plants could make geothermal energy more practical.

Carbon dioxide generated by power plants may find a second life as a working fluid to help recover geothermal heat from kilometers underground. Such a system would not only capture the carbon dioxide and keep it out of the atmosphere, it would also be a cost-effective way to use the greenhouse gas to generate new power.

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Two Rival Supercomputers Duke It Out For Top Spot

Kraken, a Cray XT5 system, is the world's sixth-fastest computer. Photo/Adam Brimer

From PC World:

The top two systems on June's list of the Top 500 supercomputers swapped places on the latest list, released Monday.

A Cray supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory has regained the title of the world's most powerful supercomputer, overtaking the installation that was ranked at the top in June, while China entered the Top 10 with a hybrid Intel-AMD system.

The upgraded Jaguar supercomputer at Oak Ridge, in Tennessee, now boasts a speed of 1.759 petaflops per second from its 224,162 cores, while the IBM Roadrunner system at the U.S. Department of Energy's Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico slowed slightly to 1.042 petaflops per second after it was repartitioned. A petaflop is one thousand trillion calculations per second.

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Egypt To Apply For First Arabic-Alphabet Internet Domain Name

From CTV News/AP:

SHARM EL-SHEIK, Egypt — Egypt will apply for the first Internet domain written in Arabic, its information technology minister said Sunday at a conference grouping Yahoo's co-founder and others to discuss boosting online access in emerging nations.

Tarek Kamel said Egypt on Monday would apply for the new domain -- pronounced ".masr" but written in the Arabic alphabet -- making it the first Arab nation to apply for a non-Latin character domain. The effort is part of a broader push to expand both access and content in developing nations, where the Internet remains out of reach for wide swaths of the population.

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The Ghost Wineries of Napa Valley

The Freemark Abbey is a fully functional ghost winery located in the
Napa Valley just north of St. Helena. Matt Kettmann

From The Smithsonian:

In the peaks and valleys of California’s wine country, vinters remember the region’s rich history and rebuild for the future

Atop Howell Mountain, one of the peaks that frame California’s wine-soaked Napa Valley, the towering groves of ponderosa pines are home to one of the region’s legendary ghost wineries. Born in the late 1800s, killed off by disease, disaster, depression, and denial in the early 20th century, and then laid to solemn rest for decades, La Jota Vineyard — like its countless sister specters found throughout the region — is once again living, breathing, and making world-class wine. And for those who care to listen, this resurrected winery has plenty to say about everything from America’s melting pot history and the long-celebrated quality of West Coast wine to strategies for sustainability and using the power of story to boost sales.

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In 2012, Neutrinos Melt The Earth's Core, And Other Disasters

Scence from 2012 courtesy of Columbia Tristar Marketing Group

From Scientific American:

During an early screening of Roland Emmerich's latest disaster flick 2012, which opens today, laughter erupted in the audience near the end of the film thanks to corny dialogue and maudlin scenes (among the biggest guffaw getters: a father tries to reconnect with his estranged son on the telephone, only to have the son's house destroyed just before he could say anything). Nobody wants to take anything seriously in a movie like this, in which digital mayhem is the draw. But if it were an audience of physicists, the laughter probably would have started in the first five minutes. You can't take any of the science seriously, although I give the filmmakers credit for creativity.

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2009 Leonid Meteor Shower: "Strong Outburst" Expected

Leonid meteors streak across the sky over Joshua Tree National Park in California on November 18, 2001. The horizontal streaks are stars and planets caught moving in the long-exposure photograph. During the 2009 Leonid meteor shower, sky-watchers—depending on where they are—may see anywhere from 30 to 300 shooting stars an hour, experts say. Photograph by Reed Saxon, AP

From National Geographic:

During the 2009 Leonid meteor shower, you may see anywhere from 30 to 300 shooting stars an hour, depending on whether you're in the right place to see the showy peak on November 17, experts predict.

With the highest number of meteors streaking across the skies around 4:45 p.m. ET, the Leonids peak will be effectively invisible for viewers in North America and Europe.

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World's Worse Case of Arsenic Poisoning Solved

Many people in Bangladesh continue to drink arsenic contaminated water (Source: USGS)

From ABC News (Australia)/AFP/Reuters:

Researchers have finally worked out what led to the widespread release of arsenic into drinking water in rural Bangladesh, affecting millions of people.

Dubbed 'the worst mass poisoning in history', the incident has puzzled scientists for decades.

Now a team publishing in Nature Geoscience say that tens of thousands of man-made ponds are to blame.

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Space Shuttle To Haul Spare Parts For Monday Afternoon Launch

Space Shuttle Atlantis on the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center on Sunday in Cape Canaveral, Fla. Matt Stroshane/Getty Images

From The New York Times:

The space shuttle has often been called a pickup truck to orbit, and the next flight of the shuttle Atlantis, scheduled to launch Monday afternoon, lives up to that description.

The Atlantis is lugging up to the International Space Station a cargo bay full of spare parts, including a couple of refurbished gyroscopes, pumps, tanks for ammonia and nitrogen and piece called the “trailing umbilical system reel assembly” for the railway system that moves the station’s robotic arm.

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Love and Envy Linked By Same Hormone, Oxytocin

Studies have shown that the oxytocin hormone has a positive effect on positive feelings. The hormone is released in the body naturally during childbirth and when engaging in sexual relations. (Credit: iStockphoto)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Nov. 13, 2009) — A new study carried out at the University of Haifa has found that the hormone oxytocin, the "love hormone," which affects behaviors such as trust, empathy and generosity, also affects opposite behaviors, such as jealousy and gloating. "Subsequent to these findings, we assume that the hormone is an overall trigger for social sentiments: when the person's association is positive, oxytocin bolsters pro-social behaviors; when the association is negative, the hormone increases negative sentiments," explains Simone Shamay-Tsoory who carried out the research.

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The Beautiful Aftermath Of Tropical Storm Ida

Clouds of sediment clouded the Gulf of Mexico on Nov. 10, 2009, after Hurricane Ida came ashore. Credit: Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team at NASA GSFC.

From Live Science:

One of the dramatic and often unseen effects of tropical storms and hurricanes is the muck they churn up from the ocean floor as they come ashore.

These clouds of sediment in the Gulf of Mexico were spotted Nov. 10, after Tropical Storm Ida made landfall and then moved on.

The image was made from data collected by NASA’s Aqua satellite.

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In A Malaria Hot Spot, Resistance To A Key Drug

From Time Magazine:

Every year, thousands of workers arrive at the sapphire and ruby mines of Pailin, Cambodia, risking their lives to unearth gems in the landmine-ridden territory. Soon, however, they could be the ones to put millions of others at risk. On the Thai-Cambodian border, a rogue strain of malaria has started to resist artemisinin, the only remaining effective drug in the world's arsenal against malaria's most deadly strain, Plasmodium falciparum. For six decades, malaria drugs like chloroquine and mefloquine have fallen impotent in this Southeast Asian border area, allowing stronger strains to spread to Burma, India and Africa. But this time there's no new wonder drug waiting in the wings. "It would be unspeakably dire if resistance formed to artemisinin," says Amir Attaran, a professor of law and medicine at the University of Ottawa who has written extensively on malaria issues.

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Penis Implant Brings Hopes To Thousands

From The Independent:

An unusual organ implant grown in the laboratory and rigorously tested on highly-sexed male rabbits could bring new hope to thousands of men.

Scientists in the US completely rebuilt the "stiffening" elements of the penis from donor cells - and showed that they worked.

Rabbits given the implants attempted to mate within one minute of being introduced to a female partner, and 83 per cent succeeded.

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Drink Culture: It's As Old As The Hills

From The New Scientist:

QUESTS don't come much more appealing than this. But while for most people the quest ends in the nearest bar, biomolecular archaeologist Patrick McGovern has gone much further. He has spent decades travelling the world and journeying back in time, scraping dirty crusts from ancient cauldrons, retrieving dribbles of liquid from sealed jars and extracting residues from the pores of prehistoric pots, all in the name of investigating the origins of ancient alcoholic beverages.

After he famously identified the world's oldest wine - a resinated grape wine found in two clay jars from the Neolithic village of Hajji Firuz in Iran, in 2004 he found an even older sample in China. At a 9000-year-old site called Jiahu on the banks of the Yellow river, he recovered the remains of grog made from rice, hawthorn fruit, grapes and honey. Another of his recent revelations is that the people of Central America got drunk on fermented chocolate, giving new meaning to the word chocoholic.

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Weekend Lie-Ins For Teenagers Wards Off Obesity

The scientists, who studied children aged five to 15, found those who slept in on Saturdays and Sundays were much less likely to have weight problems Photo: GETTY

From The Telegraph:

Teenagers lying in at the weekend might seem like laziness, but it will actually help them stay slim and healthy, claim scientists.

New research suggests lazing in bed at the end of a busy week is just what children need to ward off obesity.

The scientists, who studied children aged five to 15, found those who slept in on Saturdays and Sundays were much less likely to have weight problems.

They believe the weekend snooze is crucial for school-age children to catch up on the sleep they miss out on during a busy week.

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Surf's Up! Hawaiian Sea Turtles Take To The Waves

Here comes the wave: A giant Hawaiian sea turtle prepares to ride the surf

From The Daily Mail:

He has eaten a big lunch and had a snooze on the beach. So this turtle is looking for a nice quiet journey home.

Rather than be crashed about on the breakers as he makes his way back out to sea, he ducks down to the sand for a smoother ride.

The Hawaiian green sea turtle makes the same journey every day to and from the Laniakea Beach in Hawaii, where he munches on seaweed and takes his rest.

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Tick-Tock - The Clock Is Running On Europe's Proposed Sat-Nav System, Galileo

From The BBC:

Most people have had a pop at Europe's proposed sat-nav system, Galileo, down the years. Let's face it, it's been an easy target.

Artist's impression of an IOV satellite in orbit"How not to implement a large-scale infrastructure project" is the criticism you often hear. "The Common Agricultural Policy in the sky" also became a popular jibe for a while.

Galileo will be at least five years late on its original timescale and hugely over budget.

It should have been fully operational by now and have cost the European taxpayer no more than 1.8bn euros.

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Scientists Find Key To Creating Clean Fuel From Coal And Waste

From The Guardian:

'Gasification' process enhanced to save millions of tonnes of carbon and provide energy

Millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide could be prevented from entering the atmosphere following the discovery of a way to turn coal, grass or municipal waste more efficiently into clean fuels.

Scientists have adapted a process called "gasification" which is already used to clean up dirty materials before they are used to generate electricity or to make renewable fuels. The technique involves heating organic matter to produce a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide, called syngas.

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The Vatican And The Internet. Working Together

The Pope said that Catholics 'must find ways to spread voices and pictures of hope through the internet'. (Jonathan Bainbridge/Reuters)

Vatican Gathers Internet Experts To Help The Holy See Get To Grips With New Media -- Times Online

Experts on the internet have gathered at the Vatican to help the Holy See improve its public relations by getting to grips with new media, including the mysteries of internet searching, downloading, hacking and social networking.

The conference, attended by European Catholic bishops, includes representatives of Google, Facebook, YouTube and Wikipedia. Corriere della Sera said that the bishops and Vatican officials would be given advice by a young hacker from Switzerland, named only as "Petit Frere Bruno", and an Interpol expert on cybercrime. It is organised by the Swiss-based European Episcopal Commission for Media.

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New Type Of Supernova Lacks "Oomph"

False colour image of the supernova SN2002bj (blue) on top of its host galaxy, NGC1821. Credit: D. Poznanski; W. Li; and A.V. Filippenko

From Cosmos:

SYDNEY: Astronomers have discovered a new type of supernova - the thermonuclear blast from a dying star - which happens three to four times faster than other known types.

Writing in the U.S. journal Science, the researchers, led by astronomer Dovi Poznanski from the University of California, Berkeley, said it is the fastest evolving supernova they have ever seen.

"It was three to four times faster than a standard supernova, basically disappearing within 20 days. Its brightness just dropped like a rock," he said.

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Longevity Tied to Genes That Preserve Tips of Chromosomes

Researchers have found a clear link between living to 100 and inheriting a hyperactive version of an enzyme that rebuilds telomeres -- the tip ends of chromosomes. (Credit: iStockphoto/Felix Möckel)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Nov. 15, 2009) — A team led by researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University has found a clear link between living to 100 and inheriting a hyperactive version of an enzyme that rebuilds telomeres -- the tip ends of chromosomes.

The findings appear in a recent issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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Female Wild Horses Stick Together

Wild mares socialize in new Zealand's Kaimanawa Mountains. Credit: Elissa Z. Cameron

From Live Science:

Wild mares that form strong social bonds with other mares produce more foals than those that don’t, researchers have found, in what may be the first documented link between “friendship” and reproductive success outside of primates.

The study followed bands of feral horses in the Kaimanawa Mountains of New Zealand over the course of three years. Elissa Z. Cameron, now at the University of Pretoria in South Africa, and two colleagues computed sociality scores for 56 mares, based on parameters such as the proportion of time each animal spent near other mares and the amount of social grooming she did.

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California Droughts When Planet Warms?

From Future Pundit:

Why worry about earthquakes when we can worry about massive droughts instead?

California experienced centuries-long droughts in the past 20,000 years that coincided with the thawing of ice caps in the Arctic, according to a new study by UC Davis doctoral student Jessica Oster and geology professor Isabel Montañez.

The finding, which comes from analyzing stalagmites from Moaning Cavern in the central Sierra Nevada, was published online Nov. 5 in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters.

Global warming gets a lot of attention due to the prospects of huge low lying areas getting submerged. But big changes in regional climate - whether human caused or not - seem much more interesting to me. Such changes could occur at any time.

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On the Copenhagen Agenda, Reducing Deforestation May Still Succeed

Photo: A deforested area of rain forest in southern Para state, Brazil. JEFFERSON RUDDY / AFP / Getty

From Time Magazine:

This month, the journal Nature Geoscience published a study calculating that deforestation is responsible for about 15% of global carbon emissions, down from earlier estimates of 20% or more. Most of the world's deforestation is concentrated in a few tropical nations, like Brazil and Indonesia where trees are disappearing fast — when these trees die or are burned, they release into the atmosphere all the carbon they've sucked up while they were alive. According to the Nature Geoscience study, the problem of deforestation is becoming a lot less dire than previously thought.

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Michael Jackson Planned 'Robot Duplicate' Of Himself

From Register:

Dead megastar droid zombie blueprints offered for $1m.

Famous dead pop legend Michael Jackson intended to construct an eerily-lifelike robotic duplicate of himself, according to reports. Detailed three-dimensional scans of the deceased globo-celeb's body were made, and the super-accurate body maps are now said to be on sale for a million dollars.

The story was reported yesterday by the Daily Star, which says that the occasionally troubled dead overlord of pop had the scans made in 1996 "in a bizarre bid to build a robot twin... [Unidentified] scientists say following his death on June 25, the eerie images could be used to bring him back".

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Mini Ice Age Took Hold Of Europe In Months

Big freezes can happen fast (Image: Tancrediphoto.com/Stone/Getty)

From New Scientist:

JUST months - that's how long it took for Europe to be engulfed by an ice age. The scenario, which comes straight out of Hollywood blockbuster The Day After Tomorrow, was revealed by the most precise record of the climate from palaeohistory ever generated.

Around 12,800 years ago the northern hemisphere was hit by the Younger Dryas mini ice age, or "Big Freeze". It was triggered by the slowdown of the Gulf Stream, led to the decline of the Clovis culture in North America, and lasted around 1300 years.

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Telegraph.co.uk At 15: Making The News

From The Telegraph:

The machinery for putting the news online has changed a lot in the 15 years that Telegraph.co.uk has been live, says Ian Douglas.

In the summer of 1999, when the web was nine years old, the Telegraph's website was almost five and I arrived at Canary Wharf for my first shift. Newcomers were paired with someone with more experience to learn the ropes.

Check the text, paste some tags in here and here, add links to the bottom of the page, then send it off, I was told. 'Send it off where,' I asked. 'To Overlord,' was the ominous reply. Overlord was the batch process built by Tim Brown, architect of the early online Telegraph efforts. Tim was usually to be found cropping photographs in the corner on night shifts, but two years before I arrived he had built the newspaper's first web content management system in his spare time. Overlord took the stories that had been worked on throughout the evening and turned them into web pages to be published on a server sitting in a cupboard a few doors down.

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The Giant Iceberg That Went Walkabout... Towards The Coast Of Australia

Should that be there? A giant iceberg is seen off Macquarie Island which lies halfway between Antarctica and Australia. Scientists say it is unusual to see one so far north

From The Daily Mail:

Australia is known for sunny beaches, surfers, and blistering Outback heat.

So scientists were a bit taken aback when they spotted this giant iceberg floating near an island Down Under.

Australian Antarctic Division researchers were working on Macquarie Island when they first saw the iceberg last Thursday about about five miles off the island. It is rare to see an iceberg floating so far north of Antarctica, researchers said.

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Apec Leaders Drop Climate Target

From The BBC:

World leaders meeting in Singapore have said it will not be possible to reach a climate change deal ahead of next month's UN conference in Denmark.

After a two-day Asia-Pacific summit, they vowed to work towards an "ambitious outcome" in Copenhagen.

But the group dropped a target to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, which was outlined in an earlier draft.

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Army Corps of Engineers Now Required to Consider Climate Change in All Future Projects

Flood Plans Here's to keeping above water Army Corps of Engineers

From Popular Science:

Worst-case planning never hurt anybody, and certainly not federal water projects that cost millions of dollars and could be easily undone by climate change and rising sea levels. A new policy now requires the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to plan for future climate change when designing plans for flood control or other projects.

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