Mars Was Covered By Huge Ocean, Say Experts

The new map showing that Martian valley networks are more than twice as extensive
as had previously been thought Photo: PA

From The Telegraph:

A single large ocean once covered much of the northern half of Mars, supplied with water from a belt of rain-fed rivers, new research suggests.

Scientists have produced a new map showing that Martian valley networks are more than twice as extensive as had previously been thought, indicating that they were carved by rivers.

They are concentrated in a belt circling the planet's equator and mid-southern latitudes.

Read more ....

'Big Bang' Machine Makes History By Achieving First Particle Collisions

From The Daily Mail:

Proton beams have been smashed together for the first time in the 'Big Bang Machine', a development which scientists hope will help unravel the origins of the universe.

The beams were circulated in opposite directions at the same time causing the first particle collisions in the £6billion experiment after 14 months of repairs.

Read more ....

Green Lines What Does It Take To Save A Species? Sometimes, High-Voltage Power Wires

(Mick Wiggins for The Boston Globe)

From Boston.com:

FOR DECADES, NOBODY in the US had seen the bee.

The silver-haired black Epeoloides pilosula was once widespread in New England, often found where native yellow loosestrife plants grew. But as the region’s pastoral landscapes gave way to forests, the bee lost its sunny open home. In 1927 it was spotted in a Needham meadow and then, despite years of searching, not again. By the start of this century, dejected bee lovers were forced to conclude that the insect was likely extinct in the US.

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Heart Attack Risk 'Raised By Suppressing Anger'

From The BBC:

Men who do not openly express their anger if they are unfairly treated at work double their risk of a heart attack, Swedish research suggests.

The researchers looked at 2,755 male employees in Stockholm who had not had a heart attack when the study began.

They were asked about how they coped with conflict at work, either with superiors or colleagues.

The researchers say their study shows a strong relationship between pent-up anger and heart disease.

Read more ....

Climategate Reveals The Corruption Of Science And Global Warming

ClimateGate: The Fix is In -- Real Clear Politics

In early October, I covered a breaking story about evidence of corruption in the basic temperature records maintained by key scientific advocates of the theory of man-made global warming. Global warming "skeptics" had unearthed evidence that scientists at the Hadley Climatic Research Unit at Britain's University of East Anglia had cherry-picked data to manufacture a "hockey stick" graph showing a dramatic-but illusory-runaway warming trend in the late 20th century.

But now newer and much broader evidence has emerged that looks like it will break that scandal wide open. Pundits have already named it "Climategate."

Read more ....

Update: Climategate: the final nail in the coffin of 'Anthropogenic Global Warming'? -- The Telegraph

My Comment: For the past few days I have been reading the emails from the Hadley Climatic Research Unit at Britain's University of East Anglia. Anyone who calls himself a scientist would not only find these emails disturbing, but also frightened to see how science can be used to push a political agenda.

Is global warming hoax? .... it is clear from the internal communication among those who say that global warming is publicly .... that privately they believe that it is not the case.

Scientists who knowingly supported this hoax should be named and publicized. Monies that have been taken should be returned. Criminal charges should be considered.

Watts Up With That? is a science blog that is covering this growing scandal, I would bookmark their site for future reference and information.

Supervolcano Eruption In Sumatra Deforested India 73,000 Years Ago

Landsat satellite photo of Lake Toba, Sumatra, Indonesia.
(Credit: Image courtesy of NASA / via Wikimedia Commons)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Nov. 24, 2009) — A new study provides "incontrovertible evidence" that the volcanic super-eruption of Toba on the island of Sumatra about 73,000 years ago deforested much of central India, some 3,000 miles from the epicenter, researchers report.

The volcano ejected an estimated 800 cubic kilometers of ash into the atmosphere, leaving a crater (now the world's largest volcanic lake) that is 100 kilometers long and 35 kilometers wide. Ash from the event has been found in India, the Indian Ocean, the Bay of Bengal and the South China Sea.

Read more ....

Boomerangers: Young Adults Moving Back Home

From Live Science:

Some young adults are taking refuge from the dim economy by heading back to their nest, a new report suggests.

A recent survey by the Pew Research Center, announced today, found 13 percent of parents with grown children say an adult son or daughter has moved back home over the past year for various reasons, including the recession.

The so-called boomerangers are mostly individuals ages 18 to 34, the survey found.

Read more ....

Whaling: The Beginning Of The End?

From Discovery News:

Japan's whaling fleet left port for the Antarctic last week. Japanese authorities defended the hunt, as usual, as legitimate scientific research. I and others have dealt with that contention almost ad nauseam, and the basic outlines of the argument are well known.

What makes this whaling season different from recent ones, however, is that environmentalists are allowing themselves to feel cautiously optimistic that the end of this seemingly endless battle may be near.

Read more ....

Weird Data Suggests Something Big Beyond The Edge Of The Universe

Something strange appears to be tugging a 'dark flow' of galaxies across the universe. is this evidence that parallel universes really exist?

From Cosmos:

SYDNEY: Astronomers have found the best evidence yet for the weird idea that our universe is one of many in the 'multiverse'. What's more, these parallel universes seem to be exerting a strange force on our own, causing galaxy clusters to stream across space towards the edge of the known universe.

The new evidence comes from studies of 'bumps and wiggles' in the temperature of the cosmic background radiation (CMB), the leftover afterglow of the Big Bang.

Read more ....

Facebook Photo Costs IBM Employee Insurance

From Infoworld:

A Quebec-based IBM employee who's on long term sick leave was quoted in media reports as saying that she lost her long-term disability benefits because of photos she posted on Facebook.

According to a report by Canadian Press Sunday, the Quebec woman, Nathalie Blanchard said an insurance agent told her that the long-term disability cheques were terminated after photos of her Facebook grabbed the Manulife's attention.

Read more ....

Can News Corp. Afford Calling Google's Bluff?

Photo: Rupert Murdoch is reportedly thinking about removing all of News Corp.'s content from Google and striking an exclusive deal with Microsoft's Bing. (Credit: Dan Farber/CNET)

From CNET:

It was inevitable that someone would seriously consider taking Google's dare.

For years, Google has all but dared traditional media companies trying to develop online businesses to live without the traffic it sends their way. The folks at the Googleplex make it clear that content owners who believe Google is unfairly indexing (or stealing, depending on your point of view) their content can easily remove that content from Google's massive corner of the Internet.

Read more ....

Enhancing Access to Genomic Medicine

Credit: Technology Review

From Technology Review:

A startup aims to calculate the value in the onslaught of genetic tests.

Per Lofberg wants to bring genomic medicine to the masses by overcoming one of the field's biggest barriers--getting insurers and other payers to cover the growing numbers of genetic tests reaching the market. To achieve that, he founded Generation Health, a health benefit management company that aims to sift through the data on these tests, which range from those that predict an individual's risk of heart disease or cancer to those that determine how well a patient metabolizes a certain drug. Lofberg's goal is to find the ones that provide the greatest medical utility and economic value.

Read more ....

Dumb Code Could Stop Computer Viruses In Their Tracks

From New Scientist:

ON THE day a new computer virus hits the internet there is little that antivirus software can do to stop it until security firms get round to writing and distributing a patch that recognises and kills the virus. Now engineers Simon Wiseman and Richard Oak at the defence technology company Qinetiq's security lab in Malvern, Worcestershire, UK, have come up with an answer to the problem.

Their idea, which they are patenting, is to intercept every file that could possibly hide a virus and add a string of computer code to it that will disable any virus it contains. Their system chiefly targets emailed attachments and adds the extra code to them as they pass through a mailserver. A key feature of the scheme is that no knowledge of the virus itself is needed, so it can deal with new, unrecognised "zero day" viruses as well as older ones.

Read more ....

Decoded Corn Genome Promises Higher Yields, Better Biofuels, New Plastics

Corn, Illinois: Randy Wick/Flickr

From Popular Science:

With its annual output of over 330 million tons a year feeding animals, running cars, and decorating South Dakota tourist attractions, maize is clearly Americas most important crop. That's why the newly published complete corn genome could drastically change the food, automotive and plastic industries. Already, scientists have identified genes that could boost yield, change the cell wall to make more biofuel, or raise the nutritional value of this vital cereal.

Read more ....

Building a Better Alien-Calling Code

From Wired Science:

Alien-seeking researchers have designed a new simple code for sending messages into space. To a reasonably clever alien with math skills and a bit of astronomical training, the messages should be easy to decipher.

As of now, Earthlings spend much more time searching for alien radio messages than broadcasting news of ourselves. We know how to do it, but relatively little attention has been paid to “ensuring that a transmitted message will be understandable to an alien listener,” wrote California Institute of Technology geoscientist Michael Busch and Rachel Reddick, a Stanford University physicist, in a study filed online Friday on arXiv.

Read more ....

Scientists Find Molecular Trigger That Helps Prevent Aging and Disease

New research has unraveled a molecular puzzle to determine that within certain parameters, a lower-calorie diet slows the development of some age-related conditions such as Alzheimer's disease, as well as the aging process. (Credit: iStockphoto)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Nov. 23, 2009) — Researchers at Mount Sinai School of Medicine set out to address a question that has been challenging scientists for years: How does dietary restriction produce protective effects against aging and disease? And the reverse: how does overconsumption accelerate age-related disease?

Read more ....

Color E-readers Inspired By Butterflies

The full grown morpho rhetenor butterfly, a native to South America.
Credit: University of Southhampton.

From Live Science:

Full-color displays for e-readers could really take off soon — on the wings of butterflies.

Qualcomm MEMS Technologies new Mirasol is the first full color, video-capable display on a prototype e-reader. Built on the concept of the iridescence of a butterfly’s wing, the new technology reflects light rather than transmitting light the way LCD screens do.

The display is readable in sunlight and offers unprecedented energy savings for longer battery life. E-readers may just be the beginning for Mirasol displays as consumers seek color in every device they use, better visibility in bright light, and days or even weeks worth of battery life.

Read more ....

Why Do Human Testicles Hang Like That?

From Scientific America:

Earlier this year, I wrote a column about evolutionary psychologist Gordon Gallup’s “semen displacement hypothesis,” a convincing hypothesis presenting a very plausible, empirically supported account of the evolution of the peculiarly shaped human penis. In short, Gallup and his colleagues argued that our species’ distinctive phallus, with its bulbous glans and flared coronal ridge, was sculpted by natural selection as a foreign sperm-removal device. As a companion piece to that work on our phallic origins, Gallup, along with Mary Finn and Becky Sammis, have put forth a related hypothesis in this month’s issue of Evolutionary Psychology. This new hypothesis, which the authors call “the activation hypothesis,” sets out to explain the natural origins of the only human body part arguably less attractive than the penis--the testicles.

Read more ....

Shuttle Astronauts Conduct 3rd Spacewalk

From Voice of America:

Robert Satcher and Randy Bresnik ventured into open space Monday for the walk that lasted nearly six hours. The two worked to attach a new oxygen tank at the orbiting outpost and installed a unit to conduct experiments.

Two U.S. astronauts from the shuttle Atlantis have conducted a third and final spacewalk at the International Space Station.

Robert Satcher and Randy Bresnik ventured into open space Monday for the walk that lasted nearly six hours. The two worked to attach a new oxygen tank at the orbiting outpost and installed a unit to conduct experiments.

Read more ....

Report: Wikipedia Losing Volunteers

From CNET:

Wikipedia's exponential growth over this decade is due to the efforts of the millions of volunteers who write, edit, and check its entries. But could that volunteer effort now be in danger?

Volunteers have increasingly been quitting Wikipedia en masse for a variety of potential reasons, according to Monday's Wall Street Journal.

Read more ....

Computers Can't Answer Everything

Image: Information hookup: The social search engine Aardvark helps users find other people who can answer questions for them. Credit: Aardvark

From Technology Review:

A startup says natural language processing works best with human intelligence.

Providing answers to tricky questions has become big business online. But community question-and-answer sites can get clogged up with outdated answers, and it's fiendishly difficult to create software that can automatically understand a question and provide the best answer.

Damon Horowitz, chief technology officer and cofounder of the San Francisco-based Aardvark, will outline a different approach when he speaks at the Web 2.0 Expo in New York today.

Read more ....

LHC Smashes Protons Together For First Time

The LHC's first collisions occurred on 23 November in the ATLAS detector,
as reconstructed here (Image: CERN)

From New Scientist:

The Large Hadron Collider bashed protons together for the first time on Monday, inaugurating a new era in the quest to uncover nature's deepest secrets.

Housed in a 27-kilometre circular tunnel beneath Geneva, Switzerland, the LHC is the world's most powerful particle accelerator, designed to collide protons together at unprecedented energies.

Read more ....

Rat Brain Modelers Denounce IBM's Cat Brain Simulation As "Shameful and Unethical" Hoax

Rat vs. Cat Someone smells a rat

From Popular Science:

The Blue Brain project leader says that IBM's simulated brain does not even reach an ant's brain level.

IBM's claim of simulating a cat cortex generated quite a buzz last week, but now the head researcher from the Blue Brain project, a team who working to simulate their own animal brain (a rat's), has gone incandescent with fury over the what he calls the "mass deception of the public."

Read more ....

Climate Emails Stoke Debate

Hacked e-mails have raised questions on climate change data. Photo from The BBC

From The Wall Street Journal:

Scientists' Leaked Correspondence Illustrates Bitter Feud over Global Warming.

The scientific community is buzzing over thousands of emails and documents -- posted on the Internet last week after being hacked from a prominent climate-change research center -- that some say raise ethical questions about a group of scientists who contend humans are responsible for global warming.

The correspondence between dozens of climate-change researchers, including many in the U.S., illustrates bitter feelings among those who believe human activities cause global warming toward rivals who argue that the link between humans and climate change remains uncertain.

Read more ....

IBM Reveals The Biggest Artificial Brain of All Time

From Popular Mechanics:

IBM has revealed the biggest artificial brain of all time, a simulation run by a 147,456-processor supercomputer that requires millions of watts of electricity and over 150,000 gigabytes of memory. The brain simulation is a feat for neuroscience and computer processing—but it's still one-eighty-third the speed of a human brain and is only as large as a cat's. Will we ever get to truly capable artificial intelligence? PM reports from IBM's Almaden research center to find out.

Read more ....

Ghostly Bones of Galactic Feast Revealed

From Wired Science:

A new infrared image of the galaxy Centaurus A reveals the gassy, ghastly bones of a galaxy that it consumed several hundred million years ago.

The parallelogram of stars leftover from the collision had been obscured by dust. But using new processing techniques in the near-infrared part of the spectrum, European Southern Observatory astronomers were able to glimpse the leftovers of the cosmic dinner.

Read more ....

Physicists Move One Step Closer to Quantum Computing

Photo: This is postdoctoral researcher Greg Fuchs in the lab of UCSB's Center for Spintronics and Quantum Computation. (Credit: George Foulsham, Office of Public Affairs)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Nov. 23, 2009) — Physicists at UC Santa Barbara have made an important advance in electrically controlling quantum states of electrons, a step that could help in the development of quantum computing. The work is published online November 20 on the Science Express Web site.

The researchers have demonstrated the ability to electrically manipulate, at gigahertz rates, the quantum states of electrons trapped on individual defects in diamond crystals. This could aid in the development of quantum computers that could use electron spins to perform computations at unprecedented speed.

Read more ....

Why Kids Ask Why

From Live Science:

A child's never-ending "why's" aren't meant to exasperate parents, scientists say. Rather, the kiddy queries are genuine attempts at getting at the truth, and tots respond better to some answers than others.

This new finding, based on a two-part study involving children ages 2 to 5, also suggests they are much more active about their knowledge-gathering than previously thought.

"Even from really early on when they start asking these how and why questions, they are asking them in order to get explanations," lead researcher Brandy Frazier of the University of Michigan told Live Science.

Read more ....

How Long Can a Nuclear Reactor Last?

OLDIE BUT GOODIE: Extending the life span of aging nuclear power plants could be essential to meet the nation's energy needs. WIKIMEDIA COMMONS/GREUDIN

From Scientific American:

Industry experts argue old reactors could last another 50 years, or more.

Could nuclear power plants last as long as the Hoover Dam?

Increasingly dependable and emitting few greenhouse gases, the U.S. fleet of nuclear power plants will likely run for another 50 or even 70 years before it is retired -- long past the 40-year life span planned decades ago -- according to industry executives, regulators and scientists.

Read more ....

High-Fliers Swear A 5am Start Is The Key To Success

Photo: Yawn chorus: Is 5am a productive time to begin the day?

From The Daily Mail:

But how do you do it all, I asked my high-powered friend Fiona, who had just reeled off her latest long list of projects. 'Oh, I get up at 5am,' she said. 'So by breakfast time, I've cleared emails, been through the diary and can hit the ground running.'

That did it. For years, I've heard people proclaim the advantages of early rising. Yoga teachers, life coaches and exercise gurus swear by its benefits for the body.

Over-achievers find it's the best time to get things done because their brains are fresh and ready for action.

Anna Wintour, the editor of American Vogue, famously rises at 5am to fit in an hour's tennis before her 6am blow-dry each day.

Read more ....

Sophisticated Hunters Not To Blame For Driving Mammoths To Extinction

Giant animals such as the woolly mammoth were already facing extinction by the time humans had developed more lethal weapons. Photograph: Corbis/Royal BC Museum, British Columbia

From The Guardian:

Woolly mammoths and other giant ice-age mammals faced extinction 2,000 years before deadly speartips were invented.

Woolly mammoths and other large, lumbering beasts faced extinction long before early humans perfected their skills as spearmakers, scientists say.

The prehistoric giants began their precipitous decline nearly 2,000 years before our ancestors turned stone fragments into sophisticated spearpoints at the end of the last ice age.

Read more ....

Blood And Guts: On The Brink Of A Revolution

Susie Colbert, 33, has a prominent 5in scar as the result of breaking her arm in two places while whitewater rafting in 2006. 'I've accommodated the scar into my self-image now, but other people are still taken aback by it,' she says. Jason Alden

From The Independent:

Scientists will soon be able to manufacture body tissue to order if clinical trials continue to yield promising results.

The future of British medical science looks bright, brilliant and very, very bold. Scientists have taken giant steps towards being able to manufacture new skin, blood and even new bones.

Read more ....

Atlantis Astronaut Becomes A Father

NASA said it is the second time a baby has been born to
a US astronaut during a space flight Photo: AP/NASA

From The Telegraph:

An astronaut on the space shuttle Atlantis has become a father while in orbit, when his wife back on Earth gave birth to their baby daughter, NASA announced.

Randy Bresnik who ventured out on his first spacewalk on Saturday, became a father for the second time when his wife, Rebbeca Burgin, gave birth.

"Abigail Mae Bresnik arrived at 12.04am Sunday, November 22," the US space agency said in a statement posted on its website, adding that mother and child are "doing well".

Read more ....

Google Chrome OS: Why Should People Switch?

Google Chrome OS isn't scheduled to arrive for another year, but Google has a lot to do before then to make the project attractive to the average user. (Google Chrome OS screenshot)

From The Christian Science Monitor:

Google Chrome OS has buzz now, but a number of stars will have to align for many folks to migrate to it.

Will you be using Chrome OS a year from now?

At the Web-based operating system’s coming-out party at Google headquarters on Thursday, Google presented its vision of Chrome, and a huge amount of information on what the browser and operating system are based on, how they run, and the safeguards in place to ensure they run well. But missing in all of that, at least to this observer, was a clear exposition of how Google plans to get users onboard – in essence, the hook.

Read more ....

U.S. Exhausted Oil And Gas Supplies — Repeatedly -- A Commentary

From The Houston Chronicle:

What city contributed most to the making of the modern world? The Paris of the Enlightenment and then of Napoleon, pioneer of mass armies and nationalist statism? London, seat of parliamentary democracy and center of finance? Or perhaps Titusville, Pa.

Oil seeping from the ground there was collected for medicinal purposes — until Edwin Drake drilled and 150 years ago — Aug. 27, 1859 — found the basis of our world, 69 feet below the surface of Pennsylvania, which oil historian Daniel Yergin calls “the Saudi Arabia of 19th-century oil.”

For many years, most oil was used for lighting and lubrication, and the amounts extracted were modest. Then in 1901, a new well named for an East Texas hillock, Spindletop, began gushing more per day than all other U.S. wells combined.

Since then, America has exhausted its hydrocarbon supplies.

Repeatedly.

Read more ....

IBM's Blue Gene Supercomputer Models a Cat's Entire Brain

Simulating Cat Minds Can I haz brainz? IBM

From Popular Science:

Using 144 terabytes of RAM, scientists simulate a cat's cerebral cortex based on 1 billion neurons and 10 trillion synapses.

Cats may retain an aura of mystery about their smug selves, but that could change with scientists using a supercomputer to simulate the the feline brain. That translates into 144 terabytes of working memory for the digital kitty mind.

Read more ....

Large Hadron Collider: Beams Are Back on at World's Most Powerful Particle Accelerator

Repairs being made in March 2009 to the damaged section of the LHC. (Credit: Courtesy of CERN)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Nov. 20, 2009) — Particle beams are once again zooming around the world's most powerful particle accelerator -- the Large Hadron Collider -- located at the CERN laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland. On November 20 at 4:00 p.m. EST, a clockwise circulating beam was established in the LHC's 17-mile ring.

After more than one year of repairs, the LHC is now back on track to create high-energy particle collisions that may yield extraordinary insights into the nature of the physical universe.

Read more ....

Wiring the Wilderness

An HPWREN automated digital camera on Lyons Peak captured an image around 8:00 p.m. on Sunday, July 23, 2006, that shows the extent of the Horse Fire. The camera remotely collected many images that day, which the researchers were able to use to better understand the wildfire. Credit: HPWREN

From Live Science:

HPWREN (the High-Performance Wireless Research and Education Network) began in 2000 with the objective of connecting remote science sites to a high-speed network. Today, the wireless network covers nearly 20,000 square miles in San Diego, Riverside and Imperial counties in Southern California.

Hans-Werner Braun, a research scientist at the University of California, San Diego, Supercomputer Center, is principal investigator of the project along with Frank Vernon, a geophysicist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

Read more ....

Money Does Not Make You Happy 'But Therapy Does'

From The Telegraph:

Money does not make you happy but therapy does, academics have discovered.

A massive pay rise or even winning the National Lottery may not offer as much joy as talking about your problems, researchers have found.

They warn that often we overestimate how much money will increase our happiness.

Read more ....

How 16 Ships Create As Much Pollution As All The Cars In The World

Waiting game: Tankers moored off Devon waiting for oil prices to rise even further

From The Daily Mail:

Last week it was revealed that 54 oil tankers are anchored off the coast of Britain, refusing to unload their fuel until prices have risen.

But that is not the only scandal in the shipping world. Today award-winning science writer Fred Pearce – environmental consultant to New Scientist and author of Confessions Of An Eco Sinner – reveals that the super-ships that keep the West in everything from Christmas gifts to computers pump out killer chemicals linked to thousands of deaths because of the filthy fuel they use.

Read more ....

Acid Oceans Leave Fish At More Risk From Predators

From The BBC:

Ocean acidification could cause fish to become "fatally attracted" to their predators, according to scientists.

A team studying the effects of acidification - caused by dissolved CO2 - on ocean reefs found that it leaves fish unable to "smell danger".

Young clownfish that were reared in the acidified water became attracted to rather than repelled by the chemical signals released by predatory fish.

The findings were published in the journal Ecology Letters.

Read more ....

Life Expectancy And The Dangers Of Defying Death

The hands of a century old pensioner (101 years) in the day room of Manor croft care home in Fareham. The state pension is 100 years old this year. (Richard Pohle/The Times)

From Times Online:

Understanding and predicting longevity are vital if we are to manage the implications of greater life expectancy.

There’s been a lot of news recently about dying — or, more exactly, about surviving. According to figures for 2006-08 just published by the Office for National Statistics, life expectancy at birth in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, West London, has reached 84.3 years for males, 88.9 for females.

Read more ....

Bing: Google Gets Some Real Competition

From the Christian Science Monitor:

It’s hard to compete when your opponent’s name is so popular that it’s become a verb. Such is the plight of every search engine that dares to challenge Google.

Last year, four search engines made up more than 95 percent of all search traffic: Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Ask. Only Google increased its share of the pie that year, eating up 67 percent of all searches in January and 72 percent by 2009, according to the online traffic monitor Hitwise.

Read more ....

H1N1 Isn't The Only Worry: Syphilis Is Making A Comeback

From McClatchy:

RALEIGH, N.C. _ As health departments battle the H1N1 flu virus, North Carolina health workers worry that another epidemic may be brewing - one for a sexually transmitted disease that had almost disappeared from the state 10 years ago.

Cases of syphilis in the state have nearly doubled in the past year: 684 in the first nine months, compared to 359 cases for the same period a year earlier.

Read more ....

A Look At Global Warming Written In A Cooler And More Skeptical Time, Giving Us A Better Understanding Of Climate Science

Hackers targeted the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit, pictured, and published sensitive emails on the internet. Photo from The Daily Mail.

From Fabius Maximus:

The hacked emails and papers from the UK’s Climate Research Unit reveal the underside of climate science (as the many bizarre conclusions do the same for the anti-AGW mob). Spinning data to conceal contrary evidence, avoiding freedom of information requests, purging the profession of skeptical voices. All familiar things to anyone familiar with the history of science. All evidence of the most important step needed, and that most strongly opposed by most climate scientists:

Raise the standards when applying science research to public policy questions. That means requiring full transparency of data and methods used in climate science research, and third party review of the data, analysis, and models.

Read more ....

The Dubai Airshow As Seen From Orbit

Dubai Airshow 2009 : Courtesy GeoEye (See it bigger!)

From Popular Science:

Our friend the GeoEye-1 satellite, which tirelessly photographs the world at half-meter resolution from its constant orbit, swung by the Dubai Airport the other day and took this snap of the Dubai Airshow, in progress this week. Thanks, GeoEye-1!

Read more ....

Were Rats Behind Easter Island Mystery?

Moai statues on Easter Island, or Rapa Nui, among the most remote spots on Earth.
By Jayne Clark, USA TODAY

From USA Today:

Easter Island's mystery — brooding statues atop a treeless Polynesian island — fascinates tourists and scholars alike.

And inspires debate.

"Who or what destroyed the ancient palm woodland on Rapa Nui (Easter Island)?" ask German ecologists Andreas Mieth and Hans-Rudolf Bork, in an upcoming paper in the Journal of Archaeological Science. "The circumstances, causes and triggers of these environmental changes are the subject of persistent scientific discussion."

Read more ....

Solar Winds Triggered By Magnetic Fields

XRT Full Sun (Synoptic). (Credit: Images courtesy of JAXA, NAOJ, PPARC and NASA.)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Nov. 22, 2009) — Solar wind generated by the sun is probably driven by a process involving powerful magnetic fields, according to a new study led by UCL (University College London) researchers based on the latest observations from the Hinode satellite.

Scientists have long speculated on the source of solar winds. The Extreme Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrometer (EIS), on board the Japanese-UK-US Hinode satellite, is now generating unprecedented observations enabling scientists to provide a new perspective on the 50-year old question of how solar wind is driven. The collaborative study, published in this month's issue of Astrophysical Journal, suggests that a process called slipping reconnection may drive these winds.

Read more ....

Sushi Often Not What You Think

Giant Atlantic bluefin tuna from Prince Edward Island, Canada. Credit: Jay R. Rooker

From Live Science:

That tuna in your sushi might be an endangered species, a new study finds.

Some genetic detective work by scientists has shown that bluefin tuna, an endangered fish, regularly gets put on the plates of sushi eaters in New York and Colorado.

"When you eat sushi, you can unknowingly get a critically endangered species on your plate," said Jacob Lowenstein, a graduate student affiliated with the American Museum of Natural History in New York and Columbia University. "But with an increasingly popular technique, DNA barcoding, it is a simple process for researchers to see just what species are eaten at a sushi bar."

Read more ....

“Planestupid” Kills Polar Bears Via CGI To Make A Point

CSN Editor: For more info, read from Watts up With That?

Fewer Players 'Secret To World Cup Success'

From The Telegraph:

The secret to success in next year’s Football World Cup could have been uncovered by academics.

New research shows that managers who field the fewest players during a campaign go on to win the most trophies.

By contrast, those who tinker too often with their selection cut their chances of victory.

Read more ....

Beam Sent From Large Hadron Collider After 14 Months Of Repairs

Large Hadron Collider: The machine has been restarted after $40million of repairs

From The Daily Mail:

The world’s largest atom smasher, the Large Hadron Collider, has been re-started after 14 months of repairs.

The $10billion (£6billion) machine suffered a spectacular failure more than a year ago – just nine days after the launch.

Scientists are hoping the results from the device, which was designed to smash together beams of protons in a bid to recreate conditions after the Big Bang, will shed some light on the makeup of matter and the universe.

Read more ....

Water Mission Returns First Data

Smos builds up its map data in strips as it sweeps around the Earth

From BBC:

Europe's latest Earth observation satellite has returned its first data.

Smos was launched earlier this month on a quest to help scientists understand better how water is cycled around the Earth.

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

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

Read more ....