Hydrogen-Economy On The Way? New Hydrogen-Storage Method Discovered

This schematic shows the structure of the new material, Xe(H2)7. Freely rotating hydrogen molecules (red dumbbells) surround xenon atoms (yellow). (Credit: Image courtesy of Nature Chemistry)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Nov. 25, 2009) — Scientists at the Carnegie Institution have found for the first time that high pressure can be used to make a unique hydrogen-storage material. The discovery paves the way for an entirely new way to approach the hydrogen-storage problem.

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Paper-Thin Batteries Made From Algae

Batteries made of paper may power electronics in the future, researchers say. Shown are images from an experimental paper-based battery. Credit: The American Chemical Society.

From Live Science:

Imagine wrapping paper that could be a gift in and of itself because it lights up with words like "Happy Birthday." That is one potential application of a new biodegradable battery made of cellulose, the stuff of paper.

Scientists worldwide are striving to develop thin, flexible, lightweight, inexpensive, environmentally friendly batteries made entirely from nonmetal parts. Among the most promising materials for these batteries are conducting polymers.

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The Future Of Dating...Robots

Watch CBS News Videos Online

Industrial Thanksgiving: Science Takes Mom’s Recipes to the Assembly-Line

From Wired Science:

Thanksgiving is about eating, and though local, organic food might be what the cool kids are eating, most people are still eating products of the industrial food system.

Whether you’re talking turkey, cranberries or potatoes, industrial-scale processes have been developed to drive down food costs, drive up corporate profits and feed America’s incredible hunger for novel food items.

But most consumers of these manufactured meals have little or no knowledge of the machines and methods used to freeze turkeys, turn potatoes into fake potatoes, and cranberries into TV-dinner cranberry sauce. It’s not always pretty, but food scientists’ epic battle to scale up your mom’s recipes without making them taste nasty is worth examining, if not giving thanks for.

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Thanksgiving Day Facts: Pilgrims, Dinner, Parades, More

From National Geographic:

It may be called Turkey Day, but the U.S. Thanksgiving Day is about more than just the bird. Learn about a holiday myth—the first "real" Thanksgiving wasn't until the 1800s—and how we celebrate Thanksgiving dinner today.

Key to any Thanksgiving Day menu is a fat turkey and cranberry sauce.

Some 250 million turkeys were raised in the U.S. in 2009 for slaughter, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Agricultural Statistics Service. Those birds were worth about U.S. $4.5 billion.

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Chandra Hosts A Carnival Of Space

From the Chandra Blog:

This week, the United States marks the Thanksgiving holiday. For most of us, this means lots of time with family (sometimes too much), friends, and vast amounts of food. It also causes all productivity to cease anywhere close to Thursday and the days that follow. That said, however, science and space never sleep – not even from an overdose of tryptophan. (For those of you who are unfamiliar with this word, it has to do with pseudo-urban legends surrounding the American overconsumption of turkey on this holiday.) Now, off to our spin around the blogs.

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Intelligence and Technology Achievement and Productivity

From The Next Big Future:

There are some rare individuals with IQs in the 200's and their brains are not larger than regular people.

Highest IQs Ever

The dominate, rigorously researched, and documented answer (who had the highest IQ) is German polymath Johann von Goethe (IQ = 210), second to Shakespeare in literature, with a vocabulary of over 90,000 words, inspiration to Darwin, with his theories on maxilla bone evolution, mental compatriot to Newton, with his theory of colors, and founder of the science of human chemistry, with his 1809 treatise Elective Affinities, wherein a human chemical reaction view of life is presented, some two-hundred years ahead of its time.

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Arming The Immune System Against H1N1

Image: Defense mechanism: Researchers creating a new vaccine against H1N1 hope to harness the power of the immune system's dendritic cells (one such cell is shown above in blue), which are responsible for directing the body's immune response. Credit: Oliver Schwartz, Institute Pasteur / Science Photo Library

From Technology Review:

Researchers are working to treat pandemic flu by recruiting a patient's own immune cells.

Viruses multiply incredibly quickly once they've infected their victim--so fast that antiviral medications such as Tamiflu are only effective if given during the first few days of an infection. After that, the viral load is just too high for a single drug to fight off. But researchers are working on a treatment for the H1N1 virus (or swine flu) that uses a different approach. Rather than disabling the virus with a drug, they're creating a vaccine that can activate and steer a patient's own immune cells to attack the invader.

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Shuttle Atlantis Departs From Space Station

From Space.com:

The space shuttle Atlantis cast off from the International Space Station early Wednesday after almost a week linked to deliver vital spare parts.

The shuttle detached from the orbiting laboratory at 4:53 a.m. EST (0953 GMT), and flew in a circle around the station so that astronauts on the orbiter could snap detailed photographs to check on the state of the outpost.

"It's a pretty exciting thing to do, be able to see the station you were living in again now on the farewell," STS-129 commander Charlie Hobaugh said in a preflight interview. "Just having it gives us a new snapshot in time of the condition of the vehicle at that point."

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Utility Energy Storage No Longer Just Giant Batteries

(Credit: PG&E)

From CNET News:

If you need more evidence that energy storage is much more than lithium ion batteries, take a look at the latest smart-grid utility storage projects.

The Department of Energy on Tuesday announced that $620 million in stimulus funding is going to 32 smart-grid programs, which will be coupled with another $1 billion in private money. A total of $770 million from government and industry sources in the next few years will go to energy storage, giving a number of storage technologies a dose of real-world experience. (See this PDF for details.)

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Cookbook Reveals Secrets of Space Cuisine

In this photo taken aboard the International Space Station in 2001, cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin (left) and astronaut Frank L. Culbertson smile before their Thanksgiving meal. Their food is taped down to prevent it from floating away. NASA

From Discovery:

Retired NASA space foodie Charles Bourland dishes about astronaut cuisine in a new book.

Pining for some thermostabilized chicken fajitas this Thanksgiving? That's what some of the shuttle Atlantis astronauts will feast on this holiday, which falls one day before their scheduled homecoming on Friday.

Colleagues left behind on the International Space Station, who hosted the shuttle crew for a week, plan a bit more of a traditional meal, with turkey, trimmings and a wide variety of side dishes.

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Violent World Of Raptors Explored

Ospreys have talons that are large, highly curved and nearly uniform, especially suited for catching fish. This osprey snatched a fish from the Firehole River in Yellowstone National Park. (Credit: MSU photo by Kelly Gorham)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Nov. 25, 2009) — A journey that started with a box of bird feet carried three Montana State University graduate students into the gruesome world of raptors and led to their findings being published in a prominent journal.

Normally focused on dinosaurs, the students compared the claws and killing methods of four types of raptors and published a paper about their research in the Nov. 25th issue of PLoS ONE, a scientific journal published online by the Public Library of Science. The birds of prey that were studied live in North America and Europe and include eagles and hawks, owls, osprey and falcons.

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5 Myth-Busting Facts For A Safe Turkey

From Live Science:

Whether you're a seasoned cook or it's your first time stuffing a turkey, you likely want the end result to be tasty and easy on the belly. Yet even experts admit Thanksgiving dinner can be challenging.

"It's a complicated meal," said Ben Chapman, food safety specialist and assistant professor of food science at North Carolina State University. "You're cooking with something you might only cook once or twice a year. And you're cooking for a large group. As a meal, it's one of the ones that's harder to manage."

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Bloodhound Supercar On The Trail Of 1,000mph Record For Britain

Wing Commander Andy Green poses today in front of a three-quarter scale model of the front section of the Bloodhound SSC. Wg Cdr Green will be the one at the helm of the 1,000mph vehicle

From The Daily Mail:

British engineers have started building what they hope will be the world's fastest car - capable of reaching 1,000mph.

The Bloodhound SSC (Supersonic car) will be powered by a jet engine from Eurofighter Typhoon being positioned above a hybrid rocket. This combination should produce 135,000 horsepower — equivalent to the power of 180 Formula One cars.

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Organic Wine-Makers Look to Greener Packaging

There are no bottles in these boxes of wine -- just wine and the plastic pouch that holds it. Boxing instead of bottling wine saves half the shipping weight (and associated carbon emissions) and keeps the product fresher longer. Bota Box

From Scientific American:

More and more wineries offer organic varieties to lower their eco-footprints. It's no surprise that they're looking at their product packaging's environmental impacts, as well.

With more and more wineries offering organic varieties to lower their eco-footprint, it’s no surprise that they’re looking at the environmental impacts of their packaging as well. The making of conventional glass bottles (and the corks that cap them) uses significant quantities of natural resources and generates considerable pollution. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the process of manufacturing glass not only contributes its share of greenhouse gas emissions but also generates nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide and tiny particulates that can damage lung tissue when breathed in.

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DOE Announces $620 Million in Smart Grid Project Grants

From Popular Science:

While the Smart Grid we needed years ago is still years away, the Obama administration took a step forward today as Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced $620 million in stimulus awards for 32 Smart Grid demonstration projects benefiting 21 states. A decidedly feel-good video that is nonetheless educational was released along with the announcement and explains (in broad terms at least) what the DOE aims to achieve with its Smart Grid investment. View it after the jump.

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Birthplace Of Cosmic Guitar Pinpointed

Space rock (Image: S. Chatterjee/J.M.Cordes/Palomar Observatory)

From New Scientist:

IT'S the biggest guitar in the galaxy. The Guitar pulsar is a stellar corpse that is tearing through interstellar gas and creating a guitar-shaped wake of hot hydrogen (pictured). Its birthplace may now have been found.

Little is known about the origins of such wayward stellar remnants. To hunt for the pulsar's birthplace, Nina Tetzlaff at the University of Jena in Germany and colleagues projected the paths of 140 nearby groups of stars backwards in time over 5 million years.

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Video: Saturn’s Spectacular Aurora in Action

From Wired Science:

How can you not love Cassini? The latest treat NASA’s spacecraft has provided us is the first ever movie of Saturn’s incredible aruroras.

The high-resolution video was assembled from 472 still images, spaced over 81 hours in October, that show the phenomenon in three dimensions. The lights can be seen as a rippling, vertical sheet up to 750 miles high above Saturn’s northern hemisphere.

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Lost: Darwin's Missing Notebook

Charles Darwin Photo: PA

From The Telegraph:

An appeal has been launched to track down one of Charles Darwin's most important notebooks, which was probably stolen in the early 1980s.

English Heritage wants anyone who might know of the whereabouts of Darwin's 'Galapagos notebook' to come forward.

It is launching the appeal today to coincide with the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species.

To mark the anniversary, English Heritage is also publishing online Darwin's 14 other notebooks from his time aboard HMS Beagle between 1831 and 1836.

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Harnessing The Power Of Sea Water, Norway Unveils World's First Salt Power Generator

(Click Image to Enlarge)

From The Daily Mail:

The world's first salt power generator was today unveiled in Norway.

The system which harnesses the energy produced when fresh water and sea water mix was devised by the energy company Statkraft.

It has been estimated that globally, salt power could produce 1,600-1,700 terawatt hours, equivalent to half of the European Union's total annual power production.

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HIV Infections And Deaths Fall As Drugs Have Impact

From The BBC:

Greater access to anti-retroviral drugs has helped cut the death toll from HIV by more than 10% over the past five years, latest figures show.

The World Health Organization and the Joint UN Programme on HIV/Aids (UNAids) say an estimated 33.4 million people worldwide are infected with HIV.

That figure is up from 33 million in 2007 because fewer are dying with HIV.

The latest report also shows there has been a significant drop in the number of new HIV infections.

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How The Brain Filters Out Distracting Thoughts To Focus On A Single Bit Of Information

Laura Colgin is a postdoctoral fellow at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology's Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience and Centre for the Biology of Memory. (Credit: Image courtesy of The Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU))

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Nov. 23, 2009) — The human brain is bombarded with all kinds of information, from the memory of last night's delicious dinner to the instructions from your boss at your morning meeting. But how do you "tune in" to just one thought or idea and ignore all the rest of what is going on around you, until it comes time to think of something else?

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Bigger Brains Not Always Smarter

From Live Science:

More brains doesn't necessarily equal more smarts, a new comparison of animal noggins reveals.

Tiny insects could be as intelligent as much bigger animals, despite only having a brain the size of a pinhead, researchers argue in the Nov. 17 issue of the journal Current Biology.

The scientists found that past studies suggest larger animals may need bigger brains simply because there is more to control — for example they need to move bigger muscles and therefore need more and bigger nerves to move them, the authors say. But that may not equate to higher thought.

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One-Quarter of World's Population Lacks Electricity

PRIMITIVE ENERGY: With no electricity, many people in Third World countries cook their food over wood fires. ISTOCKPHOTO/DORINS

From Scientific American:

Replacing wood and coal with electricity could help reduce poverty and pollution.

Some 130 years since Thomas Edison's breakthrough with artificial light, nearly a quarter of humanity still lacks electricity, a fact officials here want delegates to the upcoming U.N. climate talks to consider.

Vast swaths of the world also have no access to modern fuels like natural gas, kerosene or propane, relying instead on wood or charcoal as principal sources of energy. Switching to energy sources that are more efficient and less detrimental to human health is a prerequisite for raising billions out of poverty as nations promised to do, U.N. officials point out.

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NASA Robotic Rocket Plane To Survey Martian Surface

NASA's Martian Rocket Plane courtesy of NASA

From Popular Science:

Since budget cuts and the inability to overcome problems like boredom and high radiation doses have ruled out any manned mission to Mars in the foreseeable future, NASA has shifted gears back towards a program of robotic exploration. To that end, NASA now wants a rocket-powered UAV to fly around the Red Planet, photographing the surface.

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Orion's Dark Secret: Violence Shaped The Night Sky

Dark forces at work (Image: Andy Martin)

From New Scientist:

WHERE will astronomers stop in their love affair with the enigmatic substance called dark matter? First we were told it was essential to allow a galaxy to spin without falling apart. Then it was the glue that held clusters of galaxies together. Later it was said to have catalysed the formation of the galaxies in the first place. Now, surely, they have gone too far. If the latest theories pan out, dark matter has also given us some of the world's most enduring astrological myths.

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Apple 27-Inch iMac

Michael Calore/Wired.com

Apple's 27-Inch iMac Is Big, Bright and Beautifully Fast -- Wired

Put one of Apple's new 27-inch Core i7 iMacs on your desk, and you run the risk of alienating yourself from your friends, co-workers and loved ones.

Sure, the sheer speed of the thing is amazing — the new Core i7 processor is outrageously fast — but it's the massive screen that will turn your brain into a gob of HD-saturated jelly. Seriously. The iMac's screen is so freaking huge, so bright and so crisp, it will render you dumb with child-like glee. You'll just want to sit there and watch movies all day and night.

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My Comment: I sampled one yesterday .... and I was impressed. It had 4 GB of RAM .... not 8 GB ....but it was still super fast. I give it a big thumbs up.

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.

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'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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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."

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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