Optimism As Artificial Intelligence Pioneers Reunite

INTELLIGENCE John McCarthy, seated center, who ran the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, at a reunion last month with Bruce Buchanan to his left and Vic Scheinman on the right. Standing, from left, are Ralph Gorin, Whit Diffie, Dan Swinehart, Tony Hearn, Larry Tesler, Lynn Quam and Martin Frost. John Markoff

From The New York Times:

STANFORD, Calif. — The personal computer and the technologies that led to the Internet were largely invented in the 1960s and ’70s at three computer research laboratories next to the Stanford University campus.

One laboratory, Douglas Engelbart’s Augmentation Research Center, became known for the mouse; a second, Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center, developed the Alto, the first modern personal computer. But the third, the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, or SAIL, run by the computer scientist John McCarthy, gained less recognition.

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Draft Text Divides Climate Summit

From BBC:

Documents leaked at the UN climate summit reveal divisions between industrialised and developing countries over the shape of a possible new deal.

Campaigners say a draft text proposed by the Danish host government would disadvantage poorer nations.

It also sees everything coming under a single new deal, whereas an alternative text from developing countries wants an extension to the Kyoto Protocol.

Other blocs are expected to release their own texts in the next few days.

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New Project In Scramble To Save Vanishing Internet Links

From Times Online:

The Internet Archive is fighting to preserve shortened web links created by free online services that may be running out of money.

What if, the next time you went on the internet, you clicked on a link and nothing happened?

What if billions of internet links all stopped working at once?

As 2010 approaches, this is exactly the problem that the internet is facing. So great is the concern that the Internet Archive in the United States has already begun what some people are calling one of the most important repair jobs in the web’s history.

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Undocumented Volcano Contributed to Extremely Cold Decade From 1810-1819

SDSU Professor Jihong Cole-Dai and his colleagues studied ice cores from Antarctica and Greenland and found evidence of a previously undocumented volcanic eruption exactly 200 years ago that contributed to the record cold decade of 1810-1819. (Credit: Image courtesy of South Dakota State University)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Dec. 7, 2009) — South Dakota State University researchers and their colleagues elsewhere in America and in France have found compelling evidence of a previously undocumented large volcanic eruption that occurred exactly 200 years ago, in 1809. The discovery helps explain the record cold decade from 1810-1819.

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Killer Petunias And Murderous Potatoes Revealed

Petunias have sticky hairs that trap insects. Credit: Stockxpert

From Live Science:

Petunias and potatoes may actually be carnivorous plants, scientists now suggest.

Indeed, carnivorous behavior may be far more widespread in plants than commonly thought — if we take a closer look, botanists said.

At least six different kinds of killer plants have been recognized since the time of Darwin, such as Venus flytraps, which snares insects between its jaw-like leaves, and pitcher plants, which capture victims in slippery pits. These plants apparently target animals to supplement their growth in harsh, nutrient-poor habitats.

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"Very Likely" The Warmest Decade On Record

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From CBS:

At Copenhagen Climate Summit, U.N. Weather Agency also says 2009 Probably Warmest Year in Some Areas.

(CBS/AP) This decade has very likely been the warmest in the historical record, and 2009 will probably end up as one of the warmest years, the U.N. weather agency announced Tuesday at the second day of the 192-nation climate conference in Copenhagen.

In some areas - parts of Africa, central Asia - this will probably be the warmest year, but overall 2009 "is likely to be about the fifth-warmest year on record," said Michel Jarraud, secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organization.

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Google's Real-Time Search Ready To Challenge Bing

From PC World:

Google on Monday unveiled its real-time search capability, the latest salvo in its ongoing feature war with Bing. Microsoft's search engine already integrates real-time Twitter and Facebook results. Now, both search engines have released their initial real-time products, and there's a lot to like from the two major search brands. Let's take a look at how Bing's Twitter search matches up against Google's real-time search.

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Breakthrough Flu Drug Might Already Exist

Image: Structurally sound: The neuraminidase protein of the H1N1 virus is particularly adept at mutating to avoid attack. In this crystal structure, the mutations that allow it to resist Tamiflu and other antiviral drugs are visible as multicolored stick structures. Credit: Dani

From Technology Review:

Fragments of known drugs could lead to a more robust antiviral for H1N1 and other flu variants.

The flu virus is a wily target, constantly mutating to avoid attack from the immune system and from antiviral drugs like Tamiflu. But in research presented Sunday at the annual meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) in San Diego, scientists announced a new method for fighting pandemic influenzas such as H1N1 (swine) and H5N1 (avian).

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Dolphins, Sea Lions To Serve As Marine Guardians Of Naval Base

Photo: Marine Watchdogs: Dolphins and sea lions will soon be "sniffing" out suspicious swimmers near Puget Sound. ISTOCKPHOTO/EDIN

From Scientific American:

The newest batch of sentries at Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor will be paid in fish.

The newest batch of sentries at Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor will not have to wear uniforms. But they won't get to clock out for breaks -- and they will be paid in fish.

The base near Washington's Puget Sound is slated to receive up to 20 Navy-trained bottlenose dolphins and California sea lions to patrol the shoreline around the submarine base as part of a bolstered security initiative started after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

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3 Bets the DOE Is Placing On Science To Break The Climate Stalemate

From Wired Science:

The Advanced Research Projects Agency for energy put out its second call for new ideas, and this time, the agency has narrowed its focused to three research fields.

The new arm of the Department of Energy, which is dedicated to high-risk, high-reward innovations, is betting $100 million on batteries for cars, new materials for capturing carbon, and microorganisms that can convert sunlight and carbon dioxide directly into fuels.

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Volcanic Blast's Devastation Confirmed By Pollen

New pollen and soil evidence suggests the eruption of Toba in Indonesia 73,000 years ago was so severe, the global environment was thrown into chaos. iStockPhoto

From Discovery News:

A massive volcanic explosion in Indonesia rocked the planet 73,000 years ago, cooling temperatures and devastating populations of our ancestors.

It takes a heck of a disaster to wipe the trees off of India. But 73,000 years ago, the titanic eruption of Toba in Indonesia did exactly that, according to a new study, brushing the region clean almost overnight as it kicked the planet into a cold snap that would persist for almost 2,000 years.

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Google Chief: Only Miscreants Worry About Net Privacy

From Register:

'If you don't want anyone to know, don't do it'.

If you're concerned about Google retaining your personal data, then you must be doing something you shouldn't be doing. At least that's the word from Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place," Schmidt tells CNBC, sparking howls of incredulity from the likes of Gawker.

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Dueling E-Book Readers

Watch CBS News Videos Online

From CBS News:

Natali Del Conte Compares Five Top Offerings of This Holiday Season.

(CBS) One of this year's hot gift items is the e-book reader -- portable digital devices used to read books and magazines.

They started taking off in 2001, but were very basic. Today, they're sophisticated, interactive and can perform more functions than just holding text -- and they're experiencing explosive growth.

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Single-Atom Transistor Discovered

a) Colored scanning electron microscope image of the measured device. Aluminum top gate is used to induce a two-dimensional electron layer at the silicon-silicon oxide interface below the metallization. The barrier gate is partially below the top gate and depletes the electron layer in the vicinity of the phosphorus donors (the red spheres added to the original image). The barrier gate can also be used to control the conductivity of the device. All the barrier gates in the figure form their own individual transistors. (b) Measured differential conductance through the device at 4 Tesla magnetic field. The red and the yellow spheres illustrate the spin-down and -up states of a donor electron which induce the lines of high conductivity clearly visible in the figure. (Credit: American Chemical Society)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Dec. 7, 2009) — Researchers from Helsinki University of Technology (Finland), University of New South Wales (Australia), and University of Melbourne (Australia) have succeeded in building a working transistor, whose active region composes only of a single phosphorus atom in silicon.

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Scientists: Northern Forests Need Saving, Too

From Live Science:

When fire destroys forests, or when discarded wood products are burned at the dump, carbon dioxide (CO2) escapes into the air. Hence, in part, the uproar denouncing the slash-and-burn destruction of tropical jungles. But let’s not overlook another great woodland biome: the boreal forest.

That’s the plea voiced in a recent opinion paper by Corey J.A. Bradshaw of the University of Adelaide in Australia and two colleagues. They point out that far northern forests represent a third of all remaining woodlands and 30 percent of all terrestrially stored carbon on Earth. Those vast coniferous tracts covering much of Alaska, Canada, Scandinavia, and Russia are still relatively unscathed, but they face increasing threats.

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MIT Harnesses Online Crowds To Beat Darpa Balloon Challenge In Just 9 Hours

DARPA Network Challenge Winner MIT's team claimed victory just nine hours
after the first balloons went up DARPA

From Popular Science:

The Pentagon's DARPA agency wanted to know how to filter trustworthy information from social networks; MIT had the answer.

Groups of friends and strangers spent more than a month preparing for perhaps the greatest social networking competition in history. All wanted to be the first to find 10 red weather balloons scattered across the continental U.S. on December 5, and claim a $40,000 prize from the Pentagon's DARPA agency.

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My Comment: That was fast .... it also tells everyone that the power of social networks should not be ignored.

Personalised Vaccines Could Protect All Children

Time for your personalised shot (Image: Phanie Agency/Rex Features)

From New Scientist:

CHILDREN whose genetic make-up means they may not be protected by the standard form of a vaccine could in future be given a personalised shot. This is the prospect raised by the discovery of gene variants that seem to predict whether an individual will produce enough antibodies in response to a vaccine to protect them against disease.

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Childhood Obesity Linked To Mutant Gene

A genetic mutation may be the real reason overweight children cannot shift the pounds
Photo: Alamy

From The Telegraph:

Childhood obesity could be caused by a genetic mutation, scientists at Cambridge University believe.

Findings show for the first time that the condition can be a genetic one, rather than the result of over feeding.

The study could have a major impact on the decision of social services to take obese children into care where they believe they are being abused.

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Computer Pop-Ups Waste Time Even After They Have Disappeared

Computer annoyance: Pop-ups waste more time than they take to close, a study has found

From The Daily Mail:

The annoyance of computer screen pop-ups lasts long after they have disappeared or been closed, research has found.

Although they might stay on the screen for just a few seconds, pop-ups make us lose more time trying to find our place and resume the task that was interrupted, a Cardiff University study concluded.

The research, led by Dr Helen Hodgetts and Professor Dylan Jones, examined the cost of on-screen interruptions in terms of the time taken to complete a simple seven-step computer task.

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Ancient Site Reveals Signs Of Mass Cannibalism

Photo: The site contains remains of 500 "intentionally mutilated" humans.

From The BBC:

Archaeologists have found evidence of mass cannibalism at a 7,000-year-old human burial site in south-west Germany, the journal Antiquity reports.

The authors say their findings provide rare evidence of cannibalism in Europe's early Neolithic period.

Up to 500 human remains unearthed near the village of Herxheim may have been cannibalised.

The "intentionally mutilated" remains included children and even unborn babies, the researchers say.

The German site was first excavated in 1996 and then explored again between 2005 and 2008.

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Should You Treat Your Children Like Dogs?

Lucy Atkins's children Isabella, Ted and Sam with Rocket

From The Guardian:

Can dog-whisperering techniques used to control canines also work with children?

On parenting blogs, websites and Twitter, the guilty admissions are all the same: the training techniques of Cesar Millan, AKA "The Dog Whisperer", work on kids too. Millan has published four books; his show runs on a perpetual reel on the National Geographic channel. "As I watched him work with an extremely aggressive pit bull," admits a woman called TheMentorMom on Minti.com, "I saw that some of his techniques and philosophies applied to teaching children."

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Google Launches Real-Time Search

From Wall Street Journal:

Search-engine giant Google Inc. on Monday disclosed partnerships with social Web-sites Facebook and MySpace, and unveiled new technology that enables it to incorporate most-current updates by users of those social networks into its results.

Google said its real-time search technology will feature a scrolling list of near-instantaneous updates from a wide range of other sources, including micro-blogging service Twitter, news sites and documents.

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Mammoth Extinction Altered Ecosystem

New evidence suggests that changes in the North American ecosystem didn't kill the mammoth - their demise may have brought the changes about. Credit: Wikimedia

From Cosmos:

SYDNEY: The extinction of mammoths in North America at the end of the last ice age was not caused by a change in the ecosystem: it's what triggered the changes, a new study suggests.

The study also elucidates a possible cause for the demise of mammoths and mastodons 15,000 years ago, and researchers say that the expanded incidence of fire in the landscape - suspected of being caused by human arrival - only appeared after the extinction.

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Headed Toward Extinction: The Light Bulb

From CBS News:

I come not to praise the incandescent light bulb. I come to bury it.

The familiar incandescent Edison bulb debuted 130 years ago, on December 31, 1879. And the next day, its death spiral will begin. Australia has imposed regulations that will phase the bulb out in 2010 and the European Union will follow in 2012.

The U.S. meanwhile, will get rid of them through new efficiency regulations in stages. 100-watt incandescents will vanish in 2012, followed by 75-watts a year later and 60-watts a year after that.

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Superbright Supernova Is First Of Its Kind

In this schematic illustration of the material ejected from SN 2007bi, the radioactive nickel core (white) decays to cobalt, emitting gamma rays and positrons that excite surrounding layers (textured yellow) rich in heavy elements like iron. The outer layers (dark shadow) are lighter elements such as oxygen and carbon, where any helium must reside, which remain unilluminated and do not contribute to the visible spectrum. (Credit: Image courtesy of DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Dec. 5, 2009) — An extraordinarily bright, extraordinarily long-lasting supernova named SN 2007bi, snagged in a search by a robotic telescope, turns out to be the first example of the kind of stars that first populated the Universe. The superbright supernova occurred in a nearby dwarf galaxy, a kind of galaxy that's common but has been little studied until now, and the unusual supernova could be the first of many such events soon to be discovered.

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Skin Cream Secrets Revealed

Researchers examine skin cream on the nanoscale to better understand what makes it feel smooth
Credit: dreamstime

From Live Science:

If asked to describe how skin cream feels, you might use words like "smooth," "thick," or "greasy."

But for Ohio State University mechanical engineering professor Bharat Bhushan, these words aren't good enough. Using a special instrument, he has gleaned new understanding of how these creams interact with skin on the nanoscale, bringing a more quantitative measure to the smooth sensation.

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The Tech That Makes New Airplanes And Runways Safer

Enhanced and synthetic vision systems (inset) blend GPS information with a topographical database to create a moving digital map of unseen terrain and hazards. (Photograph by Sam Chui)

From Popular Mechanics:

In our Anatomy of a Plane Crash feature, PM investigates the causes behind Air France 447's disappearance. Here are some of the advances in technology for airports, cockpits and airframes—systems that work in tandem to make air flight safer.

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In 2010, The Civilian Space Industry Finally Takes Off

The Final Countdown: October 15, 2009: Virgin Galactic’s bullet-nosed rocket, SpaceShipTwo, sits in the hangar of Scaled Composites in Mojave, California, awaiting a paint job before its public debut in December. Click here to launch the gallery for a closer look at SpaceShipTwo under construction. John B. Carnett

From Popular Science:

Who needs the space shuttle? Take a tour inside the private space industry and its innovative, efficient plans to get astronauts into space when NASA retires its old ride.

For a traveler heading up the highway toward the Mojave Air and Space Port, in the desert 70 miles north of Los Angeles, the surroundings are ghostly. Silent 747s and DC-10 jumbo jets from defunct airlines, along with smaller 727s and DC-9s, some cut up or resting on pylons, are visible from miles away, looking frozen and forlorn. Parked along the road at the airport entrance is a 1962 Convair 990, which began its life as an American Airlines jet airliner. Now the wind whistles through its nacelles and birds nest in its wheel wells.

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Large Moon Of Uranus May Explain Odd Tilt

A massive moon that orbited Uranus in the past may explain the planet's extreme tilt (Image: NASA/ESA/M. Showalter/SETI Institute)

From New Scientist:

Please try to resist the childish jokes, but the fact is that the odd tilt of Uranus may be the result of a particularly large moon.

Uranus spins on an axis almost parallel with the plane of the solar system, rather than perpendicular to it – though why it does this nobody knows. One theory is that the tilt is the result of a collision with an Earth-sized object, but this "hasn't succeeded in explaining much of anything", says Ignacio Mosqueira of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California. Why, for example, are the orbits of Uranus's 27 known moons not also tilted?

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Earth Much More Sensitive To Global Warming Than Thought

Factory smoke. Photo: Martin Pope

From The Telegraph:

The Earth may be 50 per cent more sensitive to the warming effect of carbon dioxide greenhouse gas than has previously been thought, scientists claim.

A new study suggests bigger cuts in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions may be needed to prevent drastic long term climate change.

The evidence was obtained by scientists looking back three million years to the Pliocene epoch, when global temperatures were 5.4F (3C) to 9F (5C) higher than they are today.

They found that levels of CO2 in the atmosphere at the time should not have produced such a warm world.

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Copenhagen Climate Change Summit To Produce As Much CO2 As An African Country

From The Daily Mail:

It is being hyped as the summit that will save the planet.

But according to critics, next week's climate change talks in Copenhagen are more likely to cost the earth.

Researchers have estimated that the bill for the 12-day jamboree will top £130million - and will generate as much greenhouse gas as an entire Africa country.

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Copenhagen Summit Urged To Take Climate Change Action

From The BBC:

Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen has described the UN climate summit in Copenhagen as an "opportunity the world cannot afford to miss".

Opening the two-week conference in the Danish capital, he told delegates from 192 countries a "strong and ambitious climate change agreement" was needed.

About 100 leaders are to attend the meeting, which is intended to supplant the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.

The UN says an unprecedented number of countries have promised emissions cuts.

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Historical Colonization versus Historical Navies and Future Spaceships

From Next Big Future:

In terms of the scale of the effort for colonizing North America, I think it is useful to compare the size of the naval fleets of the time and other historical benchmarks. We know how large the military is today and the share of the total economy that it has. It will be more useful to approximate how large the interplanetary space travel industry will need to be before an interstellar colonization expedition would be a reasonably sustainable activity.

This relates to the discussion of spaceships and whether interstellar spaceships will happen

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Gasoline From Vinegar

Photo: Composting biofuels: Inside this white building, piles of sorghum are broken down into acids. The tanks in the foreground are used for pretreatment and for delivering a mixed culture containing many different organisms that break down biomass. The acids they produce can be used to make gasoline and other chemicals. Credit: Terrabon

From Technology Review:

A process that converts acids from garbage into fuel gets a boost.

A company that has developed a process for converting organic waste and other biomass into gasoline--Terrabon, based in Houston--recently announced a partnership with Waste Management, the giant garbage-collection and -disposal company based in Houston. The partnership could help Terrabon bring its technology to market.

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Nanowires Key To Future Transistors, Electronics

Researchers are closer to using tiny devices called semiconducting nanowires to create a new generation of ultrasmall transistors and more powerful computer chips. The researchers have grown the nanowires with sharply defined layers of silicon and germanium, offering better transistor performance. As depicted in this illustration, tiny particles of a gold-aluminum alloy were alternately heated and cooled inside a vacuum chamber, and then silicon and germanium gases were alternately introduced. As the gold-aluminum bead absorbed the gases, it became "supersaturated" with silicon and germanium, causing them to precipitate and form wires. (Credit: Purdue University, Birck Nanotechnology Center/Seyet LLC)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Dec. 3, 2009) — A new generation of ultrasmall transistors and more powerful computer chips using tiny structures called semiconducting nanowires are closer to reality after a key discovery by researchers at IBM, Purdue University and the University of California at Los Angeles.

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Mind-Machine Breakthrough: People Type With Just Thoughts

Electrodes placed directly on the surface of peoples' brains allow them to type just by thinking of letters. Image credit: stockxpert

From Live Science:

By focusing on images of letters, people with electrodes in their brains can type with just their minds, scientists now reveal.

These findings make up one more step on the road to mind-machine interfaces that may one day help people communicate with just their thoughts. Researchers have recently employed brain scans to see numbers and maybe even pull videos from inside people's heads.

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To Deflect An Asteroid, Try A Lasso, Not ANuke

From Wired Science:

To save the world from the real threat of a major asteroid impact, one engineer has imagined a scheme similar to George Bailey’s wish to lasso the moon for his sweetheart in “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

The plan is to attach a gigantic weight to an Earth-bound asteroid using an enormous cord. This crazy-sounding contraption would change the asteroid’s center of mass and subsequently its trajectory, averting a potentially catastrophic scenario.

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In The Brain, Seven Is A Magic Number

From ABC News:

New Findings on Why You Have Trouble Remembering More Digits.

Having a tough time recalling a phone number someone spoke a few minutes ago or forgetting items from a mental grocery list is not a sign of mental decline; in fact, it's natural.

Countless psychological experiments have shown that, on average, the longest sequence a normal person can recall on the fly contains about seven items. This limit, which psychologists dubbed the "magical number seven" when they discovered it in the 1950s, is the typical capacity of what's called the brain's working memory.

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Will Gadget Revolutionize Our Reading Habits?

From San Francisco Chronicle:

Author Jeff Vande Zande was pleased when his latest book reached a digital milestone - it "went Kindle," formatted as an electronic book for Amazon.com's portable e-reader.

Although the college English professor from Michigan is hopeful about the new market his novel, "Landscape with Fragmented Figures," might reach, he isn't quite sold on electronic readers and still prefers the look, feel and "weathered page" smell of a printed book.

"Not all books are in Kindle edition, so for me, it was a big deal," Vande Zande said. However, he believes "the Kindle is not going to revolutionize books in the same way as the Internet and the iPod have revolutionized how we take in music."

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Dissection Begins On Famous Brain

From The New York Times:

SAN DIEGO — The man who could not remember has left scientists a gift that will provide insights for generations to come: his brain, now being dissected and digitally mapped in exquisite detail.

The man, Henry Molaison — known during his lifetime only as H.M., to protect his privacy — lost the ability to form new memories after a brain operation in 1953, and over the next half century he became the most studied patient in brain science.

He consented years ago to donate his brain for study, and last February Dr. Jacopo Annese, an assistant professor of radiology at the University of California, San Diego, traveled across the country and flew back with the brain seated next to him on Jet Blue.

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Top UN Climate Official Confident That New Pact Will Be Reached In Copenhagen

From UN News Centre:

On the eve of the historic United Nations climate change gathering in Copenhagen, Denmark, a top official with the world body today expressed confidence that the event will deliver a comprehensive and ambitious new deal.

The two-week talks are set to kick off tomorrow in the Danish capital, and by the end of the summit, Governments must adequately respond to the urgent challenge posed by climate change, said Yvo de Boer, Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

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Ottawa Businessman To Be Canada's Second Space Tourist

John Criswick, an Ottawa entrepreneur who has booked a US$200,000 flight on board Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo, stands in front of the plane at its unveiling in July 2008. (HO, Virgin Galactic/THE CANADIAN PRESS)

From CTV News:

MONTREAL — An Ottawa entrepreneur plans to be in California on Monday for the official unveiling of a vehicle that will help him fulfil his childhood dream of being an astronaut.

John Criswick and 13 other Canadians are among 300 space tourists who have made reservations with Virgin Galactic for a trip that will take them on a flight 110 kilometres above the Earth.

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Tiger Woods Should Have Used SpoofCard

From Discovery News:

Oh man. What's going on Tiger Woods? It seems like his world is crashing down around him. Literally. I know he's all about his privacy. Won't talk to the media about personal stuff. But now this voice mail, which he allegedly left on Jamiee Grubbs' mobile phone, has been leaked all over the nation. It's just not looking good.

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School IT Director Loses Job Over Space Alien Hunt

Photo: Silhouette of Very Large Array (VLA), which has contributed in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). In Arizona, a school IT director lost his job over a hunt for alien life. Newscom

From Christian Science Monitor:

District says the former employee's quest for ET will cost it $1.2 million.

The hunt for alien life led one Arizona man on a hunt for a new job.

Brad Niesluchowski used his role as information technology director of an Arizona school district to install SETI@home on computers at work. The free program, part of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) at the University of California at Berkeley, downloads and analyzes data from a radio telescope constantly scanning the cosmos for galactic neighbors.

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Astronauts To Taste 'Space Sushi'

From Space Travel:

US astronaut Timothy Creamer said on Thursday he was impatient to taste "space sushi" courtesy of his Japanese crewmate after they arrive on the International Space Station (ISS) later this month.

"We can't wait for when Soichi makes us sushi!" Creamer said, referring to Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi, at a press conference at the Star City cosmonaut training centre outside Moscow, the Interfax news agency reported.

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Balancing Protein Intake, Not Cutting Calories, May Be Key to Long Life

Rows of jars containing Drosophila, also known as fruitflies, being bred in laboratory conditions. As Drosophila can be bred easily in mass and have a short lifespan, scientists frequently use them in research, particularly in the study of genes. (Credit: Wellcome Library, London)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Dec. 6, 2009) — Getting the correct balance of proteins in our diet may be more important for healthy ageing than reducing calories, new research funded by the Wellcome Trust and Research into Ageing suggests.

The research may help explain why 'dietary restriction' (also known as calorie restriction) -- reducing food intake whilst maintaining sufficient quantities of vitamins, minerals and other important nutrients -- appears to have health benefits. In many organisms, such as the fruit fly (drosophila), mice, rats and the Rhesus monkey, these benefits include living longer. Evidence suggests that dietary restriction can have health benefits for humans, too, though it is unclear whether it can increase longevity.

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New Device Gets A Better Grip On Gaming

The OrbiTouch keyboard, originally created to help people with carpal tunnel syndrome, is taking the gaming world by storm. Credit: Blue Orb

From Live Science:

It's hard enough to navigate an unexplored realm in an online role-playing game, but when your only means of control is the constant back and forth from keyboard to joystick, it can be hard to get into character.

Now, an approach originally designed to help people with carpal tunnel syndrome is emerging as a solution. The system lets users talk, travel and fight — all from the comfort of a single device.

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Will Fusion Fade ... Or Finally Flare Up?

May 31: A video from the National Ignition Facility explains what the super-laser experiment is designed to do. NIF / LLNL

From MSNBC:

The hot, medium and cool prospects for harnessing ultimate star power.

Is nuclear fusion the ultimate energy source, or the ultimate pipe dream? Millions upon millions of dollars are being spent to find out which answer is the right one. For some technologies, the answer could come sooner than later. For others, it may be later rather than sooner.

The easiest way to access fusion power is to go outside on a sunny day: Nuclear fusion is the reaction that powers the sun, by crushing hydrogen atoms into helium atoms and converting the small blips of extra mass into energy. Hydrogen bombs, tested by the world's armies but never used on the battlefield, do the same thing.

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Tempers Flare In Climate Change Flap

From CBS:

One day after reports that Britain's Met office intends to reexamine 160 years' worth of temperature data, emotions over what's now being dubbed "Climategate" are getting more raw by the day.

During a live television faceoff hosted by the BBC, Marc Morano, a former communications director of the U.S. Senate Environment Committee and now an editor with the Web site Climate Depot squared off against Professor Andrew Watson of the University of East Anglia in eastern England. It didn't take long before the two got in each other's face and Watson became increasingly annoyed with Morano's loud interruptions. He finally lost it by the end when the anchor thanked the participants.

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Copying Birds May Save Aircraft Fuel

Photo: Corbis

From The Economist:

BOTH Boeing and Airbus have trumpeted the efficiency of their newest aircraft, the 787 and A350 respectively. Their clever designs and lightweight composites certainly make a difference. But a group of researchers at Stanford University, led by Ilan Kroo, has suggested that airlines could take a more naturalistic approach to cutting jet-fuel use, and it would not require them to buy new aircraft.

The answer, says Dr Kroo, lies with birds. Since 1914, and a seminal paper by a German researcher called Carl Wieselsberger, scientists have known that birds flying in formation—a V-shape, echelon or otherwise—expend less energy. The air flowing over a bird’s wings curls upwards behind the wingtips, a phenomenon known as upwash. Other birds flying in the upwash experience reduced drag, and spend less energy propelling themselves. Peter Lissaman, an aeronautics expert who was formerly at Caltech and the University of Southern California, has suggested that a formation of 25 birds might enjoy a range increase of 71%.

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Shopping Styles Of Men And Women All Down To Evolution, Claim Scientists

From The Telegraph:

The reason women love to spend hours browsing in shops while men prefer to be in and out of the high street in minutes is down to their hunter-gathering past, claim scientists.

Differing roles in prehistoric times have evolved into differing shopping styles, the researchers believe.

While women spent their days gathering food often with children, men were hunters who made specific plans about how to catch and kill their prey.

Read more ....

An End To An Era

Astronaut Hangout to Close After 30 Years -- Space.com

A former Air Force barrack-turned-bar that counted astronauts among its regular patrons will close next month after more than three decades serving the NASA community in Houston.

"The Outpost is closing... and this time, it is for good," wrote owner Stephanie Foster in a note added Tuesday to the Webster, Texas tavern's Web site. "All-in-all, you must admit that it has been an interesting and fun run for this little bar."

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Tunable Terahertz Lasers Could Allow Airport Scanners To Chemically Analyze Substances

Lasers for Scanners Uh sir, you're not supposed to have that TriStar Pictures

From Popular Science:

A new way to tune the width of terahertz quantum cascade lasers heralds a breakthrough in airport scanning and much more.

If Superman saw in terahertz radiation, he could do more than just peer through clothes and the human body. The Man of Steel might also be able to identify the chemical difference between a benign powder or an explosive tucked away inside a vial within a suitcase -- assuming that he could somehow tune his vision.

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French Immigrants Founded First British Farms

From New Scientist:

THE British may owe the French more than they care to admit. Archaeological finds from Britain show that farming was introduced 6000 years ago by immigrants from France, and that the ancient Brits might have continued as hunter-gatherers had it not been for innovations introduced by the Gallic newcomers.

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LHC Gets First Results; Step Toward "God Particle"?

A Large Ion Collider Experiment, or ALICE, (pictured above) recorded the first results from a proton-proton collision inside the Large Hadron Collider, physicists announced in December 2009. The collision created the precise ratio of matter and antimatter particles predicted from theory, showing that the so-called "big bang" machine is working as expected. Picture by Maximilien Brice, copyright CERN

From National Geographic:

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is quickly making up for lost time: The first scientific results from the recently restarted particle accelerator have been announced—about two weeks ahead of schedule.

During the first collisions of the LHC's twin beams of protons, a machine called A Large Ion Collider Experiment, or ALICE, collected the results from a proton-proton smashup.

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