How High Will The Seas Go In A Warmer World?

Remi Benali / Corbis

From Time Magazine:

Even as negotiators scramble to salvage an agreement at the foundering Copenhagen climate talks, a new study in this week's issue of Nature shows that the consequences of inaction on reducing emissions could be more severe than anyone thought.

By looking back about 125,000 years, to a time when global temperatures were as high as they are expected to be by 2100, a team of scientists from Princeton and Harvard universities has calculated that the oceans were probably at least 26 ft. higher than they are now, maybe as much as 31 ft. higher. That's significantly higher than the 13-ft.-to-19-ft. range scientists have been counting on, and it is, write Peter Huybers of Harvard and Peter Clark of Oregon State University in an accompanying commentary in Nature, "a disconcerting message."

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Sky Snake Flexible Blimps Are Bending The Rules On UAV Design

A segmented 76-foot airship during flight testing over Stuttgart, Germany.
(Sanswire-TAO Corp)

From Air And Space Smithsonian:

The blimp—that bloated, egg-shaped thing that blocks out the sun at major public events—remains one of aviation’s oddballs. Think Stay Puft Marshmallow Man in the movie Ghostbusters. And it’s a high-maintenance oddball: lots of construction and operating costs relative to the few people it carries. No speed. Huge amounts of hangar space needed to shelter it when nasty weather arrives. How does this thing get work? Other than hoisting cameras above the Super Bowl for 10-second shots during TV commercial breaks, the blimp, or zeppelin as it’s never called anymore, has been a caricature of itself for decades.

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New Map Reveals Tsunami Risks In California

Photo: West Coast Risk: Some 350,000 California residents are at risk if a tsunami strikes there. istockphoto

From Scientific American:

The map, released close to the fifth anniversary of the 2004 Sumatran Tsunami, will be helpful in emergency response planning.

SAN FRANCISCO—Just days before the fifth anniversary of the 2004 Sumatran Tsunami, California officials on Thursday released a new map of the state's tsunami hazard, which details how an event could affect 350,000 people who live along the coast and cause tens of billions of dollars of damage.

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The (Last and Next) Decade In Gadgets

(Photograph by George Frey/Getty Images)

From Popular Mechanics:

In January 2000, odds are that you didn't own an MP3 player, digital camera or even a cellphone. You certainly couldn't send saliva through the mail to a service (23andMe) to analyze your DNA. Times have changed. Here, Gizmodo's Mark Wilson breaks down the biggest tech breakthroughs of the past 10 years, and predicts where tech is going in the next 10.

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Scientists Find Formula For Beautiful Face

Actress Jessica Alba Photo: GETTY

From The Telegraph:

Beauty is not so much in the eye of the beholder as in the measurements between a woman’s eyes, mouth and ears, scientists claim.

Researchers have calculated the ratios of the “perfect” face and claim that celebrities including Jessica Alba, Liz Hurley and Shania Twain have the magic formula.

While being labelled average is rarely regarded as a compliment, they also found that the “golden ratio” matched dimensions of an average woman’s face.

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Our Vision Of the Future Of Magazines

Mag+ from Bonnier on Vimeo.

From Popular Science:

Although we believe in a strong future for print media, we’re even more excited about the digital potential for magazines. That’s why we’re thrilled with this initial vision for a future PopSci developed by Bonnier’s R&D group with design firm BERG.

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Pictured: Majestic Brown Bears Go Head To Head In Remarkable 15-Minute Duel

The bears fought each other in the middle of stunning Alaskan scenery for 15 minutes before wandering off to catch salmon in a nearby river.

From The Daily Mail:

These two brown bears couldn't have picked a more stunning setting to engage in a spot of rough and tumble.

In front of a spectacular, snow topped mountain range in Alaska, the giant animals took each other to task, with one even taking a crafty low side-swipe.

Despite one of the bears holding a definite weight advantage, the pair grappled and exchanged blows.

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New Weapon In Battle Of The Bulge: Food Releases Anti-Hunger Aromas During Chewing

A real possibility does exist for developing a new generation of foods that make people feel full by releasing anti-hunger aromas during chewing. (Credit: iStockphoto/Jan Couver)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Dec. 17, 2009) — A real possibility does exist for developing a new generation of foods that make people feel full by releasing anti-hunger aromas during chewing, scientists in the Netherlands are reporting after a review of research on that topic. Such foods would fight the global epidemic of obesity with aromas that quench hunger and prevent people from overeating. Their article appears in ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

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New Diet Advice: Curb Weekend Calories

From Live Science:

It's no surprise that holiday feasts often bring expanding waistlines, but a new study finds that weekend eating can also be a cause for concern.

Some people chow down more calories on Saturday and Sunday than on a typical weekday, researchers find. The study also showed that people tend to keep track of how much they are consuming on a daily basis, at least in a rough sense. Specifically, if they skimped on breakfast, they would make up for it by gorging at lunch, more or less.

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Dark Liquor Makes For Worse Hangovers

From Wired Science:

A new study may help drinkers pick their poison. In a head-to-head comparison, bourbon gave drinkers a more severe hangover than vodka, report Damaris Rohsenow of Brown University and colleagues in an upcoming issue of Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.

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Bionics

From National Geographic:

bi-on-ics
Etymology: from bi (as in “life”) + onics (as in “electronics”); the study of mechanical systems that function like living organisms or parts of living organisms

Amanda Kitts is mobbed by four- and five-year-olds as she enters the classroom at the Kiddie Kottage Learning Center near Knoxville, Tennessee. "Hey kids, how're my babies today?" she says, patting shoulders and ruffling hair. Slender and energetic, she has operated this day-care center and two others for almost 20 years. She crouches down to talk to a small girl, putting her hands on her knees.

"The robot arm!" several kids cry.

"You remember this, huh?" says Kitts, holding out her left arm. She turns her hand palm up. There is a soft whirring sound. If you weren't paying close attention, you'd miss it. She bends her elbow, accompanied by more whirring.

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U.S., China, India and Other Nations Arrive at Non-Binding Agreement At U.N. Climate Summit

Photo: UNCERTAIN ACCORD: A draft accord was announced Friday at the United Nations' climate summit, which has nearly concluded in Copenhagen. istockphoto

From Scientific American:

A new draft agreement from both developed and developing countries might prove the key to combating climate change.

COPENHAGEN—The U.S., China, India and South Africa form the core of a growing group of nations that have agreed upon a commitment to combat climate change, concluding a grueling two weeks of negotiations in the Danish capital here as part of the United Nations' climate summit. The so-called "Copenhagen Accord" will not be legally binding but will list in annexed documents, for the first time, commitments from both developed and developing countries to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.

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Head Games: How Helmet Tech Works In 7 Different Sports

From Popular Mechanics:

It's deep into football season, and players benched because of concussions have begun to seem as common as a turnover. That's because, after a string of damning studies, the relationship between head impacts and brain trauma, leading to cognitive impairment later in life, has become difficult to ignore. Football's not the only sport that puts players' heads at risk, though. From Nascar to skiing and cycling, here's what's considered state-of-the-art headgear.

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Ardi - Cousin Of The 'Missing Link' - Named Scientific Breakthrough Of 2009

Breakthrough of the Year Photo: PA

From The Telegraph:

The discovery of a short, ape like creature, that lived more than four million years ago just as humans began walking on two legs was the most important breakthrough of the year, according to one of the most prestigious science magazines.

Ardi - a seven stone, four-foot tall female who roamed African forests 4.4million years ago- was the oldest member of the human family tree found so far, pre-dating the previous ancestor "Lucy" by a million years.

Her discovery, reported in October, sheds light on a crucial period when we were just leaving the trees.

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Majority of U.S. Cocaine Supply Cut with Veterinary Deworming Drug

Cocaine Bricks DEA

From Popular Science:

Cocaine's a hell of a drug, and even more so when laced with another drug that's commonly used to deworm opossums. Federal agents have found that 69 percent of cocaine shipments seized entering the United States contain levamisole, a veterinary drug linked to serious weakening of the immune system in humans. Here's the real funny part: no one knows why.

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The US Air Force's Holiday Wish List: 2500 PlayStations

Leave your beer and pizza at the door, please (Image: Air Force Research Lab)

From The New Scientist:

The US Air Force Research Lab recently put out a request for 2200 Sony PlayStation 3 games consoles. The military researchers want to wired them up with the 300 or so they already have to make a type of supercomputer never seen before.

But it won't be the ultimate gaming system to teach pilots how to blast enemies out of the sky. Instead it will analyse radar and simulate the workings of brains.

The consoles are desirable because of the unique abilities of the chip at their heart. Jointly designed by Sony, Toshiba and IBM, the Cell chip is designed for the speedy and efficient graphics processing that gaming requires, as well as for number crunching.

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Dark Matter Discovered: Scientists Believe They Have Found Elusive Particle That Makes Up 90% Of Universe

This dark matter map was created by the Hubble Telescope by measuring light from distant stars thought to have been deflected by dark matter. The map of half the Universe reveals dark matter filaments, collapsing under the relentless pull of gravity and growing clumpier over time

From The Daily Mail:

Physicists have detected a particle of dark matter for the first time in human history, a number of U.S laboratories announced today.

Should the findings be confirmed it will have an Earth-shattering effect on our understanding of how galaxies form.

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Obama Takes On Skeptics In Speech, Tries To Rally Climate Crusaders

From Watts Up With That?

President Barack Obama spoke on the last day of climate talks at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. The President called on all major economies to put forward decisive national actions that will reduce their emissions and turn the corner on climate change.

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Mammals May Be Nearly Half Way Toward Mass Extinction

Small herd of buffalo in Utah, U.S. If the planet is headed for another mass extinction like the previous five, each of which wiped out more than 75 percent of all species on the planet, then North American mammals are one-fifth to one-half the way there, according to a University of California, Berkeley, and Pennsylvania State University analysis. (Credit: iStockphoto)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Dec. 18, 2009) — If the planet is headed for another mass extinction like the previous five, each of which wiped out more than 75 percent of all species on the planet, then North American mammals are one-fifth to one-half the way there, according to a University of California, Berkeley, and Pennsylvania State University analysis.

Many scientists warn that the perfect storm of global warming and environmental degradation -- both the result of human activity is leading to a sixth mass extinction equal to the "Big Five" that have occurred over the past 450 million years, the last of which killed off the dinosaurs 68 million years ago.

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Human Ancestors Were Homemakers

A basalt handaxe (top) and basalt cleaver (bottom), found at an archaeological site in Israel demonstrating the earliest known living area organization. Credit: Leore Grosman, Computerized Archaeology Laboratory, The Hebrew University

From Live Science:

In a stone-age version of "Iron Chef," early humans were dividing their living spaces into kitchens and work areas much earlier than previously thought, a new study found.

So rather than cooking and eating in the same area where they snoozed, early humans demarcated such living quarters.

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Fake Platelets To Stem Blood Flow

Artist's impression of blood flow, including red and white blood cells and platelets (shown here in yellow). Synthetic platelets bind to natural platelets at the site of an injury, speeding up the clotting process. Credit: iStockphoto

From Cosmos:

SYDNEY: Scientists have developed artificial platelets to enhance the natural process of blood clotting, reducing the risk of fatal blood loss on the battlefield and in the emergency room.

Platelets are colourless disc-shaped cells which activate the blood clotting process, helping to form 'plugs' which stop blood flowing from cuts and grazes. However, they are sometimes overpowered by serious injury or trauma, which can lead to fatal blood loss.

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The LHC Hits 2.36 Trillion Electron Volts—But What Does it Mean?

From Popular Mechanics:

The Large Hadron Collider is back up and running and already breaking records, with a 1.18-trillion-electron-volt beam. But even the basic definition of an electron volt is Latin to most. So what do the new numbers mean? Here, PM explains the electric insides—the electrons and proton beams, joules, volts and megawatts, created and consumed by the world's most powerful proton accelerator.

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Malaria Slows In 1 In 3 Affected Countries

From Time Magazine:

(LONDON) — Malaria cases appear to have been slashed by half in more than a third of countries battling the disease following a renewed push by the United Nations to eradicate it, the World Health Organization said Tuesday.

In a new global report on malaria, the U.N. health agency said it was cautiously optimistic the mosquito-borne disease's spread is slowing, even though its information is patchy and based largely on modeling.

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Chardonnay Descendant Of 'Peasant' Grape

Chardonnay is still considered an unsophisticated wine and is generally shunned by the middle classes Photo: GETTY IMAGES

From The Telegraph:

Turning your nose up at chardonnay is nothing new claim scientists who found the grape is a descendant of a "peasant" variety banned by nobleman hundreds of years ago.

Despite it being one of the main ingredients of champagne, chardonnay is still considered an unsophisticated wine and is generally shunned by the middle classes.

Now scientists believe that the reason may be historical.

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The Big Question: Has A Key Breakthrough Been Made In The Search For A Cure For Cancer?

From The Independent:

Why are we asking this now?

British scientists announced yesterday that they have sequenced a "cancer genome" for the first time. It means they have identified all of the many thousands of genetic mistakes that make a tumour cell different from a healthy cell taken from the same cancer patient.

Not all of these mistakes, or DNA mutations, were involved in triggering the cancer, but some of them – the "drivers" – clearly were. Scientists believe it will be possible eventually to identify these driver mutations and find the genetic faults that led to the changes in a healthy human cell that caused it to divide uncontrollably to form a cancerous tumour.

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Davy Jones's Lock-Up

Photo from ADIC Technologies

From The Economist:

Underwater robots can help study the world’s shipwrecks, a trove of information about the past, more easily and cheaply.

A SHIPWRECK is a catastrophe for those involved, but for historians and archaeologists of future generations it is an opportunity. Wrecks offer glimpses not only of the nautical technology of the past but also of its economy, trade, culture and, sometimes, its warfare. Until recently, though, most of the 3m ships estimated to be lying on the seabed have been out of reach. Underwater archaeology has mainly been the preserve of scuba divers. That has limited the endeavour to waters less than 50 metres deep, excluding 98% of the sea floor from inspection. Even allowing for the tendency of trading vessels to be coasters rather than ocean-going ships, that limits the number of wrecks available for discovery and examination.

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Texting Now More Popular Than Cell Calls

Photo from AP

From CBS News:

(AP) R u kidding me? Americans punched out more than 110 billion text messages last year, double the number in the previous year and growing, as the shorthand communication becomes a popular alternative to cell phone calls.

The nation's 270 million cell phone subscribers each sent out an average of 407 text messages in 2008, according to government statistics released Tuesday by the Census Bureau. That's more than double the 188 messages sent by the average cell subscriber in 2007. The figures did not break down the texting by age, but the overall numbers understate the thousands of texts sent each month by many teens - balanced out by older folks who don't text as much.

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Violence Follows Common Patterns

Photo: Armed conflicts show striking statistical similarities.

From The BBC:

Researchers have uncovered common patterns in the scale and timings of attacks across a variety of different violent conflicts.

A total of 54,679 violent events spanning several decades were analysed.

The team searched for statistical similarities across nine historic and ongoing insurgencies including those of Iraq, Afghanistan and Northern Ireland.

The results, published in Nature journal, may offer the hope of reducing casualties in future conflicts.

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Close-Up Photos Of Dying Star Show Our Sun's Fate

Chi Cygni, shown in this artist's conception, is a red giant star nearing the end of its life. As it runs out of fuel, it pulses in and out, beating like a giant heart and ejecting shells of material. Observations by the Infrared Optical Telescope Array found that, at minimum radius, Chi Cygni shows marked inhomogeneities due to roiling "hotspots" on its surface. (Credit: ESO/L. Calçada)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Dec. 17, 2009) — About 550 light-years from Earth, a star like our Sun is writhing in its death throes. Chi Cygni has swollen in size to become a red giant star so large that it would swallow every planet out to Mars in our solar system. Moreover, it has begun to pulse dramatically in and out, beating like a giant heart. New close-up photos of the surface of this distant star show its throbbing motions in unprecedented detail.

"This work opens a window onto the fate of our Sun five billion years from now, when it will near the end of its life," said lead author Sylvestre Lacour of the Observatoire de Paris.

Read more ....

Geeks Drive Girls Out of Computer Science

From Live Science:

The stereotype of computer scientists as geeks who memorize Star Trek lines and never leave the lab may be driving women away from the field, a new study suggests.

And women can be turned off by just the physical environment, say, of a computer-science classroom or office that's strewn with objects considered "masculine geeky," such as video games and science-fiction stuff.

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The Science Behind James Cameron's Avatar

From Popular Mechanics:

It's the year 2154 and humankind has reached out to the stars in director James Cameron's new science-fiction epic Avatar. The movie takes us to an exotic jungle moon called Pandora where humans are the aliens and a clash is brewing with the natives. Cameron, who has served as an adviser to NASA to investigate a camera for a Mars mission, is known for taking the science in his flicks very seriously. So how did he do? Here we check on some of the movie's scientific bona fides with top researchers in their respective fields to see where artistic license and scientific plausibility meld.

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The Amalgamated Flying Saucer Club Of America, Headquartered In Los Angeles, Released This Photo, Taken By A Member, Reportedly Showing A Flying Sauce

The Amalgamated Flying Saucer Club of America, headquartered in Los Angeles, released this photo, taken by a member, reportedly showing a flying saucer estimated at 70 ft. in diameter. Bettmann / CORBIS

From Time Magazine:

The year 1969 was a great time for hippies, a bad year for Beatles fans and an even worse year for UFO enthusiasts. Forty years ago, on Dec. 17th, the U.S. Air Force officially shuttered Project Blue Book, the agency's third and final attempt to investigate extraterrestrial sightings and the country's longest official inquiry into UFOs. From 1952 until 1969, more than 12,000 reports were compiled and either classified as "identified" — explained by astronomical, atmospheric or artificial phenomenon — or "unidentified," which made up just 6% of the accounts. Because of such a meager percentage and an overall drop in sightings, officials axed the program and ended the research. So much for the truth being out there.

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Flowers Found In Bronze Age Grave

In August a four tonne capstone was removed to reveal a burial chamber
near Forteviot in Perthshire Photo: PA

From The Telegraph:

Grieving relatives have been leaving flowers beside the graves of their loved ones for at least 4,000 years, archeologists have found.

A bunch of meadowsweet blossoms were discovered in a Bronze Age grave at Forteviot, south of Perth.

The find is reported in the journal "British Archaeology", out this week.

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Moon Poses Radiation Risk To Future Travelers

Astronaut Edwin E 'Buzz' Aldrin Jr. walks on the surface of the moon. Future lunar travelers face a radiation dose 30 percent to 40 percent higher than originally expected from radioactive lunar soil. NASA/Neil Armstrong

From Discovery News:

Rather than blocking cosmic rays, the moon itself is a powerful source of radiation, measurements show.

Future lunar explorers counting on the moon to shield themselves from galactic cosmic rays might want to think about Plan B.

In a surprising discovery, scientists have found that the moon itself is a source of potentially deadly radiation.

Measurements taken by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter show that the number of high energy particles streaming in from space did not tail off closer to the moon's surface, as would be expected with the body of the moon blocking half the sky.

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Military Could Use iPhones To Track Friends, Enemies in War

From The Gadget Lab:

What if the iPhone could be used in war? True, it’s primarily a consumer product, but it’s versatile and always connected to the internet (assuming you have network reception) — so why not?

That’s the idea behind new iPhone apps being showcased by Raytheon, a military contractor, at the Intelligence Warfighting Summit in Tucson. One app called the One Force Tracker will provide live data tracking the location of friends and foes on real-time maps. The app will also be used to communicate with other units.

Read more ....

My Comment: This is just another example on the revolution that is occurring in the intelligence community. The key is to know who are foes and who are not .... and provide this information to the men and women in the field. What was science fiction a few years ago .... is rapidly becoming reality today.

More Homes Seen Dumping Landlines

Photo: From iStockphoto

From CBS News:

Age And Location Biggest Factor In Decisions To Abandon Landlines.

(AP) The number of households with cell phones but no landlines continues to grow, but the recession doesn't seem to be forcing poor cellular users to abandon their traditional wired phones any faster than are higher-income people.

The finding, from data compiled by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, suggests that when it comes to telephone habits, peoples' decisions are affected more by age and where they live than by their economic situations.

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Climate Change Is Nature's Way -- A Commentary

From The Wall Street Journal:

Climate Change Is Nature's Way.

Climate change activists are right. We are in for walloping shifts in the planet's climate. Catastrophic shifts. But the activists are wrong about the reason. Very wrong. And the prescription for a solution—a $27 trillion solution—is likely to be even more wrong. Why?

Climate change is not the fault of man. It's Mother Nature's way. And sucking greenhouse gases from the atmosphere is too limited a solution. We have to be prepared for fire or ice, for fry or freeze. We have to be prepared for change.

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'Jesus-Era' Burial Shroud Found

From The BBC:

A team of archaeologists and scientists says it has, for the first time, found pieces of a burial shroud from the time of Jesus in a tomb in Jerusalem.

The researchers, from Hebrew University and institutions in Canada and the US, said the shroud was very different from the controversial Turin Shroud.

Some people believe the Turin Shroud to have been Christ's burial cloth, but others believe it is a fake.

The newly found cloth has a simpler weave than Turin's, the scientists say.

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Will 2010 Be The Breakout Year For E-Book Readers?

Mike Erickson, of Webster Groves, checks out a Sony Reader an e-book at Best Buy, Friday aternoon. "I'm just waiting to see what other kinds of books will be available." Erickson said. Erickson is at the Best Buy in Brentwood. (Dawn Majors/P-D)

From Stltoday:

When Sheila Effan found a Kindle electronic reader among her gifts last Christmas, one of her first thoughts was whether she'd miss the smell and feel of real paper. She got her answer five months later.

That's when a friend lent her a paperback. She lugged it around for a couple of days before tiring of the burden.

"I got annoyed with it. So I just downloaded it to my Kindle," Effan said. "I thought I would miss books. But I don't."

Oh, how the folks behind Amazon.com's Kindle, Sony's Reader and Barnes & Noble's Nook love the sound of that.

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Climate Change Does Not Always Lead to Conflict

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Dec. 17, 2009) — The climate change that took place in Mesopotamia around 2000 BC did not lead to war, but in fact led to the development of a new shared identity. Although increasing drought often leads to competition and conflict, there seems to be no evidence of this in northern Mesopotamia according to Dutch researcher Arne Wossink.

Wossink studied how the farmers and nomads in northern Mesopotamia -- currently the border area between Turkey, Syria and Iraq -- responded to the changes in climate that took place between 3000 and 1600 BC. He expected to find considerable evidence of competition: as food and water became scarcer the natural result could well be conflict. He discovered, however, that the farmers developed much closer bonds with the semi-nomadic cattle farmers.

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Earth's Upper Atmosphere Cooling Dramatically

New research shows that the outermost layer of the atmosphere will lose 3 percent of its density over the coming decade, a sign of the far-reaching impacts of greenhouse gas emissions. As the density declines, orbiting satellites experience less drag. Credit: ©UCAR.

From Live Science:

SAN FRANCISCO — When the sun is relatively inactive — as it has been in recent years — the outermost layer of Earth's atmosphere cools dramatically, new observations find.

The results could help scientists better understand the swelling and shrinking of our planet's atmosphere, a phenomenon that affects the orbits of satellites and space junk.

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McDonald's Free Wi-Fi Part Of Growing Trend

From Computerworld:

Everybody wants free Wi-Fi, and McDonald's Corp. is responding to that demand with Wednesday's announcement that more than 11,000 of its U.S. restaurants will have free Wi-Fi in January.

"We've had Wi-Fi working in our restaurants for five years under the pay-to-play model, but now is the time, with the ubiquity of Wi-Fi devices -- including handhelds and laptops -- to extend that offer," McDonald's USA CIO David Grooms said in an interview today.

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A Global 'Planetary Skin' Network Will Monitor Earth's Resources

Planetary Skin Satellites join forces with drones and
surface sensors to monitor the Earth NASA/Cisco

From Popular Science:

NASA and Cisco officially launch a $100 million effort to integrate ground, sea, air and space sensors.

Every day, farmers and legislators make billions of small- and large-scale decisions that affect the Earth's resources, and typically rely on thousands of fragmented sources of data. Now NASA has joined tech firm Cisco in creating a $100 million "Planetary Skin" that would integrate all the Earth data from satellites, aerial drones and ground sensors, and put it in the hands of any decisionmakers who need it.

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Inconvenient Truth For Al Gore As He's Caught Exaggerating The Threat Of Global Warming... Again

Spin row: Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore makes his controversial speech during a presentation of a report on the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, at the Bella centre of Copenhagen yesterday

From The Daily Mail:

Green crusader Al Gore was at the centre of a new spin row last night after he was caught out for a second time exaggerating the threat of global warming.

In a keynote speech at the Copenhagen talks, the former U.S. vice-president claimed the North Pole could be completely free of ice by the middle of the next decade.

He claimed a study showed a ‘75 per cent chance’ that the Arctic could be ice-free in the summer months within five to seven years.

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Michelangelos Make Smart Lovers

From The Science Blog:

EVANSTON, Ill. --- Is that really Bob? You've seen him hundreds of mornings for the last 10 years at local coffee shops. Since he started dating Sara, he looks you in the eye -- and smiles. Sara takes every opportunity to let coffee shop cronies know that Bob is her guy and to gush about how funny he is. And he is. Who knew?

Think of Sara like Michelangelo chipping away at a block of marble to release the ideal figure slumbering within.

A new international review of seven papers on "the Michelangelo phenomenon" shows that when close partners affirm and support each other's ideal selves, they and the relationship benefit greatly.

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More Powerful Superconducting Magnets will Make More Powerful Particle Colliders

From The Next Big Future:

The completed long quadrupole shell magnet (LQS01) in the Building 77A assembly area of Berkeley Lab's Engineering Division.

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN has just started producing collisions, but scientists and engineers have already made significant progress in preparing for future upgrades beyond the collider’s nominal design performance, including a 10-fold increase in collision rates by the end of the next decade and, eventually, higher-energy beams.

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Most Earth-Like Extrasolar Planet Found Right Next Door

From Wired Science:

Meet GJ 1214b, the most Earth-like planet ever found outside our solar system.

It’s not exactly Earth’s twin: It’s about six times bigger, a whole lot hotter and made mostly of water. But compared to the giant gas balls that account for nearly every other extrasolar planet ever found, it’s pretty darn close. And through a fortunate happenstance of cosmic geometry, astronomers will be able to study GJ 1214b in great detail.

“If you want to describe in one sentence what this planet is, it’s a big, hot ocean,” said Harvard University astronomer David Charbonneau. “We can even study its atmosphere. This planet will occupy us for years. That’s part of what’s so exciting about it.”

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Dying Star Previews Our Own Sun's Fate

Artist's impression of Chi Cygni. As the red giant star runs out of fuel, it pulses in and out, beating like a giant heart and ejecting shells of material. Credit: ESO/L. Calçada

From Cosmos:

CAMBRIDGE: New images of the surface of a distant, dying star offer a preview of the ultimate fate of our own Sun, French scientists say.

"This work opens a window onto the fate of our Sun five billion years from now, when it will near the end of its life," said lead author Sylvestre Lacour of the Observatoire de Paris.

About 550 light-years from Earth, a star like our Sun is writhing in its death throes. Chi Cygni has swollen in size to become a red giant star so large that it would swallow every planet out to Mars in our solar system.

Moreover, it has begun to pulse dramatically in and out, beating like a giant heart.

Read more ....

New Displays For E-Readers: Read All About It

Photo: Getty Images

From The Economist:

Display technology: Readers of electronic books must choose between long battery life or vibrant, living colour. Could they have both?

THE sudden surge in the popularity of e-readers—slate-like devices, such as Amazon’s Kindle, on which electronic books can be read—has been one of the big surprises of 2009. Recessions are often a good time to launch new products, as old certainties are questioned and consumer tastes shift. The iPod made its debut in 2001 in the depths of America’s recession, and e-readers may prove to be a similar success story this time. But today’s e-readers, like that first iPod, are technologically quite simple. Most of them have a monochromatic screen to display text and black-and-white pictures, and none can handle video.

Even so, around 5m e-readers will be sold worldwide in 2009, according to iSuppli, a market-research firm, and a further 12m in 2010. The Kindle is by far the most popular e-reader, but there are many others.

Read more ....

Tremors Between Slip Events: More Evidence of Great Quake Danger to Seattle

Seattle skyline with Mount Rainier in the background. (Credit: iStockphoto/Natalia Bratslavsky)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Dec. 16, 2009) — For most of a decade, scientists have documented unfelt and slow-moving seismic events, called episodic tremor and slip, showing up in regular cycles under the Olympic Peninsula of Washington state and Vancouver Island in British Columbia. They last three weeks on average and release as much energy as a magnitude 6.5 earthquake.

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Robotic Planes Capture Detailed Images Of Remote Antarctic

After three stokes of bad luck, the group launches the unmanned aerial vehicle in mission No. 4, a 15-hour trip to Terra Nova Bay and back. Credit:Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Science.

From Live Science:

SAN FRANCISCO — Unmanned planes flying over one of the most forbidding regions of Antarctica have captured the first close-up images of the area, where the cold, dense seawater that drives the ocean's circulation is formed.

These unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are proving a boon to scientists who study the frozen regions at Earth's poles, many parts of which simply aren't reachable to humans.

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Scientists Decode Entire Genetic Code Of Cancer

Cracking the Cancer Code A cluster of breast cancer cells, with blue ones marking actively growing cells and yellow marking dying cells. Could scientists crack their code next? Wellcome Trust

From Popular Science:

And cigarette smokers get a free mutation in every pack.

In a major step toward understanding cancer, one of the biggest problems bedeviling modern medicine, scientists have now cracked the genetic code for two of the most common cancers. This marks just the beginning of an international effort to catalog all the genes that go wrong among the many types of human cancer, the BBC reports.

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Susan Boyle's I Dreamed A Dream Audition Tops List Of Most Watched YouTube Video This Year With 120m Hits

From The Daily Mail:

Britain's Got Talent runner-up Susan Boyle was the star of the most-watched clip on video website YouTube this year, figures showed today.

The Scottish singer's rendition of I Dreamed A Dream on the television show was watched more than 120 million times by viewers across the world.

She netted more than three times the number of internet hits achieved by the second most-watched video of 2009.

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The Publishing Disruption

From The Futurist:

What a unique thing a book is. Made from a tree, it has a hundred or more flexible pages that contain written text, enabling the book to contain a large sum of information in a very small volume. Before paper, clay tablets, sheepskin parchment, and papyrus were all used to store information with far less efficiency. Paper itself was once so rare and valuable that the Emperor of China had guards stationed around his paper possessions.

Before the invention of the printing press, books were written by hand, and few outside of monasteries knew how to read. There were only a few thousand books in all of Europe in the 14th century. Charlemagne himself took great effort to learn how to read, but never managed to learn how to write, which still put him ahead of most kings of the time, who were generally illiterate.

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Russians Confirm That UK Climate Scientists Manipulated Data To Exaggerate Global Warming

From The Telegraph:

Climategate just got much, much bigger. And all thanks to the Russians who, with perfect timing, dropped this bombshell just as the world’s leaders are gathering in Copenhagen to discuss ways of carbon-taxing us all back to the dark ages.

Feast your eyes on this news release from Rionovosta, via the Ria Novosti agency, posted on Icecap. (Hat Tip: Richard North)

A discussion of the November 2009 Climatic Research Unit e-mail hacking incident, referred to by some sources as “Climategate,” continues against the backdrop of the abortive UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen (COP15) discussing alternative agreements to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol that aimed to combat global warming.

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