Why Your Boss Is Incompetent

It's not their fault that they are incompetent (Image: David Seed/Taxi/Getty)

From New Scientist:

IN THIS season of goodwill, spare a thought for that much-maligned bunch, the men and women at the top of the management tree. Yes, the murky machinations of the banking bosses might have needlessly plunged millions into penury. Yes, the actions of our political leaders might seem to be informed more by dubious wheeler-dealing than by Socratic wisdom. And yes, the high-ups in your own company might well be the self-important time-wasters you've always held them for.

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Obama To Ramp Up Human Space Program

From Discovery News:

Science magazine is reporting tonight that President Obama has made his decision about the future of the U.S. human space flight program, with a plan to turn over space taxi services to the International Space Station to commercial companies and to direct NASA to spend its money and resources developing a heavy-lift booster for human missions to the moon, asteroids and the moons of Mars.

Citing unnamed sources, the magazine reports that Obama will ask for a $1 billion boost in NASA’s 2011 budget to jumpstart the new launcher and to expand the agency's Earth-monitoring science satellites.

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About Wikipedia’s Handling Of Controversial Topics…Like Climate Science

From Fabius Maximus:

Summary: This is a hat trick. About effective propaganda. And climate science. And more evidence that Wikipedia cannot be relied upon as an information source regarding controversial matters — or any work of importance. (It’s always useful as a first place to look and source of links.)

Contents

1. “Wikipedia Is A Stunning Example Of How The Propaganda Machine Works“, Lawrence Solomon, National Review (reposted by CBS), 8 July 2008
2. “Wikipedia’s climate doctor“, Lawrence Solomon, National Post, 19 December 2009 – “How Wikipedia’s green doctor rewrote 5,428 climate articles.”

Update: an email reply by Wikipedia Editor Pierre Grés to Dennis Kuzara’s complaint about bias of Wikipedia Administrator William Connolley, posted at Watts Up With That, 19 December 2009 (see the actual Wikipedia file on this here):

“In September 2009, the Wikipedia Arbitration Committee revoked Mr. Connolley’s administrator status after finding that he misused his administrative privileges while involved in a dispute unrelated to climate warming.”

We’ll learn much about Wikipedia’s honesty by what happens now to the dozens of articles seriously distorted or outright suppressed by Connolley. Is this a structural problem with Wikipedia, or just a bad apple in the barrel?

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Sophisticated New Computer Models Predict Details Of Insurgent Attacks

How Do The World's Most War-Torn Countries Always Seem To Have A Toyota Dealership?
Foreign Policy

From Popular Science:

Chaos, confusion, and uncertainty have pervaded battle since Homer first described the din of clashing hoplites. But new developments in computer modeling look to pierce the fog of modern war by predicting the time and location of insurgent attacks. More comprehensive than the SCARE IED cache location program, these models claim to have predicted everything from the number of casualties in an attack to the cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah.

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Climategate: How The Cabal Controlled Wikipedia

From The National Post:

How Wikipedia’s green doctor rewrote 5,428 climate articles.

The Climategate Emails describe how a small band of climatologists cooked the books to make the last century seem dangerously warm.

The emails also describe how the band plotted to rewrite history as well as science, particularly by eliminating the Medieval Warm Period, a 400 year period that began around 1000 AD.

The Climategate Emails reveal something else, too: the enlistment of the most widely read source of information in the world — Wikipedia — in the wholesale rewriting of this history.

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Hubble's Festive View Of A Grand Star-Forming Region

The massive, young stellar grouping, called R136, is only a few million years old and resides in the 30 Doradus Nebula, a turbulent star-birth region in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way. (Credit: NASA, ESA, F. Paresce (INAF-IASF, Bologna, Italy), R. O'Connell (University of Virginia, Charlottesville), and the Wide Field Camera 3 Science Oversight Committee)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Dec. 20, 2009) — Just in time for the holidays: a Hubble Space Telescope picture postcard of hundreds of brilliant blue stars wreathed by warm, glowing clouds. The festive portrait is the most detailed view of the largest stellar nursery in our local galactic neighborhood.

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New Device Provides Internet And Phone Service In Disasters

From Live Science:

Losing an Internet connection or phone service can prove incredibly annoying for most people, but in an emergency, it can spell disaster.

During the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center, frantic calls jammed cell phone networks, and firefighters, police and ambulances could not even talk to one another by radio. Since then, European researchers have tried to develop a technology that allows emergency responders to still use phone or Internet in the most chaotic situations.

Their solution: a souped-up router that allows a specially equipped command vehicle to find the best Internet access through any available wireless networks, or even satellite connections.

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Avatar Mirrors Emotions With Motion Capture

From Wired:

Go behind the scenes of 'Avatar' with James Cameron, Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldana to see the new technology used to capture actors' facial expressions in striking detail.

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Grunts From The Front: From Roman Tablets To Army Blogs

From The Independent:

Humans have always fought each other, but the written narrative of warfare begins about 6,000 years ago with documents detailing a conflict between Elam and Sumer (modern-day Iran and Iraq). Since then military history has been dominated by the official story of leaders and their strategic political and military decisions. Wars have rarely been narrated by the ordinary foot soldier, pilot or sailor.

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My Comment: Plus ca change .... plus c'est le meme chose. The more things change .... the more that they stay the same.

Banned Gouais Blanc Grape Is The Long-Lost Mother Of Champagne

From Times Online:

The Gouais blanc grape, disparaged for centuries as an inferior wine ingredient fit only for peasants, has been revealed as the mother of many of today’s finest and most sought-after varieties.

A genetic study has shown that Gouais blanc is the chief ancestor of modern grapes such as Chardonnay, the grape used to make Chablis and a component of Champagne, and Gamay noir, which is most famous as the mainstay of Beaujolais.

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The Skull Bone Is Different To The Hip Bone

From The Telegraph:

Fundamental differences between skull and limb bones have been identified by British scientists in a discovery they hope will lead to treatments and even a cure for osteoperosis.

Bones in the arms and legs become weak and brittle in old age often because they are not engaged in as much exercise and bearing of weight as they are in youth.

However skull bone, which bears almost no weight throughout life, remains hard and particularly resistant to breaking.

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Snowflakes, The Coolest Shapes On The Planet Are Even More Beautiful Close Up

From The Daily Mail:

If the recent snowfalls have left you dreaming of a white Christmas, your wish might be granted - because forecasters say we're in for more over the next week.

And although a crisp and pristine blanket of the stuff is a wonderful sight to wake up to, snow is even more beautiful in close-up.

As these photographs show, each snowflake is a miniature masterpiece of nature: six-sided, perfectly symmetrical - and unique.

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2010 Preview: Tooth-Mounted Hearing Aid For The Masses

Learning to hear again (Image: Barnaby Hall/Photonica/Getty)

From The New Scientist:

Beethoven is said to have overcome his deafness by attaching a rod to his piano and clenching it between his teeth, enabling the musical vibrations to travel through his jawbone to his inner ear. Next year, a similar but less unwieldy approach might restore hearing to people with a common form of deafness.

Single-sided deafness (SSD) affects around 9 million people in the US, and makes it difficult for them to pinpoint the exact source of sounds. This can make crossing roads extremely hazardous, and also makes it hard to hear conversations in noisy rooms.

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Data To Expose 'Ghost Mountains'

A simple illustration of the Gamburtsevs inferred from new gravity data

From The BBC:

Scientists who mapped one of the most enigmatic mountain ranges on Earth have given a first glimpse of their data.

An international team spent two months in 2008/9 surveying the Gamburtsevs in Antarctica - a series of peaks totally buried under the ice cap.

The group has told a major conference in the US that the hidden mountains are more jagged than previously thought.

They are also more linear in shape than the sparse data collected in the past had suggested.

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Why Does A Human Baby Need A Full Year Before Starting To Walk?

Why does a human baby need a full year before it can start walking, while a newborn foal gets up on its legs almost directly after birth? (Credit: iStockphoto/Beth Jeppson).

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Dec. 19, 2009) — Why does a human baby need a full year before it can start walking, while a newborn foal gets up on its legs almost directly after birth? Scientist have assumed that human motor development is unique because our brain is unusually complex and because it is particularly challenging to walk on two legs. But now a research group at Lund University in Sweden has shown that human babies in fact start walking at the same stage in brain development as most other walking mammals, from small rodents to elephants.

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Happiest States Revealed By New Research

The Happiest States

1. Louisiana
2. Hawaii
3. Florida
4. Tennessee
5. Arizona
6. Mississippi
7. Montana
8. South Carolina
9. Alabama
10. Maine

From Live Science:

Ever wondered if you'd be happier in sunny Florida or snow-covered Minnesota? New research on state-level happiness could answer that question.

Florida and two other sunshine states made it to the Top 5, while Minnesota doesn't show up until number 26 on the list of happiest states. In addition to rating the smile factor of U.S. states, the research also proved for the first time that a person's self-reported happiness matches up with objective measures of well-being.

Essentially, if an individual says they're happy, they are.

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15 Cigarettes: All It Takes To Harm Genes

Scientists believe this new insight into the genetics of cancer will eventually lead to new drugs that target the specific changes to the gene that helps to trigger the disease. ALAMY

From The Independent:

Study reveals the genetic mutations suffered by smokers who go on to develop lung cancer.

One genetic mutation occurs on average for every 15 cigarettes that a typical lung-cancer patient smokes, according to a study that has identified for the first time all of the mutations acquired during the lifetime of a cancer patient.

Scientists have completed a full genetic analysis of the genomes of cancer patients, and hope the information will lead to a fundamental understanding of the causes of cancer – and possibly drugs and treatments – by identifying the mutations that turn a healthy cell into a cancerous tumour cell.

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Marijuana, Alcohol Addiction May Share Genes

From Yahoo News/Health Day:

FRIDAY, Dec. 18 (HealthDay News) -- The genes that make people susceptible to alcoholism also make them prone to becoming addicted to marijuana, a new study suggests.

Researchers interviewed almost 6,300 men and women aged 24 to 36, including almost 2,800 sets of twins who were part of the Australian Twin Registry, about their use of alcohol and marijuana over their lifetime.

Twins are valuable to researchers in determining the role of genetics in various diseases or conditions because identical twins share 100 percent of their genes, while fraternal twins share 50 percent of their genes, the same as other siblings.

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Data Deluge Will Reboot Our Brains

We are being bombarded with increasing amounts of information, although scientists say the brain itself is not under threat. (Pete Saloutos)

From Times Online:

The speed of modern life is 2.3 words per second, or about 100,000 words a day. That is the verbiage bombarding the average person in the 12 hours they are typically awake and “consuming” information, according to a new study.

Through emails, texting, internet surfing, reading and other media, our brains are being deluged with increasing quantities of information. Although we may not actively read 100,000 words a day, that is the approximate number reaching our eyes and ears. Add images, such as videos and computer games, and we are faced with the equivalent of 34 gigabytes of information each day — enough to overload the typical laptop inside a week.

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Living In Big Cities 'Makes You Miserable'

Piccadilly Circus, London, UK: Researchers found the popularity of big cities such as London, New York and Los Angeles undermined their attractions by increasing congestion, house prices and air pollution Photo: GETTY

From The Telegraph:

Living in big cities makes you miserable and people are actually more happy away from urban areas, claims research.

Researchers looking at happiness levels found that the popularity of big cities such as London, New York and Los Angeles undermined their attractions by increasing congestion, house prices and air pollution. Only the high wages and exciting jobs offset this lower quality of life.

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Google Books Project Found Guilty Of Violating Copyright By French Court

A number of French publishers spent three years fighting
Google's plan to scan and sell their books online

From The Daily Mail:

Google was found guilty by a French court today of violating copyright by digitising books and putting extracts online.

The search engine company initially started scanning books without permission for its controversial online library project. They were forced to strike deals in the U.S and the UK after hundreds of complaints.

In France, major publishers issued a legal challenge arguing the digital service would lead to publishers and authors losing out.

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Cooking Is What Made Us Human

From New Scientist:

What was the central mystery of human evolution that you were trying to solve?

I was sitting next to the fire in my living room and I started asking the question, when did our ancestors last live without fire? Out of this came a paradox: it seemed to me that no human with our body form could have lived without it.

Why can't a human exist on the same diet as a chimpanzee?

A chimpanzee's diet is like eating crab apples and rose hips. Just go into the woods and find some fruits, and see if you can come back with a full stomach. The answer is you can't. The big difficulty is that the nutrient density is not very high. This is problematic for humans because we have a very small gut, about 60 per cent of the volume it would be if we were one of the other great apes. We don't have enough intestine to keep low-quality food in our gut long enough to digest it.

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Guardian Headline – Low Targets, Goals Dropped: Copenhagen Ends In Failure

From Watts Up With That?

When the Guardian, that champion of everything “green” says it, you know it was a failure.

Excerpt:

The UN climate summit reached a weak outline of a global agreement last night in Copenhagen, falling far short of what Britain and many poor countries were seeking and leaving months of tough negotiations to come.

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Fake Blood-Clotting Products To Heal Wounded Soldiers

Photo: Immediate treatment can save lives.

From The BBC:

Scientists say they have made a synthetic blood-clotting agent that could help wounded troops and patients.

In the lab, the fake platelets cut bleeding in half compared with having no treatment.

They could offer doctors a limitless supply with a longer shelf life than fresh donor platelets, the journal Science Translational Medicine reports.

The Case Western Reserve University team in the US hopes the product could become available in coming years.

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My Comment: This is going to save many lives.

The Known Universe By AMNH (Video)

Hat Tip: Geek Press

Avatar's Moon Pandora Could Be Real, Planet-Hunters Say

This artist's conception shows a hypothetical gas giant planet with an Earth-like moon similar to the moon Pandora in the movie Avatar. New research shows that, if we find such an "exomoon" in the habitable zone of a nearby star, the James Webb Space Telescope will be able to study its atmosphere and detect key gases like carbon dioxide, oxygen, and water. The key is to find a planet that transits its star, and then find a moon orbiting that planet more than one stellar radius away, so that the moon can be studied independently of the planet. Moreover, an alien moon orbiting the gas giant planet of a red dwarf star may be more likely to be habitable than tidally locked Earth-sized planets or super-Earths. (Credit: David A. Aguilar, CfA)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Dec. 18, 2009) — In the new blockbuster Avatar, humans visit the habitable -- and inhabited -- alien moon called Pandora. Life-bearing moons like Pandora or the Star Wars forest moon of Endor are a staple of science fiction. With NASA's Kepler mission showing the potential to detect Earth-sized objects, habitable moons may soon become science fact.

If we find them nearby, a new paper by Smithsonian astronomer Lisa Kaltenegger shows that the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will be able to study their atmospheres and detect key gases like carbon dioxide, oxygen, and water vapor.

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The Shortest Day: The Science Of The Winter Solstice

The winter solstice marks the shortest day of the year, when the sun is at its lowest point in the sky.
Credit: Stockxpert.

From Live Science:

You may think Mr. Frost's blustery entrance already occurred, but not officially. The winter solstice, and thus the official start of the chilly season on the astronomical calendar, begins Monday.

More exactly, the winter solstice begins at 12:47 p.m. EST (1747 UT) on Dec. 21.

Here's what's behind the timing:

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New Crew Poised To Launch To Space Station

From Yahoo News/Space.com:

A Russian cosmonaut doctor, a veteran Japanese astronaut and a rookie American spaceflyer are poised to blast off Sunday for the International Space Station.

The three spaceflyers are slated to launch Dec. 20 at 4:51 p.m. EDT (2151 GMT) on the Russian Soyuz TMA-17 spacecraft from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. They will spend about two days catching up to the space station, where they plan to dock Tuesday.

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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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