Llama Proteins Could Play A Vital Role In The War On Terror

Two llama ignoring the view of Machu Picchu. (Credit: iStockphoto/Marshall Bruce)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Jan. 21, 2010) — Scientists at the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research (SFBR) have for the first time developed a highly sensitive means of detecting the seven types of botulinum neurotoxins (BoNTs) simultaneously.

The BoNT-detecting substances are antibodies -- proteins made by the body to fight diseases -- found in llamas. BoNT are about 100 billion times more toxic than cyanide, and collectively, they are the only toxins in the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) 'category A' list of potential bioterror threats alongside anthrax, Ebola virus and other infectious agents.

Read more ....

U.S. Babies Are Getting Smaller

From Live Science:

Babies born in the United States are getting smaller, according to a new study. The findings suggest that birth weights in this country have declined during the past 15 years, most dramatically among the least likely group of mothers.

The researchers estimate that birth weights for full-term babies have decreased by an average of 1.83 ounces (52 grams) between 1990 and 2005.

Read more ....

Six Industries Apple's Tablet Could Shake Up

From Popular Mechanics:

Apple's tablet announcement is next week. And like the iPhone before it, the product may well have a power that ripples far beyond its on-sale date. Here are six industries that the Apple tablet could shake up.

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This Spring's Hottest New Accessory: A Bionic Limb?

Aimee Mullins Howard Schatz via aimeemullins.com

From Popular Science:

As if people weren't worrying enough about advanced prostheses making amputees stronger than normal humans, now we have to worry if they are going to make them sexier, too. The prosthetics industry is growing rapidly, and, according to Hugh Herr, the director of MIT Media Lab's Biomechatronics Group, advanced prostheses will soon become envied in the same way the newest electronic gadget or the hottest car is today.

Read more ....

Daily Pint Of Blueberry Juice 'Could Help Stop Memory Loss', Study Suggests

Those who drank blueberry juice showed a "significant improvement
on learning and memory tests", scientists said.

From The Telegraph:

A daily pint of blueberry juice could help reduce memory loss, according to scientists.

According to the study of pensioners with signs of dementia, the fruit was found to sharpen recall, even when memory had started to fail.

In the first such test on humans, the group of pensioners drank the juice over 12 weeks, which helped improve their memory and recall in a series of tests.

Read more ....

Why Amazon Won't Launch Its Own Tablet, But Will Use Apple's

From ARS Technica:

The Kindle game is up, and Amazon knows it. In 2010, the world plus dog will be hawking an E-Ink-based e-reader, and major distribution and publishing houses like Barnes & Noble, Google, and Hearst will be offering their digital content on everything with a screen. That's why Amazon gave up some royalty money to e-book publishers on Wednesday, and announced a SDK and app store for the Kindle on Thursday.

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Mammals 'Floated To Madagascar'

From the BBC:

The ancestors of the current mammals found on the island of Madagascar could have been transported on floating vegetation from Africa, a study says.

Researchers modelled ancient ocean currents and found that favourable conditions existed in the same period as when mammals arrived on the island.

The idea of "rafting" first emerged in 1940, but some argued that a "land bridge" allowed animals to walk there.

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China, Google And The Cloud Wars -- A Commentary

Google has threatened to quit China over censorship and cyberattacks. Photo AFP

From Holman Jenkins, Wall Street Journal:

What does Google know about you? What does the Chinese government know about you?

Now you know a less-spoken reason why Google has gone to the mattresses over Chinese hacking. Always in the cards, since the birth of the Web, was the possibility that some great Internet business—a Yahoo or Google or Amazon or Facebook—would be destroyed overnight by a cataclysmic loss of trust in its protection of consumer data.

We haven't seen this phenomenon yet, but it has seemed almost inevitable that sooner or later we will.

Google's response to the discovery that Chinese hackers—likely government hackers—had tried to ransack its servers has been both energetic and obfuscating. "We love China and the Chinese people," said CEO Eric Schmidt. "This is not about them. It's about our unwillingness to participate in censorship."

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The Age Of The Killer Robot Is No Longer A Sci-fi Fantasy

You can't appeal to robots for mercy or empathy - or punish them afterwards. CHRIS COADY

From The Independent:

In the dark, in the silence, in a blink, the age of the autonomous killer robot has arrived. It is happening. They are deployed. And – at their current rate of acceleration – they will become the dominant method of war for rich countries in the 21st century. These facts sound, at first, preposterous. The idea of machines that are designed to whirr out into the world and make their own decisions to kill is an old sci-fi fantasy: picture a mechanical Arnold Schwarzenegger blasting a truck and muttering: "Hasta la vista, baby." But we live in a world of such whooshing technological transformation that the concept has leaped in just five years from the cinema screen to the battlefield – with barely anyone back home noticing.

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My Comment: The key paragraph in this report is the following, and it sums up perfectly the direction that we are going ....

.... When the US invaded Iraq in 2003, they had no robots as part of their force. By the end of 2005, they had 2,400. Today, they have 12,000, carrying out 33,000 missions a year. A report by the US Joint Forces Command says autonomous robots will be the norm on the battlefield within 20 years. ....

Climate Change Chief Says Sorry For Hot Air Claim Over Melting Glaciers

From The Daily Mail:

The head of the UN's climate change body has been forced to make a humiliating apology over claims the Himalayan glaciers could vanish within 25 years.

Last week it emerged there was no evidence for the warning from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

After a global outcry, Dr Rajendra Pachauri - chairman of the IPCC - has issued an unprecedented apology.

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Rickets Makes Comeback Among Computer Generation

Rickets, where children develop painful and deformed bow-legs and do not grow properly, is a condition linked with Victorian era poverty.

From The Telegraph:

The growth of the computer generation and changing lifestyles among children are leading to a Vitamin D deficiency and a rise in cases of rickets, medical experts have warned.

They said youngsters were spending more time indoors on their computers rather than previous generations who spent time playing outside with their friends.

The two medical experts have called for Vitamin D to be added to milk and other food products.

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Rover Gives NASA An 'Opportunity' To View Interior Of Mars

This approximately true-color view of Marquette Island comes from combining three exposures that Opportunity's panoramic camera (Pancam) took through different filters during the rover's 2,117th Martian day, or sol, on Mars (Jan. 6, 2010). (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Jan. 22, 2010) — NASA's Mars exploration rover Opportunity is allowing scientists to get a glimpse deep inside Mars.

Perched on a rippled Martian plain, a dark rock not much bigger than a basketball was the target of interest for Opportunity during the past two months. Dubbed "Marquette Island," the rock is providing a better understanding of the mineral and chemical makeup of the Martian interior.

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Heidi Montag's Plastic Surgery: Obsession Or Addiction?

From Live Science:

When reality TV show star Heidi Montag announced last week that she had undergone 10 plastic surgeries, all in one day, the news was met with some (naturally) raised eyebrows. But she's not alone in her obsession to look perfect by enduring multiple cosmetic enhancements, a phenomenon that has the makings of an addiction, or at least a binge behavior, experts say.

Though Montag, 23, has argued she's not addicted to cosmetic procedures, some psychologists would disagree.

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San Andreas Fault: Could Earthquake Happen Sooner Than Expected?

From Christian Science Monitor:

The frequency of a major earthquake along a key stretch of California’s San Andreas fault could be greater than thought, according to studies published Thursday in the journal Science.

The interval between major earthquakes along a key stretch of California's San Andreas fault appears to be shorter than current assessments indicate, according to two related studies published Thursday.

If these results – in the journal Science – hold up under additional scrutiny, they suggest that this section in southern California, which was responsible for the 1857 Fort Tejon quake, may be relatively close to another rupture.

Yet buried within that estimate may be some good news.

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Young People Spend 7 Hours, 38 Minutes A Day On TV, Video Games, Computer

Should toddlers be allowed to watch TV? Photograph: Peter Byrne/PA

From The L.A. Times:

Media are a full-time job plus overtime for children 8 to 18, a Kaiser report says. They devote 53 hours a week to those pursuits, an hour and 17 minutes more than five years ago.

Reporting from Chicago - The amount of time young people spend consuming media has ballooned with around-the-clock access and mobile devices that function practically as appendages, according to a new report.

Young people now devote an average of seven hours and 38 minutes to daily media use, or about 53 hours a week -- more than a full-time job -- according to Kaiser Family Foundation findings released today.

Read more ....

Is E-Diplomacy The Future? (Video)

Verizon, AT&T May Carry Apple Tablet

Apple has sent invitations for a Jan. 27 event in San Francisco, where the technology company will unveil its long-awaited tablet device. Apple

From FOX News:

Which wireless carrier will offer Apple's soon-to-be-released mystery device? Will it be Verizon? AT&T? The answer, according to sources at the two companies, is both.

As any well-read geek will tell you, Apple is releasing some sort of tablet device next week, and the rumors about features have been flying as fast and furious as those men in tights at Cirque du Soleil. I'm not going to add to the noise by speculating about unreleased details like the size, shape, color, price and general feature list. Instead I'm going to add the other noise: the network noise.

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Amazon Prepares For Apple Tablet With Promise Of Apps For Kindle Ereader

Amazon's Kindle: soon with apps. Photograph: Mario Tama/Getty Images

From The Guardian:

Developers are being sought to produce iPhone-style apps as Kindle faces Apple tablet challenge in ebook market.

Amazon is inviting developers to build iPhone-style apps on its Kindle ebook reader, in what is seen as a pre-emptive strike against the expected launch next week of an Apple tablet computer.

Developers are promised the capacity to "build and upload active content that will be available in the Kindle Store later this year". The first developers will be allowed to join a test programme – a limited beta – from next month.

Read more ....

Scientist Creates Intergalactic tube Map Of The Milky Way

Accessible: Samuel Arbesman's map of the Milky Way is based on the London tube map and uses stars and nebula as the 'stations'

From The Daily Mail:

If you thought your daily commute was a time-consuming chore, spare a thought for intergalactic space travellers of the future making their way to work on this 'Milky Way Transit Authority'.

Based completely on the London Underground, a Harvard scientist has released this simplified Milky Way map to display the 'vast and complex interconnections' of our galaxy in an accessible way.

But future passengers won't want to get caught up in intergalactic engineering works as the 'stops' on the map, created by Samuel Arbesman, are thousands of light years apart.

Read more ....

The Truth About Robots And The Uncanny Valley: Analysis

Japan's government sponsored research laboratory, AIST, unveils the humanoid robot "HRP-4C," which has 42 actuators and several sensors on its body. (Photo by Yoshikazu Tsuno/AFP/Getty Images)

From Popular Mechanics:

An oft-cited theory in robotics, the uncanny valley, refers to that point along the chart of robot–human likeness where a robot looks and acts nearly—but not exactly—like a human. This subtle imperfection, the theory states, causes people's feelings toward robots to veer from fondness to revulsion. Here, contributing editor Erik Sofge argues that the theory is so loosely backed it is nearly useless for roboticists. For an in-depth look at the human–robot relationship, check out PM's feature story "Can Robots Be Trusted?" on stands now.

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High-Speed Brain Scan Used to Diagnose War Vets' PTSD With 90% Accuracy

The Stress Of War Different soldiers sharing the same experiences can react very differently. A research group in Minneapolis believes it has found an objective means to accurately identify PTSD through magnetoencephalography.

From Popular Science:

With so many troops rotating into and out of two different war zones, mental health experts in the U.S. are urgently trying to understand the causes – and a means to assuage or prevent – post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Now, a group of researchers at the University of Minnesota and the Minneapolis VA Medical Center may have unlocked the secret to objective PTSD diagnosis: a biomarker in the brain that diagnoses the condition with more than 90 percent accuracy.

Read more ....

New Theory On The Origin Of Primates

New biogeographic reconstruction of primates, flying lemurs, and tree shrews about 185 millions of years in the early Jurassic. (Credit: Image courtesy of Buffalo Museum of Science)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Jan. 20, 2010) — A new model for primate origins is presented in Zoologica Scripta, published by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters and The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. The paper argues that the distributions of the major primate groups are correlated with Mesozoic tectonic features and that their respective ranges are congruent with each evolving locally from a widespread ancestor on the supercontinent of Pangea about 185 million years ago.

Read more ....

Ability To Recognize Faces Is Inherited

From Live Science:

Some people never forget a face. For the rest of us, recognizing faces is not so easy. And those with prosopagnosia can't even recognize their close friends.

Now scientists say the ability to recognize faces is inherited and separate from general intelligence or IQ.

IQ is strongly heritable. And one longstanding general thought about IQ holds that if you're smart in one area, you'll be smart in others. But some skills seem distinct. A person can be brilliant with numbers but not good with linguistics, for example. This latter reality supports a modularity hypothesis, in which the mind is like a Swiss Army knife — a general-purpose tool with special-purpose devices, researchers explained.

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For Dogs, It's 'Survival Of The Cutest'

From Discovery News:

Look at how cute and adorable Claudia and Johnny are! Don't they just melt your heart?

New research shows that how we value the "cuteness" of our pet dogs could influence a breed's survival, variation and overall evolutionary pattern.

The University of Manchester released a new study today that compared the skull shapes of domestic dogs with those of different species across the order Carnivora, to which dogs, cats, bears, weasels, seals and walruses belong.

Read more ....

Tablet Wars: Amazon Adds Apps to Kindle

From Gadget Lab:

Amazon has announced that it will open up the Kindle e-reader to third party developers, allowing applications, or what Amazon calls “active content”, to run on the device.

What kind of apps could run in the low-fi Kindle? Well, you won’t be getting Monkey Ball, but interactive books, travel guides with locations data, RSS readers and anything that brings text to the device would be a good candidate. This could even include magazine and newspaper subscriptions.

Read more ....

Space Pictures Taken From Garden Shed

Amateur astronomer Peter Shah who has taken astonishing shots of the universe from his garden shed Photo: WALES NEWS SERVICE

From The Telegraph:

An amateur stargazer has stunned astronomers around the world with his photographs of the universe – taken from his garden shed.

Peter Shah, 38, cut a hole in the roof of his wooden shed and set up his modest eight-inch telescope inside. After months of patiently waiting for the right moment he emerged with a series of striking images of the Milky Way.

His photographs of a vivid variety of star clusters light years from Earth have been compared to the images taken from the £2.5 billion Hubble space telescope.

Read more ....

Fish Oil Slows Burn Of Genetic Fuse In Ageing, Say Scientists

Cod liver oil capsules with omega-3. Photograph: Graham Turner

From The Guardian:

Omega-3 fatty acids from fish oils have a direct effect on biological ageing, US research suggests.

Fish oil may be the true elixir of youth, according to new evidence of its effect on biological ageing. Omega-3 fatty acids from fish oil preserve the genetic "fuse" that determines the lifespan of cells, say scientists.

The discovery, made in heart disease patients, may explain many of the claimed health benefits of omega-3.

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Bad Memory? Forget It!

From The Daily Mail:

Do you have trouble remembering where you left your car keys? Do you struggle to recall people's names? A study from Cambridge University suggests that regular aerobic exercise - such as jogging - can significantly boost memory by triggering the growth of grey matter in the brain. But are there other things we can do to develop our brain cells? We asked eight-times World Memory Champion Dominic O'Brien, author of Learn To Remember and a host of bestselling memory books, for his tips...

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Himalayan Melting: How A Climate Panel Got It Wrong

A fast-moving glacial stream rushes down from Rakaposhi Mountain in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province. Paula Bronstein / Getty

From Time Magazine:

Between the undying controversy that was "Climategate" and the near collapse of the Copenhagen summit on global warming, 2009 was not a great year for climate scientists or activists. Less than a month into the new year, 2010 isn't looking much better.

On Wednesday (the day after Republican Scott Brown, an opponent of cap and trade, seized a U.S. Senate seat in Massachusetts), a new scandal broke over climate science. Faced with criticism of a widely quoted piece of analysis from its 2007 climate assessment that warned that Himalayan glaciers could melt by 2035, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was forced to admit to relying on dubious scientific sources, apologized and retracted its earlier estimate. That estimate of the rate of Himalayan glacier loss because of warming, which appeared in the same assessment that earned the global body a share of the Nobel Peace Prize, was "poorly substantiated," the IPCC said.

Read more ....

Boeing 747 Marks A Major Milestone

747-100. Photo Credit: Boeing Photo

From L.A. Times:

The first jumbo jet made its maiden commercial flight 40 years ago today. More than 1,400 of the planes with their signature hump have rolled off the Boeing assembly line.

It was the kind of plane that seemed to fit the swinging go-go days with martini-swigging travelers lingering around a bar.

First-class passengers dressed in their Sunday best made their way up a spiral staircase to get to the "flying penthouse," harking memories of private rail cars.

It seemed the epitome of plushness when it made its first commercial flight 40 years ago today. A Times reporter described the cabin as a "luxurious auditorium some genie had wafted aloft."

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Electromagnetic Pulse Cannon Could Demo Car-Stopping Power Next Month

EMP Cannon This skewed perspective shows a presumably older version of Eureka Aerospace's EMP car-stopper. PopSci

From Popular Science:

U.S. Marines could deploy the non-lethal weapon if it proves viable.

Stopping a speeding car without killing its driver and passengers with traditional means--bullets--can prove tricky, even if skilled snipers can put a disabling shot in a car's engine block. But a Canadian company could soon demo an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) cannon capable of effectively scrambling a car's chips and other electronics, according to Flight International. The U.S. Marines have lined up as possible, if skeptical, customers.

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The Sound of Saturn's Rings

From Universe Today:

This wonderful video was posted by Jennifer Ouellette on Discovery News, and I just had to share it. The sounds are actual recordings picked up by the Cassini spacecraft. I have heard the eerie audio before, but never had previously seen it paired up with moving images from the mission. The radio emissions, called Saturn kilometric radiation, are generated along with Saturn's auroras, or northern and southern lights. Cassini's Radio and Plasma Wave Science (RPWS) instrument takes high-resolution measurements that allow scientists to convert the radio waves into audio recordings by shifting the frequencies down into the audio frequency range.

Read more ....

Calpain Is Important To Memory Processes After All

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Jan. 21, 2010) — A second high-profile paper in as many months has found an important role in learning and memory for calpain, a molecule whose academic fortunes have ebbed and flowed for 25 years.

USC's Michel Baudry (then at the University of California, Irvine) and Gary Lynch (UC Irvine) first pointed to calpain as the key to memory in a seminal 1984 paper in Science on the biochemistry of memory.

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Embryos Like to Be Rocked Like Babies

To test out a device that keeps embryos in motion, researchers placed early-stage mouse embryos into a thimble-sized funnel, at the bottom of which were tiny channels through which fluids flowed. Credit: University of Michigan.

From Live Science:

Like babies that can be lulled to sleep with swaying, embryos also prefer to be rocked.

By gently rocking embryos while they grew during in vitro fertilization, scientists increased pregnancy rates in mice by more than 20 percent. The same rock-a-bye procedure could lead to more success for in vitro fertilization in humans, the researchers say.

Read more ....

Brain Scans Predict Video Gamers Success

A screen shot of the video game "Space Fortress" which was used to measure performance and learning rates. Credit: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

From Cosmos:

SYDNEY: The size of three specific regions of the brain can predict performance in video games, and may show the way forward for education, said American psychologists.

Participants in the study had to play the video game "Space Fortress", and submit to brain scans to measure the volume of three parts of the 'striatum', located deep in the forebrain and thought to be responsible for picking up skills and behavioural habits.

Read more ....

Environmental Cleanup Starts Amid Haiti Rubble

From Discovery News:

Experts have started assessing how to deal with the masses of rubble and hazardous waste left in the wake of the Haiti quake.

Just a week after Haiti's catastrophic magnitude 7.0 earthquake, getting aid to victims remains a top priority, but experts are also now starting to assess how to coordinate the sorting and disposing of building rubble.

So far, no large industrial spills have been found. The biggest environmental issue, according to the United Nations Environment Program, is dealing with all of the building waste generated by the earthquake, which destroyed at least 40-50 percent of the buildings in the capital, Port-au-Prince, and devastated other towns in the area.

Read more ....

The Global Shipping Network Is Finally Revealed

From Technology Review:

Despite carrying 90 percent of the planet's trade, nobody has mapped the network of links between the world's ports. Until now.

The International Maritime Organization based in London estimates that 90 percent of the world's trade is moved around the planet by sea. Given the fascination that complexity scientists have with rail, air and road networks, it seems strange that so little attention has been paid to the maritime network.

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Queen Berenike's Cat Goddess Temple Discovered In Alexandria, Egypt

A limestone statue of the Goddess Bastet discovered at Kom el Dikka.

From The Independent:

The remains of a temple of Queen Berenike - wife of King Ptolemy III - have been discovered by archaeologists in Alexandria, Egypt.

Dr. Zahi Hawass said the remains discovered are 60 meters by 15 meters, and extend under Ismail Fahmy street. About 600 Ptolemaic statues - amongst which are beautiful depictions of the cat goddess Bastet - were also unearthed.

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The Internet's Irregular Troops -- A Book Review

From The New Scientist:

It's 8 August 2008. Russian tanks roll into Georgia. Over the next two days, Russian jets and warships bomb the former Soviet republic's cities and block its ports. The familiar images of war - bloodied civilians and ruined buildings - hit TV screens around the world.

Meanwhile, a less well-known form of conflict was also under way - in cyberspace. Georgian government servers were flooded with incoming signals, rendering many websites useless, including those of the parliament and foreign ministry. It was the first time that online attacks had coincided so clearly with a real-world conflict.

Read more ....

Ban Butter To Save Our Hearts, Says Doctor

Adjusting your diet by replacing butter with a healthy spread or margarine
is a very simple thing to do Photo: CORBIS

From The Telegraph:

Butter should be banned in a bid to save thousands from heart disease, a leading heart surgeon claims.

Dr Shyam Kolvekar said that he is "increasingly concerned" about the nation's eating habits as he is seeing patients as young as 30 in need of heart bypass surgery due to a diet "overloaded" with saturated fat.

According to a national diet survey, nine out of 10 of children, 88 per cent of men and 83 per cent of women in Britain eat too much saturated fat, consuming a fifth too much each day.

Read more ....

China's Loongson Processor Could Power First Natural-Born Chinese Supercomputer

The Loongson "Godson 2-C" An earlier generation of the Loongson – also known as "Dragon Core" or "Godson" – used in some netbooks and PCs. The next-gen Loongson 3 should be able to power China's first home-grown supercomputer. Konstantin Lanzet

From Popular Science:

As technological tensions run high between the U.S. and China these days (see Google's recent dust-up with the party, etc.), the People’s Republic has unveiled more details on its quest to phase U.S.-made processors from its microchip diet. China’s next supercomputer – a Linux-running machine known as the Dawning 6000 – will run purely on Chinese processors, possibly before the end of this year.

Read more ....

Earthquake Risk: Seismic Gap South of Istanbul Poses Extreme Danger

Geoscientists expect an earthquake along the North Anatolian Fault. (Credit: Copyright GFZ)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Jan. 19, 2010) — The chain of earthquakes along the North Anatolian fault shows a gap south of Istanbul. The expected earthquakes in this region represent an extreme danger for the Turkish megacity. A new computer study now shows that the tensions in this part of the fault zone could trigger several earthquakes instead of one individual large quake event.

Read more ....

Tough Snail Shell Could Inspire Better Body Armor

The shell of the "scaly-foot" snail, shown here, has a unique structure that may provide clues for designing improved body armor, a new study suggests. Credit: Anders Warén, Swedish Museum of Natural History, Stockholm, Sweden.

From Live Science:

A snail's shell that protects it from attacks underwater could provide clues for designing improved body armor to guard human soldiers, a new study suggests.

The research involved an unusual sea snail, the so-called "scaly-foot" snail which was first reported in 2003 and makes its home in the harsh environment of a deep-sea hydrothermal vent in the Indian Ocean. Past studies of the snail, a type of sea mollusk, revealed its foot was covered in plates of iron-sulfide minerals, and it is now the only known animal today to employ iron sulfides as a structural material.

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My Comment: The applications in the military are multiple .... the people who researched this need to be commended.

Apple Tablet: Content Will Be Key

From PC World:

On January 27, Apple is holding an event to unveil its "latest creation," which is expected to be a 10-inch touchscreen tablet. Apple's rumored device has been generating a lot of buzz and excitement, but it's not clear yet whether tablet excitement -- assuming that Apple really is unveiling a tablet, of course -- will turn into tablet dollars at the cash register.

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The Mythical Apple Tablet: Rounding Up the Rumors

From PC World:

As you probably already know by now, Apple is holding a product event in later this month. The big question on everyone's mind: Are tablets on the table? There have been countless rumors flying around about the so-called "iSlate/iPad/iTablet" (or whatever Apple decides to call it). Read on for a slew of rumors, along with ratings on their perceived validity.

Read more ....

Undersea Internet Cables Could Detect Electromagnetic Tsunami Signals

From Wired Science:

Tsunamis may be detectable with underwater fiber-optic cables, according to a new detailed model of the electrical fields the moving water generates.

The charged particles in the ocean water interact with Earth’s magnetic field to induce voltage of up to 500 millivolts in the cables that ferry internet traffic around. With relatively simple technology, those voltage spikes could serve as a tsunami-warning system for nations that can’t afford large arrays of other types of sensors.

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How Settler Farmers Fathered Europe's Males

From The Independent:

They came, they saw, they farmed and then they stole our women. Stone age farmers from the middle east not only brought their agricultural know-how with them to western Europe, they settled down with the local womenfolk and had children.

A genetic analysis of present-day male Europeans has revealed that the first farmers spread both their agricultural technology and their genes across the continent, out-competing the resident hunter-gatherer males for female attraction.

Read more ....

Ares I Is 'Safest Choice' To Replace Shuttle

The future of NASA's Ares I rocket has been up in the air (Illustration: NASA/MSFC)

From New Scientist:

It has been a whipping boy for its critics, but NASA's Ares I rocket has received a rare boost.

Despite budget and technical concerns, NASA's Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP) believes Ares I is the best bet for flying astronauts to the International Space Station after the space shuttle retires, because it has been designed from the outset with the safety of its crew in mind.

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Siblings As Important As Parents In Child’s Behaviour

From The Telegraph:

Children can learn as much from their brothers and sisters as they do from their parents, new research suggests.

The influence siblings have on each has a considerable impact on a child's development and shouldn't be underestimated, say scientists.

While parents are better role models in formal settings, such as table manners, siblings have more influence in how kids behave 'on the street', the researchers say.

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A Dangerous Pastime for Teens: The Choking Game

A hand around the neck cuts off blood supply to the brain
Patrick Ryan / Getty

From Time Magazine:

When Françoise Cochet saw the cord around her son's neck, she knew that he was dead. Fully clothed and still wearing his sneakers, 14-year-old Nicolas had strangled himself sometime after dinner in their apartment in Nice, France. His mother found him the next morning. "I shut the door so my other two children couldn't see and I didn't touch the body," she says. "I thought that I couldn't live anymore. I thought I needed to die too."

Read more ....

Israel Developing Semi-Lethal Sonic Cannon To Control Rioters

LRAD Sonic Weapon The LRAD, another sonic weapon, has been used successfully
to disperse protestors via Discovery.com

From Popular Science:

A desert people have developed a new weapon that uses sound instead of bullets. But this time, it will be used to control crowds instead of fighting giant worms or devious members of House Harkonnen. The Israeli Defense Ministry has contracted for the production of sonic-boom stun-guns called "Thunder Generator cannons," which they hope to use in crowd-control situations.

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The Science Of Sniffer Dogs

From Cosmic Log/MSNBC:

Rescuers from all around the world are converging on Haiti in the wake of this week's earthquake - and not all of them are human. Finding survivors amid the rubble of Port-au-Prince is a job tailor-made for dogs and devices.

The search-and-rescue operation "appears to be unprecedented in scale," Discovery.com reports.

Read more ....

Tipping Point? West Antarctic Ice Sheet Could Become Unstable As World Warms

Airborne view of the Pine Island glacier, Antarctica. (Credit: NASA/Jane Peterson)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Jan. 18, 2010) — A new study examines how ice sheets, such as the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, could become unstable as the world warms.

The team from Oxford University and Cambridge University developed a model to explore how changes in the 'grounding line' -- where an ice sheet floats free from its base of rock or sediment -- could lead to the disintegration of ice sheets and result in a significant rise in global sea level.

Read more ....