Flawed Autism Study Won't Stop Vaccine Critics

A medical assistant draws an MMR vaccination at the
Spanish Peaks Outreach Clinic in Walsenburg, Colo. John Moore / Getty

From Time Magazine:

More than any other research, it was a study published in British medical journal the Lancet in 1998 that helped foster the persisting notion that childhood vaccines can cause autism. On Tuesday, that flawed study, led by gastroenterologist Dr. Andrew Wakefield, was officially retracted by the journal's editors — a serious slap and rare move in the world of medicine.

"It has become clear that several elements of the 1998 paper by Wakefield et al are incorrect, contrary to the findings of an earlier investigation," wrote the Lancet editors in a statement issued online.

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Sony Wants To Build An iPad Clone

From Gadget Lab:

Sony wants to make an iPad clone, according to the company’s CFO Nobuyuki Oneda. Speaking at a press conference in Tokyo, Oneda said of the iPad “That is a market we are also very interested in. We are confident we have the skills to create a product.”

It’s certainly no surprise that Apple’s long-expected announcement last week would spur a slew of copycat designs — one of the trends at this year’s CES, which came *before* the iPad event, there were plenty of iSlate announcements, notably from Dell and also Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer (nice guess on the name by the way, guys).

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Quantum Mechanics At Work In Photosynthesis: Algae Familiar With These Processes For Nearly Two Billion Years

Phytoplankton. (Credit: NOAA MESA Project)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Feb. 4, 2010) — A team of University of Toronto chemists have made a major contribution to the emerging field of quantum biology, observing quantum mechanics at work in photosynthesis in marine algae.

"There's been a lot of excitement and speculation that nature may be using quantum mechanical practices," says chemistry professor Greg Scholes, lead author of a new study published in Nature. "Our latest experiments show that normally functioning biological systems have the capacity to use quantum mechanics in order to optimize a process as essential to their survival as photosynthesis."

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What Really Motivates Sperm

From Live Science:

In high-school health class films, sperm cells are shown zooming around with quick flicks of their tails, but they only jump into action when they are in the right chemical conditions – usually that's in the female reproductive tract. Researchers have now figured out the precise chemical switch that turns on the sperm's motors, which could lead to the development of new treatments for infertility.

Scientists have long known that sperm's activity level depends on the internal pH of the sperm cell —a measure of how acidic or alkaline a substance is. They start out with acidic insides when in the male reproductive tract, but once they enter the female tract, their internal environment becomes alkaline and off they zoom toward the egg.

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Headache Pill Could Save Earthquake Crush Victims

Rescue carries its own dangers (Image: Roberto Schmidt/Getty)

From New Scientist:

JUST one tablet of paracetamol (acetaminophen) could help save earthquake survivors who otherwise risk dying from kidney failure after rescue. Experiments in rats have shown that the drug prevents "crush syndrome", or rhabdomyolysis, in which muscle debris from crushed limbs floods the kidneys soon after the limb is freed from rubble, causing them to fail.

"When you release the pressure on muscle through rescue, debris goes to the kidney. It's like a chain reaction, and acetaminophen blocks it," says Olivier Boutaud of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, and head of the research team.

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Patients In 'Vegetative' State Can Think And Communicate

'Vegetative state' brain scan images:: the fMRI images which were
used as part of the study by Dr Adrian Owen

From The Telegraph:

Patients left in a “vegetative” state after suffering devastating brain damage are able to understand and communicate, groundbreaking research suggests.

Experts using brain scans have discovered for the first time that the victims, who show no outward signs of awareness, can not only comprehend what people are saying to them but also answer simple questions.

They were able to give yes or no responses to simple biographical questions.

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Do Not Adjust Your Sets: Solar Storms Could Cause Blackouts At Olympics

Solar flares erupting from the surface of the Sun fling billions of tonnes of electrically-charged matter towards the Earth in a solar storm. ESA/ASA

From The Independent:

With terrorist threats, dire transport links and overspent budgets you'd be forgiven for thinking that the 2012 London Olympics had enough problems to worry about. But another nightmare scenario has just been added to the Olympic dream – a communications blackout caused by solar storms.

After a period of unprecedented calm within the massive nuclear furnace that powers the Sun, scientists have detected the signs of a fresh cycle of sunspots that could peak in 2012, just in time for the arrival of the Olympic torch in London.

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New Amateur Video Reveals Sheer Devastation Of Challenger Explosion

From The Daily Mail:

An amateur video of the Challenger explosion has resurfaced, 24 years after the tragedy.

The four-minute film, shot by optometrist Jack Moss, brings an entirely new perspective to the terrible event which killed a team of seven, including science teacher Christa McAuliffe, who had been chosen by NASA to become the first civilian in space.

In the tape shot from his back garden in Winter Haven Florida in 1986, Moss watches the launch with his wife and neighbour before the group noticed something was wrong.

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3 Programs That Lose Out In Obama's Defense Budget

F-35

From Popular Mechanics:

The Obama administration released its budget and strategy documents this week, spelling trouble for some military programs. Not that many are at risk of cancellation, though: The $708 billion 2011 Pentagon budget is $18 billion higher than 2010's. (It calls for $33 billion in supplemental funding for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, something candidate Barack Obama railed against during his campaign.) Still, Gates and Obama took some programs to task, and killed one outright. Here's a rundown of some of the losers.

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My Comment:

Experts: 40% Of Cancers Are Preventable

Lung cancer cell
Visuals Unlimited / Corbis

From Time Magazine:

(LONDON) — About 40 percent of cancers could be prevented if people stopped smoking and overeating, limited their alcohol, exercised regularly and got vaccines targeting cancer-causing infections, experts say.

To mark World Cancer day on Thursday, officials at the International Union Against Cancer released a report focused on steps that governments and the public can take to avoid the disease.

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Say Hello To Robonaut2, NASA's Android Space Explorer Of The Future

From Popular Science:

With the news that the White House has canceled the Constellation Program, NASA seems to be moving out of the human space flight business. However, the unveiling of a next-generation robot astronaut shows the android space program to be alive and well.

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Behold ‘The Amazon Effect’: Now Murdoch’s Gunning For The $10 E-Book

From Wired Science:

Smelling blood in the water after Amazon caved to Macmillan’s demand to stop selling e-books of their titles for only $10, News Corp Chief Rupert Murdoch says he, too, wants that deal.

Murdoch’s media empire includes HarperCollins books, which has had 20 titles on New York Times best-seller lists in the past three months, including Sarah Palin’s Going Rogue ($29) and the hot political tome Game Change ($28). Reuters reports Murdoch told analysts Tuesday that Amazon appears “ready to sit down with us again” and renegotiate the deal under which Amazon prices new e-book titles at $9.99. That’s even though the publisher still gets a wholesale payment based on a higher price and Amazon eats the loss itself.

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Lord Moncton On Climate Change (Video)

Lord Monckton Vows Melbourne -- Watts Up With That?

Highlights of Lord Christopher Monckton’s Melbourne Presentation at the Sofitel Melbourne. Recorded 1st February 2010.

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Excessive Internet Use Is Linked To Depression

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Feb. 4, 2010) — People who spend a lot of time browsing the Internet are more likely to show depressive symptoms, according to the first large-scale study of its kind in the West by University of Leeds psychologists.

Researchers found striking evidence that some users have developed a compulsive internet habit, whereby they replace real-life social interaction with online chat rooms and social networking sites. The results suggest that this type of addictive surfing can have a serious impact on mental health.

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45-Foot Ancient Snake Devoured Crocs

The extinct giant snake, called Titanoboa (shown in an artist's reconstruction), would have sent even Hollywood's anacondas slithering away. Credit: Jason Bourque.

From Live Science:

The largest snake the world has ever known likely had a diet that included crocodile, or at least an ancient relative of the reptile.

Scientists have discovered a 60-million-year-old ancient crocodile fossil, which has been named a new species, in northern Columbia, South America. The site, one of the world's largest open-pit coal mines, also yielded skeletons of the giant, boa constrictor-like Titanoboa, which measured up to 45 feet long (14 m).

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Excavation And Restoration On The Avenue Of Sphinxes

The Avenue of Sphinxes in front of the Luxor Temple. Photo by Jennifer Willoughby

From The Independent:

Egypt’s Minister of Culture, Farouk Hosni, and Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), along with the governor of Luxor, Samir Farag, will embark today on an inspection tour along the Avenue of Sphinxes that connects the Luxor and Karnak temples.

Built by the 30th Dynasty king Nectanebo I (380-362 BC), the avenue is 2,700 meters long and 76 meters wide, and lined with a number of statues in the shape of sphinxes. Queen Hatshepsut recorded on her red chapel in Karnak temple that she built six chapels dedicated to the god Amun-Re on the route of this avenue during her reign, emphasising that it was long a place of religious significance.

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Dying Stars Eat Comets For Their Last Supper

Snacking on comets (Image: HST/NASA)

From New Scientist:

WHEN the sun dies, it's not just Earth that will be doomed - the destruction will reach as far as the comets in the outer solar system. That's according to a new explanation of the behaviour of planetary nebulae - bubbles of gas sloughed off by dying stars (pictured).

There are two methods for calculating the abundance of elements in planetary nebulae: looking at light emitted when electrons and ionised atoms recombine, or looking at the energy emitted by atoms excited by collisions. Yet they yield very different results, a discrepancy that has baffled astronomers for decades.

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Britain Facing Food Crisis As World's Soil 'vanishes In 60 Years'V

From The Telegraph:

British farming soil could run out within 60 years, leading to a catastrophic food crisis and drastically higher prices for consumers, scientists warn.

Fertile soil is being lost faster than it can be replenished and will eventually lead to the “topsoil bank” becoming empty, an Australian conference heard.

Chronic soil mismanagement and over farming causing erosion, climate change and increasing populations were to blame for the dramatic global decline in suitable farming soil, scientists said.

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The Whale Whisperer: Astonishing Bond Between Diver And Scar The Giant Sperm Whale

Friends: Andrew Armour and Scar the sperm whale consider one another solemnly as they swim in the waters off Dominica last weekend

From The Daily Mail:

Peering solemnly nose-to-nose at each other, this is the Whale Whisperer and his friend - Scar the 10-year-old giant of the sea.

These spectacular images show Andrew Armour bonding with the colossal sperm whale in the warm Caribbean waters off the island of Dominica.

Taken on the weekend, the photographs offer stunning insight into the lives of other pod members travelling with Scar.

Read more ....

Fringe's Killer Biological Weapon Is Rooted in Fact

From Popular Mechanics:

Last week, a lethal virus unleashed in an office building caused us to rethink what would happen in the midst of a real outbreak. In Jan. 29's episode, "The Bishop Revival," the cast of Fringe encounters its most plausible case yet. We talk to toxin expert professor Dale Johnson of UC Berkley's Nutritional Science and Toxicology program to determine if a chemical weapon can be designed to target those with specific genetic traits.

Read more ....

Google Contributes Massive Amounts of Computing Power To Engineer Antibodies

Finding Antibodies Medical hide and seek could get a boost from Google Tolerx, Inc

From Popular Science:

Google has quietly put millions of dollars' worth of resources into a biotech startup that creates targeted antibody drugs that single out diseased targets among healthy cells. The Internet search giant ultimately hopes that computer models alone could identify the best antibody for particular targets for testing in human clinical trials. That would speed up or even replace the usual "wet lab" work and years spent on drug safety testing in animals and humans that costs hundreds of millions of dollars, according to Xconomy.

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Saturn Mission 'Extended Again'

Cassini completed its initial four year mission to explore Saturn in June 2008.

From The BBC:

The US space agency (Nasa) has extended the international Cassini-Huygens mission once again.

The unmanned Cassini-Huygens probe arrived at Saturn in 2004 on a mission that was meant to come to end in 2008.

The mission had already been extended by two years; potentially, the Cassini spacecraft could now explore the Saturn system until 2017.

Read more ....

Genetic Test For 'Speed Gene' In Thoroughbred Horses

New research identifies the 'speed gene' contributing to a specific athletic trait in thoroughbred horses. (Credit: iStockphoto/Derek Dammann)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Feb. 3, 2010) — Groundbreaking research led by Dr Emmeline Hill, a leading horse genomics researcher at University College Dublin's (UCD) School of Agriculture, Food Science and Veterinary Medicine has resulted in the identification of the 'speed gene' in thoroughbred horses.

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Brute Force: Humans Can Sure Take A Punch

A boxer punching. Credit: stockxpert

From Live Science:

The human body can take a remarkable amount of punishment, given bones made of one of the strongest materials found in nature. At the same time, even an unarmed person can inflict an astonishing amount of damage with the proper training.

So how much does it take to crack a bone? And how much mayhem can a person deal out? In an era when "extreme fighting" has become a popular phenomenon, scientists are testing the extremes that athletes at the peak of their game can reach in order to help the rest of us.

Read more ....

Whales Get Support On Sonar Ban

Watch CBS News Videos Online

From CBS News:

NOAA May Limit Sonar Tests, though Another Case Heads to Court.

Whales and the U.S. Navy have tangled repeatedly over the past years over charges that the Navy’s sonar exercises disorient or injure whales and other marine mammals. Now, whales in the Pacific appear to have a new champion: the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which is considering limiting the Navy’s sonar tests in certain marine mammal “hot spots.”

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Monitoring Cell Death Could Help Cancer Treatment

Image: Death of a tumor: This PET scan, taken just days after radiation therapy, shows a hot spot of cell-death activity in a brain tumor--a good indication that the therapy is working. Credit: Aaron Allen, Davidoff Comprehensive Cancer Center, Rabin Medical Center

From Technology Review:

An earlier measure of treatment could improve patients' prognosis.

When it comes to aggressive cancers, in the brain or lung for example, oncologists know that the sooner they can determine whether a treatment is unsuccessful, the sooner they can reevaluate and, if necessary, prescribe a new course of action. But typically, it takes two months or more to do the before-and-after comparisons that help determine whether a tumor is shrinking. Now an Israeli company called Aposense says it may have found a way to drastically speed up the process: an imaging marker that, when used with PET scans, indicates the presence of dying cells.

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Police Want Backdoor To Web Users' Private Data

From CNET News:

Anyone with an e-mail account likely knows that police can peek inside it if they have a paper search warrant.

But cybercrime investigators are frustrated by the speed of traditional methods of faxing, mailing, or e-mailing companies these documents. They're pushing for the creation of a national Web interface linking police computers with those of Internet and e-mail providers so requests can be sent and received electronically.

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No (Primordial) Soup For You: Origins Of Life Were Not What You Think

From Discovery News:

The predominant theory of the origin of life would make a terrific setting for a space horror movie, or a particularly tense episode of Star Trek: picture early Earth, a noxious place devoid of oxygen, its young oceans choked with some kind of indiscernible ooze.

Depending on how you like your origin stories, a thunderstorm passes overhead, and lightning crackles into the broth, pouring forth ever bigger organic molecules until -- presto! -- virus-sized strands of RNA and the first replicating life is formed.

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Slate Showdown: iPad vs. HP Slate vs. JooJoo vs. Android Tablets & More

From Gizmodo:

Everybody's talking about tablets, especially those single-pane capacitive touchscreen ones more specifically known as "slates." The iPad is the biggest newsmaker, but there are lots headed our way (most with built-in webcams). Here's how they measure up, spec-wise:

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DARPA's Robotic Ghost Ships Will Stalk Submarines

Robot Frigates Now imagine this ship without the people U.S. Navy/Scott Taylor

From Popular Science:

Ships that appear in perfect working order except for a missing human crew would normally raise suspicions that something has gone terribly wrong, possibly in the vicinity of the Bermuda Triangle. Yet an unmanned frigate is exactly what DARPA's mad scientists at the Pentagon have ordered, according to The Register. The automated ships' mission would have it spending months cruising the seas unmanned, on the hunt for ghostly enemy submarines.

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Amazon Acquires Touch Screen Startup; Souped Up Kindle Being Planned?

From ZDNet:

Amazon is reportedly buying Touchco, a start-up focused on touch screen technology, in a move that may signal a multi-touch Kindle in the future.

According to the New York Times, Amazon is acquiring Touchco, a New York-based company with a handful of employees and technology that was never commercialized.

Touchco was a project at New York University’s Media Research Lab. Terms of the deal weren’t available, but it doesn’t appear to be material enough to warrant much disclosure.

What does this deal mean?

Read more ....

Exoplanet Gas Spotted From Earth

Photo: The team used Nasa's Nasa's Infrared Telescope Facility in Hawaii

From The BBC:

Astronomers have used a new ground-based technique to study the atmospheres of planets outside our Solar System.

The work could assist the search for Earth-like planets with traces of organic, or carbon-rich, molecules.

Astronomers spotted evidence of methane gas in the atmosphere of an exoplanet.

Gases have previously been discerned on exoplanets before, but only by using space-based telescopes.

Read more ....

NASA's New Mission: Space To Thrive

From The Economist:

A plan to overhaul America’s space agency is long overdue.

IN 2004 George Bush announced a plan for America’s space agency, NASA, to return to the moon by 2020, land there, explore the surface and set up a base. The moon would then serve as a staging post for a journey to Mars. It was, unfortunately, unclear how this modest proposal would be paid for and, as work began and costs spiralled, the “vision” seemed more science fiction than science.

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Twitter Forces Password Reset to Protect Some Accounts

From PC World:

Twitter required some users to reset their passwords on Tuesday after discovering that their log-in information may have been harvested via security-compromised torrent Web sites, the company said.

For years, a malicious hacker has been setting up file-sharing torrent sites that appear legitimate and then selling them to well-meaning buyers who want to own their own download site, explained Del Harvey, Twitter's director of trust and safety, in a blog post.

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Suspected Asteroid Collision Leaves Odd X-Pattern Of Trailing Debris

This is a NASA Hubble Space Telescope picture a comet-like object called P/2010 A2, which was first discovered by the LINEAR (Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research program) sky survey on January 6. The object appears so unusual in ground-based telescopic images that discretionary time on Hubble was used to take a close-up look. This picture, from the January 29 observation, shows a bizarre X-pattern of filamentary structures near the point-like nucleus of the object and trailing streamers of dust. The inset picture shows a complex structure that suggests the object is not a comet but instead the product of a head-on collision between two asteroids traveling five times faster than a rifle bullet (5 kilometers per second). Astronomers have long thought that the asteroid belt is being ground down through collisions, but such a smashup has never before been seen. (Credit: NASA, ESA, and D. Jewitt (UCLA))

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Feb. 2, 2010) — NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has observed a mysterious X-shaped debris pattern and trailing streamers of dust that suggest a head-on collision between two asteroids. Astronomers have long thought the asteroid belt is being ground down through collisions, but such a smashup has never been seen before.

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The 'New' NASA Will Look Back At Earth

An artist's concept of the Orbiting Carbon Observatory. Credit: NASA

From Live Science:

NASA's new proposed budget will in part shift the space agency's focus from landing people on the moon back to Earth, with more money slated to go to projects that will help us understand our planet's climate and even plans to re-launch the carbon observatory that failed to launch last year.

The 2011 proposed budget for NASA, announced on Monday, cancels the Constellation program to build new rockets and spacecraft optimized for the moon, but increases NASA's overall budget by $6 billion over the next five years. Of that $6 billion, about $2 billion will be funneled into new and existing science missions, particularly those aimed at investigating the Earth sciences, particularly climate.

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Paper Linking Vaccine To Autism Retracted

There is no evidence that vaccines cause autism. Credit: iStockphoto

From Cosmos:

PARIS: Medical journal The Lancet has withdrawn a 1998 study linking autism with inoculation against three childhood illnesses, a paper that caused an uproar and an enduring backlash against vaccination.

"We fully retract this paper from the published record," The Lancet's editors said in a statement published online.

The 1998 paper suggested there might be a connection between autism and a triple vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella (MMR).

Read more ....

"Twitteros" Are Mexico's Latest Outlaws

From CBS News:

GlobalPost: From Drug Cartels to Breathalyzer Tipsters, Twitter Users Are Fast Becoming Public Enemy No. 1.

Mexico has racked up its fair share of menacingly named outlaws in a three-year drug war: the Zetas, Aztecas and even a band of female assassins called the Panthers.

Now, if the government gets its way, another name will also make the wanted list: los Twitteros.

Read more ....

iPad Rattles The E-Bookshelves

Bestseller: The iPad features iBook, an application for buying and reading books.
Credit: Apple

From Technology Review:

But Amazon's e-book dominance may be hard to change.

Over the weekend, a massive disappearing act took place on the virtual shelves of Amazon.com. In a dispute over e-book pricing, the online retailer blocked customers from buying titles--e-book or print--from Macmillan, a publisher whose imprints include Nature Publishing Group, the literary line of Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, and the science fiction and fantasy line Tor.

Read more ....

Google Shows Off Chrome OS Tablet Ideas

A mock-up of a Chrome OS tablet from Google's Chromium developer site.
(Credit: Google)

From CNET News:

Who could resist the months of hype that paved the way for Apple's iPad debut last week? Apparently not Google, which has shown its interest in tablet computing with its browser-based Chrome OS.

On Monday, Glen Murphy, a user interface designer for Google's Chrome browser and the Chrome operating system based on it, pointed to image and video concepts of a Chrome OS-based tablet that went live two days before the iPad launch. Apparently nobody noticed initially, because only now did Murphy tweet, "Apparently our tablet mocks have been unearthed."

The site also shows the array of devices Google envisions for Chrome OS.

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The Pursuit Of Intelligence In Computer Science

What actually constitutes an objective pattern of cognition in machines that we will recognize as intelligent is extremely vague and constantly being rewritten. Steve Dunning/Getty Images

From Discovery News:

We can’t give machines intelligence until we can figure out what roles creativity, inspiration and curiosity should play.

Since the dawn of high tech electronics and robotics, we’ve heard an awful lot about artificial intelligence and countless tales about how it may just decide to enslave us all one of these days, or fuse with humanity into an unrecognizable homunculus of men, women, children and machines as in the end of Isaac Asimov’s classic short story The Last Question, which is probably my favorite science fiction tale for it’s amazing scope and it’s bizarre climax. But when we actually drill down to the actual requirements for making machines endowed with the kind of computing abilities we’d call intelligence, we’ll find that the definition of what actually constitutes an objective pattern of cognition we will recognize as intelligent is extremely vague and constantly being rewritten.

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NASA Budget Creates Uncertainty In Clear Lake

From Houston Chronicle:

Change came to Washington a year ago with the election of President Barack Obama, and one year later it is thundering through Houston's space community like a shuttle's sonic boom.

The totality of impacts from Obama's proposed NASA budget for Houston, the Clear Lake community surrounding Johnson Space Center and even for the astronauts themselves is still far from certain.

Space agency officials declined Tuesday to even confirm that NASA's astronaut corps would continue after the space shuttle retires within the next year.

Read more ....

China's Power Boom Means West May Swap Oil Dependency For Green Tech Dependency

A Wind Power Field Near Xinxiang, China Chris Lim

From Popular Science:

President Obama made it clear in his State of the Union Address last week that he fears the American economy is on the brink of missing out on a green tech boom that could propel us out of our current financial mess and into the coming century, and it appears his concern is well-placed. China leapfrogged Denmark, Germany, Spain and the U.S. to become the world's largest maker of wind turbines last year, and 2010 is shaping up to be another banner year. For China that is, not for the West.

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Apologies Go Down Better Through Right Ear, Study Finds

Saying sorry into someone's right ear offers more chance of getting your message across, research shows Photo: GETTY

From The Telegraph:

Saying sorry isn’t always enough to earn forgiveness but you have more chance of getting your message across if you speak into someone’s right ear, research indicates.

Scientists found that when we are angry, the right ear becomes more receptive to sound than the left.

The discovery has led to the theory that by targeting the right ear, the penitent are more likely to succeed in talking someone round.

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'Broad Spectrum' Antiviral Fights Multitude Of Viruses

Ebola virus. A small-molecule "broad spectrum" antiviral may be able to fight a host of viruses by attacking them through some feature common to an entire class of viruses. (Credit: Frederick Murphy)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Feb. 2, 2010) — The development of antibiotics gave physicians seemingly miraculous weapons against infectious disease. Effective cures for terrible afflictions like pneumonia, syphilis and tuberculosis were suddenly at hand. Moreover, many of the drugs that made them possible were versatile enough to knock out a wide range of deadly bacterial threats.

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Future Soldiers May Get Brain Boosters And Digital Buddies

Caption: The Future Soldier Initiative. Credit: U.S. Army Natick Soldier Research Design and Engineering Center in Massachusetts.

From Live Science:

The soldiers of the future might controversially boost their brains with drugs and prosthetics, augment their strength with mechanical exoskeletons, and have artificially intelligent "digital buddies" at their beck and call, according to the U.S. Army's Future Soldier Initiative.

The project is the latest attempt from the U.S. Army research lab in Natick, Mass., to brainstorm what soldiers might carry into the battlefield of tomorrow. A special emphasis of its concept is augmenting mental performance.

Read more ....

My Comment: An interesting look at what "super soldiers" may look like in the future.

Neuron Breakthrough Offers Hope On Alzheimer’s And Parkinson’s

From Times Online:

Neurons have been created directly from skin cells for the first time, in a remarkable study that suggests that our biological makeup is far more versatile than previously thought.

If confirmed, the discovery that one tissue type can be genetically reprogrammed to become another, could revolutionise treatments for conditions such as Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s, opening up the possibility of turning a patient’s own skin cells into the neurons that they need.

Read more ....

Apple iPad May Ship With Webcam

From Wired Science:

Close scrutiny of the iPad which Steve Jobs presented at Apple’s special event last week shows what may be webcam, tucked away in the black screen bezel just like it is on the MacBook Pro.

A screen-grab from the official video of the event shows nothing but a small dot above the screen, opposite the home button. Taken alone, this isn’t much, but compare this with the picture of the iPad leaked just hours before the event (below). If you remember, these showed an iPad locked down in a security frame, and you could clearly see the camera in the bezel. I even pointed out the cutout in the frame that let us see the webcam.

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Save the Ozone Layer, Give Global Warming A Boost?

Image courtesy NASA Earth Observatory

From The National Geographic:

While most of the world has warmed, parts of the southern hemisphere have remained stubbornly cold—oddly enough because of a gaping hole in the ozone layer. Now new research shows that all the efforts made by scientists and environmental advocates to close the hole may actually increase warming throughout the entire southern hemisphere.

That's because, for decades, brighter summertime clouds, created by the hole, have reflected more of the sun's rays, acting as a shield against global warming.

Read more ....

Digital Doomsday: The End Of Knowledge

Information is stored in many forms, but will it be readable in the future?
(Image:WesternWolf/Flickr/Getty)

From The New Scientist:

"IN MONTH XI, 15th day, Venus in the west disappeared, 3 days in the sky it stayed away. In month XI, 18th day, Venus in the east became visible."

What's remarkable about these observations of Venus is that they were made about 3500 years ago, by Babylonian astrologers. We know about them because a clay tablet bearing a record of these ancient observations, called the Venus Tablet of Ammisaduqa, was made 1000 years later and has survived largely intact. Today, it can be viewed at the British Museum in London.

Read more ....

DARPA Gives $32 Million For A Bigger Big Dog From Boston Dynamics

LS3- The Bigger Dog via Boston Dynamics

Popular Science:

After years of development and several creepy videos, Boston Dynamics' Big Dog robot is scheduled to get bigger. Working off a $32 million request from DARPA and the Marine Corps, Boston Dynamics has developed a supped-up version of the quadrupedal Big Dog robot called the the Legged Squad Support System (LS3). This new robot will have a longer range, heavier carrying capacity, and more agility than its predecessor.

Read more ....

Spray-On Miracle Could Revolutionise Manufacturing

Fantasy becomes reality: Alec Guinness starred in the 1951 satire
The Man in the White Suit. GETTY

From The Independent:

Liquid glass sounds like the stuff of sci-fi. But can it really live up to the hype?

It sounds too good to be true: a non-toxic spray invisible to the human eye that protects almost any surface against dirt and bacteria, whether it is hospital equipment and medical bandages or ancient stone monuments and expensive fabrics.

But true it is. The spray is a form of "liquid glass" and is harmless to living things and the wider environment. It is being touted as one of the most important, environmentally-friendly products to emerge from the field of nanotechnology, which deals in objects at the molecular end of the size scale.

Read more ....

Cat Predicts 50 Deaths In RI Nursing Home

The tortoiseshell and white cat spends its days pacing from room to room, rarely spending any time with patients except those with just hours to live Photo: AP

From The Telegraph:

A cat with an uncanny ability to detect when nursing home patients are about to die has proven itself in around 50 cases by curling up with them in their final hours, according to a new book.

Dr David Dosa, a geriatrician and assistant professor at Brown University, said that five years of records showed Oscar rarely erring, sometimes proving medical staff at the New England nursing home wrong in their predictions over which patients were close to death.

The cat, now five and generally unsociable, was adopted as a kitten at the Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Centre in Providence, Rhode Island, which specialises in caring for people with severe dementia.

Read more ....

So All These Climate Revelations Were A Dastardly Foreign Plot -- A Commentary

Matt Murphy

From The Independent:

It hasn't occurred to King that the emails might have been leaked by an insider

It was the Russians. Or possibly the Chinese. No, wait, it was the Americans. Yes, our very own version of Inspector Clouseau is on the case of the leaked emails from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit.

Yesterday Sir David King, Tony Blair's former chief scientific advisor, told this newspaper: "It was an extraordinarily sophisticated operation. There are several bodies of people who could do this sort of work. These are national intelligence agencies... there is the possibility that it could be the Russian intelligence agency." However, King goes on to suggest that the expense of such an operation would be too great for the entire Russian state to undertake: "In terms of the expense, there is the American lobby system, which is a very likely source of finance, so the finger must point to them."

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