Life From A Test Tube? The Real Promise Of Synthetic Biology

Image: Matt Collins

From Scientific American:

Scientists are closing in on the ability to make life from scratch, with potential consequences both good and bad.

I have seen the future, and it is now.

Those words came to mind again as I recently listened to Craig Venter, one of those leading the new areas of synthetic genomics and synthetic biology. Every time I hear a talk on this subject, it seems a new threshold in the artificial manipulation and, ultimately, creation of life has been passed.

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Scientists Get Closer To Understanding Why We Age

Biologists have observed that people's cells often age at different rates.
Image Source / Corbis

From Time Magazine:

Time waits for no man, the old truism goes, but in recent years scientists have shown that it does seem to move more slowly for some. Molecular biologists have observed that people's cells often age at different rates, leading them to make a distinction between "chronological" and "biological age."

But the reason for the difference remains only vaguely understood. Environmental factors such as smoking, stress and regular exercise all seem to influence the rate at which our cells age. Now, for the first time, researchers have found a genetic link to cellular aging — a finding that suggests new treatments for a variety of age-related diseases and cancers.

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In Brookhaven Collider, Scientists Briefly Break A Law Of Nature

HOT A computer rendition of 4-trillion-degree Celsius quark-gluon plasma created in a demonstration of what scientists suspect shaped cosmic history. Brookhaven National Laboratory

From The New York Times:

Physicists said Monday that they had whacked a tiny region of space with enough energy to briefly distort the laws of physics, providing the first laboratory demonstration of the kind of process that scientists suspect has shaped cosmic history.

The blow was delivered in the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, or RHIC, at the Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, where, since 2000, physicists have been accelerating gold nuclei around a 2.4-mile underground ring to 99.995 percent of the speed of light and then colliding them in an effort to melt protons and neutrons and free their constituents — quarks and gluons. The goal has been a state of matter called a quark-gluon plasma, which theorists believe existed when the universe was only a microsecond old.

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'Star Wars' Is A Mere Phantom Menace To Missiles

From New Scientist:

The US Missile Defense Agency (MDA) has finally shot down a moving missile with an airborne laser – but military experts say the system is not good enough for combat.

A liquid-fuelled rocket – thought to be a Scud-B, similar to those being developed by Iran and North Korea – was fired from a ship off the coast California on 11 February.

Within the next 20 seconds, the "airborne laser testbed" onboard a modified Boeing 747 locked-on to it with two low-powered tracking lasers, then a laser beam of several megawatts, to heat-damage the missile's skin. If such damage is done while booster rockets are still firing, the stresses caused by the acceleration can destroy the missile, as this clip of the test shows.

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Special Ops Gunships To Get Pain-Inducing Weapons

1. An electron gun fires a particle beam through a vacuum tube wrapped with strong magnets.
2. As the beam meets the magnetic field, the electrons bunch up and gyrate, producing high-power microwaves at set frequencies.
3. Mirrors steer the microwaves through a window made of diamond. The gem is used for its resistance to heat and for its clarity.
4. The electron beam’s excess energy is deposited in the coils of a collector.

From Popular Mechanics:

Nonlethal energy-beam blasters that cause pain without killing their targets could finally find a home—inside special operations gunships. Here's how they work.

The Pentagon has been researching nonlethal pain rays since the mid-’90s, but finding a vehicle to carry them has proven to be a challenge. Researchers have mounted these microwave weapons—which repel people by heating water molecules just under the skin, reportedly without damaging tissue—on trucks, guard towers and Humvees, but the U.S. military has never deployed them for real-world use. (Using such weapons on civilians in Iraq or Afghanistan is not seen as a good way to win hearts and minds.)

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My Comment: Ouch.

E-Books: Publishers Poised For Victory In Latest Battle

Photo: Google is thought to be offering the book trade more from e-book sales

From Times Online:

Publishers look set to win the latest round in the battle for supremacy on electronic books, with Google ready to offer major concessions as it prepares to enter the increasingly competitive e-book market.

Following the unveiling of Apple’s iPad, which will feature an electronic bookstore when it launches next month, and Amazon’s humiliation last week by a book publisher in a prices row, Google is thought to have given in to the book industry by offering it a higher share of the sale of e-books.

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Red Wine, Chocolate Among Foods That Fight Cancer

More great news for chocolate lovers: it helps fight cancer. Source: The Australian

From The Australian/AFP:

CABERNET and chocolate are potent medicine for killing cancer, according to new research.

Red grapes and dark chocolate join blueberries, garlic, soy, and teas as ingredients that starve cancer while feeding bodies, Angiogenesis Foundation head William Li said at the Technology Entertainment Design Conference in Long Beach, California.

``We are rating foods based on their cancer-fighting qualities,'' Li said. ``What we eat is really our chemotherapy three times a day.''

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Diamond Nanowire Device Could Lead To New Class Of Diamond Nanomaterials

A diamond-based nanowire device. Researchers used a top-down nanofabrication technique to embed color centers into a variety of machined structures. By creating large device arrays rather than just "one-of-a-kind" designs, the realization of quantum networks and systems, which require the integration and manipulation of many devices in parallel, is more likely. (Credit: Illustrated by Jay Penni.)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Feb. 15, 2010) — By creating diamond-based nanowire devices, a team at Harvard has taken another step towards making applications based on quantum science and technology possible.

The new device offers a bright, stable source of single photons at room temperature, an essential element in making fast and secure computing with light practical.

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King Tut's Mom And Dad ID'ed

From Live Science:

Candidates for King Tut's mother and father have been identified using DNA analyses from royal Egyptian mummies.

King Tutankhamun ruled from 1333 to 1324 B.C., during the period of ancient Egyptian history known as the New Kingdom.

Though he is possibly the most well-known of the Egyptian pharaohs, many mysteries still exist about the life, death and parentage of King Tut. But new DNA tests may have helped answer the question of what killed Tut, as well as exactly who his parents were.

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King Tut Died Of Malaria, Had A Club Foot: New Study

The removal of the lid of the sarcophagus of the mummy of King Tutankhamen in his underground tomb in the Valley of the Kings in Luxor November 4, 2007. Reuters/Ben Curtis/Pool

From The National Post:

WASHINGTON -- The celebrated pharaoh Tutankhamun had a club foot, walked with a cane and was killed by malaria, a study showed on Tuesday.

Researchers from Egypt, Italy and Germany used DNA testing to draw "the most plausible" family tree to date for Tutankhamun and computerized tomography (CT) scans to determine that the pharaoh and his forebears were unlikely to have had the feminine physiques they are depicted with in 3,000-year-old artifacts.

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A Faster Wireless Web

Mobile speed: Fasp-AIR will make its first appearance in the wild as an iPhone application designed to speed media uploads over wireless networks. Credit: Aspera

From Technology Review:

A new protocol called fasp-AIR promises speedier mobile downloads.

Transfers of large amounts of data across the Internet to wireless devices suffer from a key problem: The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) used to send and receive that data can be unnecessarily slow.

A company called Aspera has now announced an alternative protocol designed to accelerate wireless transfer speeds. Called fasp-AIR, it includes new proprietary approaches to addressing problems of data transfer that are unique to wireless communications. The original fasp protocol is already used to boost regular Internet transfers. It was used, for instance, to speed up the transfer of files from New Zealand to the U.S. during production of the movie Avatar.

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'Climategate' Scientist Speaks Out

Professor Phil Jones. Photograph: University of East Anglia

From Scientific American:

Climatologist Phil Jones answers his critics in an exclusive interview with.

Phil Jones holds himself defensively, his arms crossed tightly in front of his chest as if shielding himself from attack. Little wonder: Jones has spent the past three months being vilified for his central role in what is now called "climategate."

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Why Google Wants A Faster Internet

Scott Barbour / Getty Images

From Time Magazine:

There was no lack of, well, buzz about Google's new Buzz social-media platform last week, but more important were a series of moves that suggest the search giant is ready to take a tentative step toward fixing one of its longest-held gripes: the speed of Internet connections in the U.S.

In a blog post on Feb. 10, Google product managers Minnie Ingersoll and James Kelly laid out the company's plan to provide as many as 500,000 people in a small number of locales with fiber-optic Internet connections capable of one gigabit per second (Gbps), more than 100 times faster than the typical U.S. broadband connection speed today. It would be a blazing-fast upgrade, capable of downloading a full-length HD movie in under 90 seconds.

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Scientists Discover The Secret Of Ageing

From The Financial Times:

One of the biggest puzzles in biology – how and why living cells age – has been solved by an international team based at Newcastle University, in north-east England.

The answer is complex, and will not produce an elixir of eternal life in the foreseeable future.

But the scientists expect better drugs for age-related illnesses, such as diabetes and heart disease, to emerge from their discovery of the biochemical pathway involved in ageing.

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Did 'Dark Stars' Spawn Supermassive Black Holes?

A massive dark star voraciously eating matter and dark matter until it is well over 100,000 times the mass of the sun (NASA/Ian O'Neill).

From Discover Magazine:

Approximately 200 million years after the Big Bang, the universe was a very different place.

For starters, there was no starlight as there were no stars. This period was known descriptively as the "Dark Ages." As there were no stars, only clouds of the most basic elements persisted, fogging up the cosmos.

Although it's believed the first stars (known as "Population III stars") were sparked when hydrogen and helium gases cooled enough to clump together, collapsing under gravity and initiating nuclear fusion in the star cores (thus generating heavier elements), there's another possibility.

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A Gene For Alzheimer's Makes You Smarter

An intellectual advantage (Image: Joerg Sarbach/AP/PA)

From The New Scientist:

A GENE variant that ups your risk of developing Alzheimer's disease in old age may not be all bad. It seems that young people with the variant tend to be smarter, more educated and have better memories than their peers.

The discovery may improve the variant's negative image (see "Yes or no"). It also suggests why the variant is common despite its debilitating effects in old age. Carriers of the variant may have an advantage earlier in life, allowing them to reproduce and pass on the variant before its negative effects kick in. "From an evolutionary perspective it makes sense," says Duke Han at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago.

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Why Does Time Fly When You Are Having Fun?

From The BBC News:

It might seem like a bit of an odd question, but what speed does time travel at?

The obvious answer is that it ticks by at exactly the rate of 60 seconds every minute. But new research into our perception of time shows that for us humans, time is a lot more complicated.

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Cameras of the Future: Heart Researchers Create Revolutionary Photographic Technique

The image shows a drop of milk falling into a beaker of water. A video was made at the same time, using the same camera, and represents the same image data. The still image has a 16 fold greater spatial resolution (see swirls of milk in the beaker), and it can be decoded into the video frames played in sequence to reveal the high-speed motion content. (Credit: Copyright Dr Gil Bub, University of Oxford)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Feb. 15, 2010) — Scientists at the University of Oxford have developed a revolutionary way of capturing a high-resolution still image alongside very high-speed video -- a new technology that is attractive for science, industry and consumer sectors alike.

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Why Is The Sun's Atmosphere So Hot?

A schematic diagram of the cycle of mass in the solar atmosphere. High speed upflows seen in the magnetic upper chromosphere as Type-II spicules, get thrust into the corona; this material is visible at a wide range of temperatures, and some of it becomes entrained in the coronal magnetic field. Later, this material falls out along the same magnetic field lines, most likely as a phenomena called "coronal rain."

From Live Science:

The 2006 launch of the multinational Hinode satellite changed the picture of the Sun for astrophysicists. For two astrophysicists in particular, the resulting imagery offered a voyage of discovery and the thrill of unraveling a long-held solar mystery.

Earth's atmosphere can obscure the view of unaided ground-based telescopes, but, unimpeded by this problem, the high-resolution telescope flying on Hinode captures images of the Sun in unparalleled detail.

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The Car In front Will Be Carbon Fibre

Volkswagen AG's carbon-fibre sports car prototype, at the Tokyo Motor Show in 2005. The cars of the future will be like this with knobs on. Photo: Reuters/ERIKO SUGITA

From The Telegraph:

A nano-scale material developed in Britain may one day yield wafer-thin cellphones and light-weight, long-range electric cars powered by the roof, boot and doors, according to researchers.

For now, the new technology - which is a patented mix of carbon fibre and polymer resin that can charge and release electricity just like a regular battery - has not gone beyond a successful laboratory experiment.

But if scaled up, it could hold several advantages over existing energy sources for hybrid and electric cars, according to the scientists at Imperial College London who developed it.

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Bay Window View Installed On Space Station

From CBS News:

Astronauts Attach Cupola to New Tranquility Module.

(CBS) A multi-window cupola was successfully moved Monday from the new Tranquility module's outboard port to an Earth-facing hatch where the observation deck will provide bay-window views.

After resolving problems with jammed bolts and sticky latches, Astronauts Kay Hire and Terry Virts - operating the space station's robot arm - moved the cupola into position for attachment at Tranquility's nadir port.

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Why I'm An ebook Convert -- Commentary

The Kindle . . . ideal for a furtive read of celebrity memoirs.
Photograph: Mario Tama/Getty Images

From The Guardian:

A Kindle or ebook won't have that 'new book smell' – but no one's going to judge you by its cover.

Following my blithering about the iPad the other week, I found myself thinking about ebooks. That's my life for you. A rollercoaster. Until recently, I was an ebook sceptic, see; one of those people who harrumphs about the "physical pleasure of turning actual pages" and how ebook will "never replace the real thing". Then I was given a Kindle as a present. That shut me up. Stock complaints about the inherent pleasure of ye olde format are bandied about whenever some new upstart invention comes along. Each moan is nothing more than a little foetus of nostalgia jerking in your gut. First they said CDs were no match for vinyl. Then they said MP3s were no match for CDs. Now they say streaming music services are no match for MP3s. They're only happy looking in the rear-view mirror.

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Google Street View Snowmobile Gives A Slopes-Eye-View Of Winter Olympics Resort

From The Daily Mail:

First there was the Google car, which roamed the roads of Britain to build up a Street View perspective of the nation.

Then came the Google Trike, powered by super-strong employees to chart harder to reach areas such as Stone Henge.

Now the internet search giant has headed to the mountains with the Google snowmobile.

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The Hottest Science Experiment On The Planet

Brookhaven National Laboratory

From Discover Magazine:

In a Long Island lab, gold particles collide to form a subatomic stew far hotter than the sun.

Rocking the thermometer at 4 trillion degrees Celsius, a subatomic soup that might reflect the state of matter shortly after the Big Bang has set a new world record: It's the hottest substance ever created in a lab. The previous record, recorded at Sandia National Lab in 2006, was a balmy 2 billion degrees Celsius. The core of the sun burns at a chill 15 million degrees.

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Primordial Giant: The Star That Time Forgot

Messages from a long-lost universe (Image: Tim Gravestock)

From New Scientist:

At first, there didn't seem anything earth-shattering about the tiny point of light that pricked the southern Californian sky on a mild night in early April 2007. Only the robotic eyes of the Nearby Supernova Factory, a project designed to spy out distant stellar explosions, spotted it from the Palomar Observatory, high in the hills between Los Angeles and San Diego.

The project's computers automatically forwarded the images to a data server to await analysis. The same routine kicks in scores of times each year when a far-off star in its death throes explodes onto the night sky, before fading back to obscurity once more.

But this one did not fade away. It got brighter. And brighter. That's when human eyes became alert.

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Giant Redwoods May Dry Out; Warming To Blame?

Fog shrouds redwoods in California's Humboldt Redwoods State Park.
Photograph by Michael Nichols, National Geographic Stock

From The National Geographic:

Declining fog cover on California's coast could leave the state's famous redwoods high and dry, a new study says.

Among the tallest and longest-lived trees on Earth, redwoods depend on summertime's moisture-rich fog to replenish their water reserves.

But climate change may be reducing this crucial fog cover. Though still poorly understood, climate change may be contributing to a decline in a high-pressure climatic system that usually "pinches itself" against the coast, creating fog, said study co-author James Johnstone, an environmental scientist at the University of California, Berkeley.

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Space Rock Contains Organic Molecular Feast

Photo: The Murchison meteorite came down in Australia in 1969

From The BBC:

Scientists say they have confirmed that a meteorite that crashed into earth 40 years ago contains millions of different organic compounds.

It is thought the Murchison meteorite could be even older than the Sun.

"Having this information means you can tell what was happening during the birth of the Solar System," said lead researcher Dr Philippe Schmitt-Kopplin.

The results of the meteorite study are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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Nanoparticles To Clean Drinking Water

Credit: iStockphoto

From Cosmos:

BEIJING: Scientists have developed nanotechnology that purifies water using only visible light, it continues working in the dark and it kills the tougher microbes to boot.

Light is often used as a water purifier and existing methods rely on processes stimulated by ultraviolet (UV) light.

But UV accounts for just 5% of daylight so a method using visible light — which accounts for almost half — is more desirable.

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Scientists Synthesize Unique Family of Anti-Cancer Compounds

Image of one of the kinamycin compounds synthesized by Yale researchers destroying ovarian cancer cells (the spherical objects) in less than 48 hours in lab tests. (Credit: Gil Mor)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Feb. 13, 2010) — Yale University scientists have streamlined the process for synthesizing a family of compounds with the potential to kill cancer and other diseased cells, and have found that they represent a unique category of anti-cancer agents. Their discovery appears in this week's online edition of the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

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Year Of The Tiger: All About The Chinese Zodiac

From Live Science:

This Sunday, Feb. 14, marks a new year according to the Chinese calendar, which will be moving from the reign of the Ox to the year of the Tiger.

Each year on the Chinese calendar is assigned an animal from the Chinese zodiac, which rotates on a 12-year cycle. People born during a specific year are thought to have attributes of their animal — tigers are confident, daring and unpredictable, for example.

The Chinese calendar is thought to have been formulated around 500 B.C., though elements of it date back at least to the Shang Dynasty around 1,000 B.C.

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Mobile Operators Join Forces To Develop Open Apps Platform

From Wall Street Journal:

BARCELONA—Twenty-four mobile operators Monday said they had formed an alliance to build an open platform to deliver applications to all mobile phone users, in an attempt to emulate the runaway success of Apple Inc.'s App Store.

The initiative shows how even fierce rivals are coming together to try to capture the mass market in mobile Internet services.

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Climategate Academic Professor Phil Jones Admits He 'Lost Track' Of Vital Data

Professor Phil Jones from the Climate Researh Unit University of East Anglia

From The Telegraph:

Professor Phil Jones, the academic at the centre of the “climategate” scandal, has admitted he had difficulty “keeping track” of vital data used to back up global warming claims.

Prof Jones stepped down as director of the University of East Anglia’s climate change unit in December after leaked emails appeared to show academics were manipulating data to bolster claims that global warming is caused by humans.

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CSI Cairo: How Science Will Solve The Mystery Of Tutankhamun

DNA samples have been taken from Tutankhamun and other mummies from the 18th dynasty of rulers in an attempt to establish his family lineage. Getty Images

From The Independent:

New technology is helping answer the riddles in the life, and death, of the boy pharaoh. And it's cracked other historical puzzles too.

His golden funeral mask with its striped headdress has become the symbol of Egypt's ancient grandeur. Yet for all the fame that surrounds the boy King Tutankhamun, no one really knows who he was.

Now, the mystery of King Tut's lineage has finally been solved. It will be revealed to the world on Wednesday, more than 30 centuries after the pharaoh was sealed in a gold coffin.

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Online Voyeurs Flock to The Random Thrills Of Chatroulette

From The Guardian:

An addictive new website that links strangers' webcams is gaining popularity – and notoriety.

A new website that has been described as "surreal", "addictive" and "frightening" is proving a sensation around the world – and attracting a reputation as a haven for no-holds-barred, explicit material.

Chatroulette, which was launched in November, has rocketed in popularity thanks to its simple premise: internet video chats with ­random strangers.

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There Has Been No Global Warming Since 1995

Click Image to Enlarge

From The Daily Mail:

* Data for vital 'hockey stick graph' has gone missing
* There has been no global warming since 1995
* Warming periods have happened before - but NOT due to man-made changes

The academic at the centre of the ‘Climategate’ affair, whose raw data is crucial to the theory of climate change, has admitted that he has trouble ‘keeping track’ of the information.

Colleagues say that the reason Professor Phil Jones has refused Freedom of Information requests is that he may have actually lost the relevant papers.

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Robot Hand Could Protect Soldiers On The Battlefield

The 'intelligent' substance d3o at the display

From The Telegraph:

A robot hand that could defuse bombs, luminous goo that flows around soldiers’ moving bodies but hardens to protect them if they are hit and a uniform that conducts electricity are among the first fruits of the Ministry of Defence’s version of the Dragons’ Den.

The Centre for Defence Enterprise (CDE) in Harwell, Oxfordshire, is an initiative that aims to harness British scientific innovation for rapid use on the battlefield. Ministers also hope to temper the MoD’s reputation for laborious and costly procurements that arrive in service years after they have ceased to be useful.

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Google Shuts Down Music Blogs Without Warning

Music blog Gorilla Vs Bear was concerned by Google's actions

From The Guardian:

Bloggers told they have violated terms without further explanation, as years of archives are wiped off the internet.

In what critics are calling "musicblogocide 2010", Google has deleted at least six popular music blogs that it claims violated copyright law. These sites, hosted by Google's Blogger and Blogspot services, received notices only after their sites – and years of archives – were wiped from the internet.

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Hubble Telescope Captures Saturn's Eerie Twin Aurorae

Astronomers had a rare chance to view Saturn with its rings edge on. It meant they could study the planet's Northern and Southern lights

From The Daily Mail:

A spectacular light show on Saturn has been captured in unique new photos of the ringed planet.

The aurora images captured by the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) were made possible by a rare chance to see the planet with its rings edge-on and both poles in view.

It takes Saturn almost 30 years to orbit the Sun, and during that time such a picture opportunity occurs only twice.

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How Transformers Can Explode

With a surge of power and corroded wiring, transformers can explode, causing extensive damage. (Photo from Iceman9294/Flicker)

From Popular Mechanics:

On February 12, an underground electrical transformer exploded in front of a Radio Shack on 6th Avenue, in New York City, emitting a fireball seven stories high and damaging nearby buildings. Here's how this could have happened.

A transformer from Consolidated Edison (Con Ed), New York City's sole electricity supplier, exploded from beneath the sidewalk in an underground vault yesterday, creating a fiery blast that shattered windows multiple stories high. Though no injuries were reported, offices and stores at the corner of 20th Street were left smoldering.

Investigators are still trying to answer the question: Just what lead this transformer to explode?

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New Camera System Takes The Guesswork Out Of Baseball Stats

Keeping an Eye on the Ball Up to four cameras mounted on the light towers along each foul line send a live feed to a computer, where object-recognition software identifies each player and the ball and records their every movement as the play unfolds. Here, a sample data stream from a pop fly to left field. Graham Murdoch

From Popular Science:

This could be the year that baseball-stat freaks finally crack the “Derek Jeter enigma.” A panel of coaches has awarded the New York Yankees’ shortstop four of the past six Gold Glove awards for fielding excellence. That drives statisticians nuts, because nearly every statistical model ranks Jeter’s defense below average.

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Study Hints At Dark Matter Action

Image: Some scientists believe dark matter (in pink) is everywhere in the universe

From The BBC:

Researchers in the US say they have detected two signals which could possibly indicate the presence of particles of dark matter.

But the study in Science journal reports the statistical likelihood of a detection of dark matter as 23%.

Deep underground in a lab in Minnesota experiments to detect WIMPS, or Weakly Interacting Massive Particles have been going on since 2003.

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Models of Sea Level Change During Ice-Age Cycles Challenged

Data researchers collected on speleothem encrustations, a type of mineral deposit, in coastal caves on the Mediterranean island of Mallorca indicate that sea level was about one meter above present-day levels around 81,000 years ago. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of Iowa)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Feb. 12, 2010) — Theories about the rates of ice accumulation and melting during the Quaternary Period -- the time interval ranging from 2.6 million years ago to the present -- may need to be revised, thanks to research findings published by a University of Iowa researcher and his colleagues in the Feb. 12 issue of the journal Science.

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4 Myths of Online Dating Photos Revealed

From Live Science:

Guys hoping to get noticed on online dating sites should take off their shirts, at least those with six-pack abs, according to new survey results by one online matchmaker that also provide advice for gals' profile pics.

"We were sitting on a treasure trove of data," said Sam Yagan, co-founder and CEO of OkCupid. ''There are millions of experiments essentially happening on our site every day."

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General Relativity: In Pretty Good Shape

From Discovery Magazine:

If we celebrate provocative new experimental findings, we should also celebrate the careful null results (experiments that agree with existing theories) on which much of science is based. Back in October we pointed to a new analysis that used observations of gravitational lensing by large-scale structure to test Einstein’s general relativity on cosmological scales, with the intriguing result that it didn’t seem to fit. And the caveat that it probably would end up fitting once we understood things better, but it’s always important to follow up on these kinds of clues.

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Astronomers Back Chile To Host World's Biggest Telescope

A view of a telescope, operated by the European Southern Observatory, in Chile. Photo: Reuters/VICTOR RUIZ CABALLERO

From The Telegraph:

For astronomers, it appears that not only does size really matter but so does an eye-opening location.

That is why an international group of four professional star gazers have banded together to back Chile's Atacama desert as home to the world's biggest telescope, to be built in 2018 based on its geographical advantages.

The high-altitude Armazones mountain in the desert in northern Chilean desert is the perfect place for the European Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) to be set up, because of skies that are cloud-free 360 nights a year, they say.

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MoD's Vanguard: A Mix Of Robot Bomb Defusers And Kneepad Goo

Rich Walker of Shadow Robot Company with a robotic hand that could be used by army bomb disposal personnel. Photograph: Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty Images

From The Guardian:

Innovative technology at the Centre for Defence Enterprise

A robotic hand that could defuse bombs remotely, a camera with the ability to detect minute changes in the landscape and a mysterious orange goo that absorbs the impact of bomb blasts are among new battlefield technologies unveiled by the Ministry of Defence.

The innovations, designed to make life safer for frontline troops, are being funded by grants from the MoD's Centre for Defence Enterprise, which encourages private companies to bring their products straight to the government for development.

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'Like Science Fiction': Astronauts Awe-Struck By Gleaming International Space Station

Space shuttle Endeavour docked with the forward docking port of the Harmony module

From The Daily Mail:

Glowing in the sunlight, this is the latest stunning shot of the International Space Station, taken from the shuttle Endeavour as it came in to dock.

Astronaut Stephen Robinson was awe-struck when he drew close to the space station, during Endeavour's approach from below.

'To look up and see what humankind could really accomplish in space was just almost impossible to believe. It seemed like science fiction,' he said.

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The High-Tech Weather Forecasting In The 2010 Winter Olympics

Whistler Resort, Vancouver, British Columbia (Photograph by Julie Bishop/Getty Images)

From Popular Mechanics:

Weather forecasting during the Olympics is always critical, but it will be even harder than usual this time around. Not only is Vancouver the warmest city to host the winter games yet but the Vancouver-Whistler region's weather is incredibly complex because of the region's varied terrain, which spans ocean, islands and fjords and rises to 6500-foot-high mountains.

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U.S. Army In Afghanistan Takes Delivery of New Bacterial Bioreactors To Clean Wastewater

Engineering Wastewater Treatment Sabin Holland is the lead scientist on a waste-water treatment system developed at SHSU which has both military and civilian applications. Sam Houston State University

From Popular Science:

Bacteria have deployed to Afghanistan to help the U.S. Army clean polluted wastewater. The microbes commonly appear in handfuls of dirt, but now form the main component of two new bioreactors made by scientists at Sam Houston State University in Texas.

Read more ....

Robot Stars In South Korean Plays

EveR-3: the all-singing, all-dancing thespian robot. Credit: Wikimedia

From The Cosmos/AFP:

SEOUL: A South Korean-developed robot played to acclaim in Robot Princess and the Seven Dwarfs and is set to take more leading theatre roles this year.

EveR-3 (Eve Robot 3) starred in various dramas last year including the government-funded Dwarfs which attracted a full house, said Lee Ho-Gil, of the state-run Korea Institute of Industrial Technology.

The lifelike EveR-3 is 157 cm tall, can communicate in Korean and English, and can express a total of 16 facial expressions – without ever forgetting her lines.

Read more ....

Tigers Evolved With Snow Leopards, Gene Study Reveals

From The BBC:

The tiger may be more ancient and distinct than we thought.

Tigers are less closely related to lions, leopards and jaguars than these other big cats are to each other, according to a new comprehensive study.

The genetic analysis also reveals the tiger began evolving 3.2 million years ago, and its closest living relative is the equally endangered snow leopard.

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Apple Does Its Part To Battle Terrorism

From Concurring Opinions:

Today in my contracts call we were looking at boilerplate and the problems of contracts of adhesion. After class one of my students pointed out to me that buried in the fine print of its iTunes Store Terms and Conditions is a clause where Apple is doing its bit to foster non-proliferation. Clause 34(g) declares in part

You may not use or otherwise export or re-export the Licensed Application except as authorized by United States law and the laws of the jurisdiction in which the Licensed Application was obtained. In particular, but without limitation, the Licensed Application may not be exported or re-exported (a) into any U.S. embargoed countries or (b) to anyone on the U.S. Treasury Department’s list of Specially Designated Nationals or the U.S. Department of Commerce Denied Person’s List or Entity List. By using the Licensed Application, you represent and warrant that you are not located in any such country or on any such list. You also agree that you will not use these products for any purposes prohibited by United States law, including, without limitation, the development, design, manufacture or production of nuclear, missiles, or chemical or biological weapons.

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Geographers Help Map Devastation in Haiti

Screenshot of MCEER's Virtual Disaster Viewer.
(Credit: MCEER, State University of New York at Buffalo)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Feb. 11, 2010) — In the wake of the earthquake in Haiti, University at Buffalo geography students are participating in a global effort to enhance the international response and recovery effort by helping to assess damage, using images hosted by Google Earth and the Virtual Disaster Viewer, which shares imagery of disasters from various sources.

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Diamonds Are A Girl's Toughest Friend

This time-integrated photograph shows the high-powered laser shot at the diamond target (center), which is surrounded by several instruments. The bright white light is plasma. At just over 1 million atmospheres of pressure the diamond failed. Credit: Eugene Kowaluk/LLE

From Live Science:

We've all heard that diamonds can cut through glass, but now scientists have found Earth's hardest solid can withstand pressures just over a million atmospheres before getting crushed.

For comparison, the pressure at the center of Earth is about 3.5 million atmospheres, according to the researchers. One atmosphere is the natural pressure of air at sea-level. And the human body can withstand about 27 atmospheres, if it's applied gradually, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

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