Sudan's Forgotten Pyramids

An archaelogical site 300 kms north of the Sudanese capital Khartoum. The pyramids form one of the most spectacular sights in Sudan with about fifty small ruinous pyramids – the tombs of the rulers of Kush from about 250 BC to 350 AD. The pyramids lie on the tops of two rocky ridges blanketed by sand dunes about three miles east of the Nile. Credit: AFP

From Cosmos/AFP:

Archaeologists say the pyramids, cemeteries and ancient palaces of the Nubian Desert in northern Sudan hold mysteries to rival ancient Egypt.

There is not a tourist in sight as the Sun sets over sand-swept pyramids at Meroe, in northern Sudan.

"There is a magic beauty about these sites that is heightened by the privilege of being able to admire them alone, with the pyramids, the dunes and the sun," says Guillemette Andreu, head of antiquities at Paris' Louvre museum.

"It really sets them apart from the Egyptian pyramids, whose beauty is slightly overshadowed by the tourist crowds."

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Evidence For Life On Mars May Be Staring Us In The Face

Sulphur in silence (Image: NASA/SPL)

From New Scientist:

THE footprint of life on Mars may have been plain to see all along in the sulphurous minerals that litter the planet's surface. What's more, the next Mars lander should be able to detect the evidence.

No mission to Mars has ever found complex carbon-based molecules, from which life as we know it is built. But sulphur is everywhere on Mars - it is more abundant there than on Earth - and it could contain one of the signatures of life. On Earth, the activity of some microbes converts one class of sulphur-containing compounds, the sulphates, into another, the sulphides. The microbes prefer to work with the lighter sulphur-32 isotope, so the sulphides they produce are relatively deficient in the heavier isotope, sulphur-34. Planetary scientists have long wondered whether we could use this pattern to discern signs of life on Mars. Now the prospects for this technique look better than ever.

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Fingertip Bacteria: A Promising Forensic Tool

Credit: Technology Review

From Technology Review:

The genetic makeup of microbes on a person's skin could provide crime scene evidence.

It's not just our genomes that make us unique. The genomic profile of bacteria that rub off our fingertips and onto objects we touch--a computer keyboard, for instance--also provides a "fingerprint" that could be used for forensic purposes, according to researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Noah Fierer, Rob Knight, and colleagues recovered bacteria from keyboards of three individuals and sequenced large numbers of bacterial genomes at once.

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Latest SpaceX Falcon 9 Engine Test A Success (With Video!)

From Popular Mechanics:

This weekend’s Falcon 9 engine test could pave the way for a test flight in early April.

This weekend, the launch company Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) ignited all nine Merlin rocket engines in a static fire test that marks a milestone in private space industry. The 3.5-second test occurred at Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral. "The test validated the launchpad propellant and pneumatic systems, as well as the ground and flight-control software that controls pad and launch vehicle configurations," the company announced. The success was a relief after a setback last Tuesday when launch technicians aborted the test with just 2 seconds to ignition.

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Tested: A Reboot For The Immune System

Reset Immune System iStock

From Popular Science:

The ability to reprogram the immune system is one of the most sought-after goals in medicine. Now researchers are closer than ever to pulling it off in patients with Type 1 diabetes, one of whom happens to be our correspondent.

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NASA Aims For April 5 Space Shuttle Discovery Launch

The space shuttle Discovery sitting on launch pad 39-A on August 27, 2009 at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Karen Bleier, AFP/Getty Images

From USA Today:

NASA will run tests later this week to determine whether its safe to fly shuttle Discovery despite valve trouble that cropped up over the weekend during a critical propellant-loading operation at Kennedy Space Center.

The tests, if successful, could provide managers with the data required to prove Discovery could launch as scheduled on April 5 and still fly its International Space Station outfitting mission safely.

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Search On For Death Star That Throws Out Deadly Comets

This diagram shows a brown dwarf in relation to Earth, Jupiter, a low-mass star and the sun.
Photo: NASA

From The Telegraph:

Nasa scientists are searching for an invisible 'Death Star' that circles the Sun, which catapults potentially catastrophic comets at the Earth.

The star, also known as Nemesis, is five times the size of Jupiter and could be to blame for the impact that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.

The bombardment of icy missiles is being blamed by some scientists for mass extinctions of life that they say happen every 26 million years.

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Replica Of Big Skull From 28,000 Years Ago Suggests Human Brains Have Started To Shrink

Old big head: A 3D image replica of the skull shows it was 20% larger than ours

From The Daily Mail:

Our brains are shrinking, according to scientists who have recreated a 28,000-year-old skull from remains found in France.

The French team, which claims to have produced one of the best replicas yet of an early modern human’s cranium, says it is up to 20 per cent bigger than ours.

No one is suggesting this means our ancestors were more intelligent as studies have found there is only a minor link between brain size and IQ.

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Scientists Identify Driving Forces In Human Cell Division

Metaphase in a human cervical carcinoma (HeLa) cell. Chromosomes (red), microtubules (green). (Credit: Jason Swedlow, University of Dundee)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Mar. 14, 2010) — If you can imagine identical twin sisters at rest, their breath drawing them subtly together and apart, who somehow latch onto ropes that pull them to opposite sides of the bed -- you can imagine what happens to a chromosome in the dividing cell.

Understanding the forces that drive chromosome segregation -- a crucial aspect of human development and some diseases, including cancer -- is the goal of an international group of researchers who collaborate each summer at the MBL.

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What Does The Achilles Tendon Do?

The Achilles tendon, pictured here, connects the calf muscle to the heel bone. Credit: NIH

From Live Science:

The injury sustained to soccer star David Beckham's left foot has fans worried the athlete will miss the World Cup, but injuries to the Achilles tendon are no stranger to athletes and the less-conditioned "weekend warriors" alike.

The Achilles tendon is a band of fibrous tissue that connects the calf muscle to the heel bone, according to the Mayo Clinic. You use this tendon in practically every activity that involves moving your foot, from walking and running to jumping and standing on tip-toe. It's also the largest tendon in your body, and can withstand more than 1,000 pounds of force, according to the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons (AAOS).

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Electronics 'Missing Link' Brings Neural Computing Closer

Coming soon to a CPU near you (Image: Patrick Landmann/SPL)

From New Scientist:

WHEN the "missing link of electronics" was finally built in 2008, it was the vindication of a 30-year-old prediction. Now it seems the so-called memristor can behave uncannily like the junctions between neurons in the brain.

A memristor is a device that, like a resistor, opposes the passage of current. But memristors also have a memory. The resistance of a memristor at any moment depends on the last voltage it experienced, so its behaviour can be used to recall past voltages.

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The iPad Developer's Challenge

Griffin's iTalk app for iPhone
(Credit: Griffin)

From CNET News:

iPhone and iPod Touch owners could breathe a sigh of relief when Steve Jobs unveiled the iPad.

Apple's highly anticipated tablet computer would not, after all, require purchasing all new applications. Instead, everything in the App Store would automatically work on the iPad. As Jobs explained, tapping one button on the iPad screen transforms apps made for the 3.1-inch iPhone/iPod Touch screen to a snugger fit on the 9.7-inch iPad.

Simple, right? For the iPad owner, sure. But the iPad means bigger changes for the people who create these apps. Though the iPad has been dismissed by some as an oversized iPod Touch, it's definitely not, as those who attempt to make iPad apps or re-create iPhone apps for it will find out fast.

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SpaceX Fires Up

From Discovery News:

In case you've been wondering, that's what a fully lit Falcon 9 rocket looks like at ignition, which occurred, by the way, for the first time this weekend at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, where SpaceX is preparing for the rocket's debut flight next month.

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Weymouth Ridgeway Skeletons 'Scandinavian Vikings'

From The BBC:

Fifty-one decapitated skeletons found in a burial pit in Dorset were those of Scandinavian Vikings, scientists say.

Mystery has surrounded the identity of the group since they were discovered at Ridgeway Hill, near Weymouth, in June.

Analysis of teeth from 10 of the men revealed they had grown up in countries with a colder climate than Britain's.

Archaeologists from Oxford believe the men were probably executed by local Anglo Saxons in front of an audience sometime between AD 910 and AD 1030.

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Cyberguards To Protect Children

Image: Demand for digital monitors from concerned parents is expected to grow. (Alamy)

From The Independent:

Technology that allows parents to monitor and even block a child’s online and mobile activity is coming to Britain soon.

Do you know what your teenager is doing on the computer in their bedroom? What websites they are visiting and who they are poking on Facebook? American parents do. A raft of new technology designed to enable mums and dads to keep tabs on their children in cyberspace is hitting the market across the Atlantic.

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Babies Are Born To Dance To The Beat

From The Telegraph:

Babies are born to dance and find the rhythm and tempo of music more engaging than speech, research has shown.

A study of infants aged from five months to two years suggests that babies are preprogrammed to move rhythmically in response to music.

Psychologist Marcel Zentner, who led the University of York team, said: "Our research suggests that it is the beat rather than other features of the music, such as the melody, that produces the response in infants.

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Hitwise: Facebook Tops Weekly Ranking, Surpassing Google

From Wall Street Journal:

Facebook Inc. edged past Google Inc. (GOOG) to become the most visited U.S. Web site for the week ended March 13, the first time the Internet giant has been topped since 2007, according to Hitwise.

The data provider said the privately held social-networking site's share was 7.07% for the week, compared with Google's 7.03%. The market share of visits to Facebook nearly tripled from a year earlier for the week, while visits to Google grew 9%.

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Twitter Astronaut Is First To Post Stunning YouTube Videos Direct From Space

From The Daily Mail:

Astronaut Soichi Noguchi has already made his name as a prolific Twitterer, who delights his 125,000 followers with live pictures from the International Space Station.

Now the Japanese engineer has gone one better, posting stunning footage of Earth and the Moon on his own YouTube channel.

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U.S. Army Worried About Wikileaks In Secret Report

From CNET News:

A leaked U.S. Army intelligence report, classified as secret, says the Wikileaks Web site poses a significant "operational security and information security" threat to military operations.

Classified U.S. military information appearing on Wikileaks could "influence operations against the U.S. Army by a variety of domestic and foreign actors," says the report, prepared in 2008 by the Army Counterintelligence Center and apparently disclosed in its entirety on Monday.

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Small Dogs Originated In The Middle East, Genetic Study Finds

Yorkshire terrier. (Credit: iStockphoto/Lenka Dankova)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Mar. 13, 2010) — A genetic study has found that small domestic dogs probably originated in the Middle East more than 12,000 years ago. Researchers writing in the open access journal BMC Biology traced the evolutionary history of the IGF1 gene, finding that the version of the gene that is a major determinant of small size probably originated as a result of the domestication of the Middle Eastern gray wolf.

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Quest Aims To Create Bigger Atoms And New Kinds Of Matter

Heavy elements like atomic number 118 were created by smashing calcium-48 ions into americium-243 target atoms, shown in this illustration. Credit: Thomas Tegge, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

From Live Science:

A quest is underway to create larger and larger atoms with more protons and neutrons than ever before.

By building these super-heavy elements, scientists are not just creating new kinds of matter – they are probing the subatomic world and learning about the mysterious forces that hold atoms together.

Read more ....

Opium Poppy's Genes Finally Revealed

Opium crop from the Malwa region of India. Credit: Wikimedia

From Cosmos/AFP:

PARIS: Researchers have discovered the genes that allow the opium poppy to make codeine and morphine, which could lead to genetically engineered plants or microorganisms generating the painkillers.

Codeine is one of the most widely prescribed painkillers in the world, the researchers said. Unlike morphine, codeine cannot be easily converted to heroin.

"The enzymes encoded by these two genes have eluded plant biochemists for a half-century," said Peter Facchini, from the University of Calgary in Canada and co-author of the paper.

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Celebrating The Real Einstein

From New Scientist:

Today is Einstein's birthday - and it's time to celebrate.

Everyone loves to celebrate Einstein. He's a movie, an opera, an asteroid, a cartoon. He's an advertisement for a Danish beer. Rock bands exist with names like Einstein's Sister and Forever Einstein. He graces the periodic table of elements--Einsteinium, atomic number 99. People have designed religions around Einstein. His brain was stolen, sliced up into nearly two hundred and fifty pieces, and sent bit by bit through the mail to the curious around the globe.

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RealNetworks: A Tale Of Opportunities Missed

Rob Glaser with Bill Gates. Glaser left Microsoft in 1994.
(Credit: Microsoft)

From CNET News:

Rob Glaser's 16 years at the helm of RealNetworks started with the pioneering of the early dot-com days and ended with a courtroom drubbing at the hands of the entertainment industry. In between, Glaser, who by most accounts saw the promise of Web video and music long before his peers, proved himself to be a better visionary than executive.

Earlier this month, Real announced it was giving up on attempts to defend its RealDVD technology against a lawsuit filed by the major movie studios. RealDVD is software that enabled users to create copies of their film discs and store the digital versions on hard drives. It was also the backbone of a planned DVD player, code-named Facet. The device would copy and hold 70 digital movies and enable users to instantly jump from film to film and scene to scene.

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Why Do We Have Daylight Savings Time?

From Discovery news:

It's a question people are probably more likely to ask themselves this time of year when we go to bed and then lose an hour. It can feel wildly unfair for the clock to say 7:00 a.m. when it actually feels like 6:00 a.m.

Well, to some degree we may have Benjamin Franklin to thank.

Franklin, who penned the proverb, "Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise," was among the first to suggest the idea. In a 1784 essay he wrote that adjusting the clocks in the spring could be a good way to save on candles.

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Obama Nasa Plans 'Catastrophic' Say Moon Astronauts

From The BBC:

Former Nasa astronauts who went to the Moon have told the BBC of their dismay at President Barack Obama's decision to push back further Moon missions.

Jim Lovell, commander of the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission, said Mr Obama's decision would have "catastrophic consequences" for US space exploration.

The last man on the Moon, Eugene Cernan, said it was "disappointing".

Last month Mr Obama cancelled Nasa's Constellation Moon landings programme, approved by ex-President George W Bush.

Nasa still aims to send astronauts back to the Moon, but it is likely to take decades and some believe that it will never happen again.

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Orange Dwarf Confirmed To Be On Collision Course With Earth

Gliese 710 Hi there, neighbor! NASA

From Popular Science:

Our solar system's 'hood may get a bit rougher sometime during the next 1.5 million years. An astronomer has given an 86 percent chance for a neighboring star to smash into the frozen Oort Cloud surrounding the outskirts of the solar system, and may scatter some comets toward Earth, Technology Review reports.

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Google Widens Assault On Microsoft's Dominance Of Business Software

From Times Online:

Google is to broaden its assault on Microsoft's dominance of the market for business software by launching on online marketplace for other companies' enterprise products.

The internet search giant wants to convert companies to using applications piped over the internet in a challenge to Microsoft's model of selling licences of its Windows operating system and software programs such as Office.

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Revealed: The 160 Species Living Inside Our Guts

The human gut: home to numerous species of unknown microbes. Science Photo Library

From The Independent:

Scientists have decoded the DNA of the bacteria that take up residence in the typical human body.

Some scientists dream of sending a probe to Mars, others work on ways of exploring the sea bed with robotic submersibles. Now a team of researchers have boldly gone where no human has gone before – they have decoded all the bacterial genes found in the human gut.

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World's Oldest Rivers Mapped Under Huge Desert Dunes

The Simpson desert's fabled dunes block its underground water channels from remote sensing (Image: visionandimagination.com/Getty)

From New Scientist:

A network of ancient rivers and streams that once flowed beneath Australia's Simpson desert – famed for its dune fields – has been mapped in a new study. The map could lead the way to valuable minerals and water resources in this drying continent.

Michael Hutchinson and John Stein of the Australian National University in Canberra extracted data from previous ground surveys to map an ancient river system 35 metres below the surface of the desert. They think the channels are among the world's oldest at 50 million years old, when the now barren land would have been lush and well watered.

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Extinct Elephant Bird Of Madagascar Could Live Again

Egg laid by great elephant bird of Madagascar compared to a hen's egg Photo: JANE MINGAY

From The Telegraph:

Towering 10 feet into the air and weighing more than half a ton, it was the biggest bird that ever lived until French colonists wiped it out more than three hundred years ago.

But the giant elephant bird of Madagascar could be resurrected after scientists discovered how to extract DNA from ancient egg shells.

Genetic material from the bird along with extinct emus of Australia and moas of New Zealand have been collected by a new technique.

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Traces Of The Past: Computer Algorithm Able To 'Read' Memories

To explore how memories are recorded, researchers showed volunteers three short films and asked them to memorize what they saw. The films were very simple, sharing a number of similar features -- all included a woman carrying out an everyday task in a typical urban street, and each film was the same length, seven seconds long. For example, one film showed a woman posting a letter. (Credit: Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at UCL)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Mar. 11, 2010) — Computer programs have been able to predict which of three short films a person is thinking about, just by looking at their brain activity. The research, conducted by scientists at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at UCL (University College London), provides further insight into how our memories are recorded.

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Oil Production To Peak In 2014, Scientists Predict

From Live Science:

Predicting the end of oil has proven tricky and often controversial, but Kuwaiti scientists now say that global oil production will peak in 2014.

Their work represents an updated version of the famous Hubbert model, which correctly predicted in 1956 that U.S. oil reserves would peak within 20 years. Many researchers have since tried using the model to predict when worldwide oil production might peak.

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MoD Trains Army To Fight Using Sophisticated Video Games

From The Daily Mail:

Poised with a rifle in the desert terrain, a British soldier dives for cover as he comes under enemy fire. But amazingly he comes to no harm... because he's sitting in a Bristol armed forces base 3,500 miles from the front line in Afghanistan.

Soldiers are being prepared for combat using a newly upgraded virtual training system. Called Op JCOVE, it runs on PCs and laptops and allows soldiers to experience a wide range of scenarios both in vehicles and on foot.

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2011 Ford F-Series Super Duty Test Drive

From Popular Mechanics:

PHOENIX, Ariz.—Has the definition of leadership in the heavy-duty/super-duty truck segment changed since the last time Ford, Chevrolet/GMC, and Dodge brought out new truck bruisers? Make no mistake: Horsepower, torque, towing and payload are still the primary fields of battle for winning over ranchers, construction workers and contractors. But we can add another event to the heavy-duty Olympics, according to those customers—fuel economy. That's right. Even with gas and diesel comfortably below $3.00 a gallon in most parts of the U.S., fuel economy has become the new torque when it comes to impressing customers. Ford, in fact, named fuel economy as its leading concern when it set out to build a new diesel engine after severing its relationship with diesel-engine supplier Navistar. The results are surprising, and may well entice Dodge and Chevy owners.

Read more ....

Are Our Asteroid-Destroying Nukes Big Enough?

Asteroids! courtesy of Sandia National Laboratory

From Popular Science:

A new study shows that blasted asteroids could re-form, Terminator-style.

Pop quiz. An asteroid the size of Manhattan is hurtling towards Earth, its impact is sure to result in mass extinction and the destruction of humanity as we know it. What do you do?

The traditional answers would be "blow it up". But new research from Los Alamos National Lab and the University of California, Santa Cruz, shows that if the asteroid isn't moving fast enough, or if the nuke isn't big enough, the asteroid will pull itself back together, T-1000-style, within a matter of hours.

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OnLive Threatens To End Video Gaming As We Know It

The serivce could undermine the multi-billion pound business models of Nintendo's Wii - with New Super Mario Bros - Sony's PlayStation and Microsoft's Xbox. (Nintendo/Handout)

From Times Online:

The era of the video games console is under threat after the launch today of a service which streams high-quality games over the internet to the computer or TV set.

For years those who wanted to play sophisticated, action-packed games have used controllers and consoles. Now gamers will get the chance to play high-end immersive games over the internet with the arrival of OnLive, which promises to deliver the most advanced games on demand to their PC or Mac computer.

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Hadron Collider To Be Closed Amid Fears Of A Very Big Bang

Large Hadron Collider

From The Independent:

12-month shutdown to repair design flaw that could break apart world's most expensive scientific experiment.

The world's single most complicated and expensive scientific experiment, designed to discover the "God particle" and recreate the conditions that existed at the dawn of creation, will be switched off for a year to correct a design problem that could break it apart if it ran on full power.

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Obesity: Food Kills, Flab Protects

Your fat cells lock away the burger grease (Image: Getty Images)

From The New Scientist:

OBESITY kills, everyone knows that. But is it possible that we've been looking at the problem in the wrong way? It seems getting fatter may be part of your body's defence against the worst effects of unhealthy eating, rather than their direct cause.

This curious insight comes at the same time as several studies distancing obesity itself from a host of diseases it has long been blamed for, including heart disease and diabetes.

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Has Twitter Reached Its Peak?

Barracuda says that Twitter's user growth has almost stopped

From The Guardian:

Micro-blogging service Twitter's user growth has almost levelled off since September 2009, according to a study.

Twitter's growth seems to have lost its momentum, according to a new study.

Growth in the micro-blogging service's number of users peaked at nearly 20% last April, but had dropped down to 0.15% in December 2009, says a study by Barracuda Networks.

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Short Blasts Of Exercise As Good As Hours Of Training, Scientists Find

From The Telegraph:

Less really can be more when it comes to exercise, scientists have discovered.

The body can get as much benefit from a short but intensive bursts of exercise lasting ten minutes than it can from ten hours of moderate training.

The technique not only takes less time but also involves much less physical effort.

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First Contact: The Man Who'll Welcome Aliens

We don't want anybody just turning a radio ­telescope on the sky and sending their own ­messages to the source.' Photograph: Felix Clay

From The Guardian:

If we are ever contacted by aliens, the man I'm having lunch with will be one of the first humans to know. His name is Paul Davies and he's chair of the Seti (Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Post-Detection Task Group. They're a group of the world's most eminent scientists and will be, come the big day, the planet's alien welcome committee. His is an awesome responsibility, and one he doesn't take lightly.

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Scientists Discover 600 Million-Year-Old Origins of Vision

This is a hydra, an ancient sea creature that flourishes today. (Credit: Todd Oakley, UCSB)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Mar. 12, 2010) — By studying the hydra, a member of an ancient group of sea creatures that is still flourishing, scientists at UC Santa Barbara have made a discovery in understanding the origins of human vision.

The finding is published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, a British journal of biology.

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Why The Chile Earthquake Aftershock Was So Big

From Live Science:

The whopping 7.2-magnitude aftershock that rattled Chile again today is nothing unusual following such a large original earthquake, scientists say.

The aftershock, which struck at about 11:40 am local time, may sound surprisingly strong, given that it is bigger than the original earthquake that decimated Haiti in January, but it wasn't unexpected to scientists, said Don Blakeman, a geophysicist with the United States Geological Survey.

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Absent-Mindedness Is A Middle-Aged Male Problem, Research Shows

A study has shown that older men are more susceptible to absent-mindedness than women. Photograph: Toby Melville/Reuters

From The Guardian:

Women come out best in listening and recollection tests in study by University of London's Institute of Education.

It's been an endless source of aggravation between the sexes; how can men so easily forget birthdays, anniversaries, and even friends' names?

Not, it seems, because they cannot be bothered to remember. Research suggests that, in middle age at least, absent-minded-ness is a particularly male problem.

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Pretty In Pink: One Of World's Rarest Camellias Blooms In London Conservatory

A 'Middlemist's red' camellia, thought to be one of only two examples of the variety in the world, at the Chiswick House Gardens conservatory, London

From The Daily Mail:

It lived through the Battle of Trafalgar, survived the reign of Victoria and escaped unharmed from a Blitz bomb.

So it's going to take more than a harsh British winter to stop one of the world's rarest camellias from bursting into flower.

This week - in a welcome sign that spring is just around the corner - the "Middlemist's red" has put on one of its most spectacular displays in many years.

Read more ....

As China And US Plan to Exploit "Burning Ice" For Fuel, The Ice Race Is On

Photo: Icy Hot : Courtesy of NASA

From Popular Science:

Methane hydrate crystals show promise as a clean energy source.

When methane and freezing cold water fuse under tremendous pressure, they create a substance as paradoxical as it coveted: burning ice. Earlier in the year, a report from the National Research Council identified the combustible water, also known as methane hydrate, as a potential source of natural gas. Now, according to the Chinese news organization Xinhau, China is joining the US, Japan, and South Korea in the hunt for this weird mineral.

Read more ....

Extreme Physics At The Ends Of The Earth

From New Scientist:

When science was young, the experiments were simple and the breakthroughs came easily - or so it seems in hindsight. Think of Galileo rolling a ball down an inclined plane, or aiming a simple tube, with a lens at each end, at the night sky. Or picture Michael Faraday discovering electromagnetic induction just by tinkering with a battery, an iron ring and some coils of wire.

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Quantum Computing Thrives On Chaos

From Wired/Science News:

Embracing chaos just might help physicists build a quantum brain. A new study shows that disorder can enhance the coupling between light and matter in quantum systems, a find that could eventually lead to fast, easy-to-build quantum computers.

Quantum computers promise superfast calculations that precisely simulate the natural world, but physicists have struggled to design the brains of such machines. Some researchers have focused on designing precisely engineered materials that can trap light to harness its quantum properties. To work, scientists have thought, the crystalline structure of these materials must be flawlessly ordered — a nearly impossible task.

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Obama Facing Uprising Over New NASA Strategy

From Yahoo News/Reuters:

WASHINGTON, March 10 - U.S. President Barack Obama is trying to tamp down an uprising in politically vital Florida against a new strategy for NASA that has rankled space veterans and lawmakers and sparked fears of job losses.

Obama's decision to kill NASA's Constellation program to launch astronauts into orbit and return Americans to the moon has prompted soul-searching on whether the United States is prepared to cede a pre-eminent space role to Russia and China.

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Avatar Director James Cameron Hails 3D TV As 'The Future' Despite Fears Screens Could Cause Health Problems

Future in focus: Fergie of the Black Eyed Peas and Avatar director James Cameron in 3D specs at the Samsung 3D LED TV launch party

From The Daily Mail:

Avatar director James Cameron hailed 3D TV as 'the future' last night as he helped launch a range of 3D television sets.

At a glitzy launch in New York of Samsung 3D sets, he told the crowd: 'You will all remember that you were here, in Times Square, for the launch of the television of the future.'

The Black Eyed Peas were called in to perform and lend the event a touch of glamour as fears surfaced that viewers could experience health problems while watching the screens.

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Airline Twitter Promotion Attracts Huge Crowds

JetBlue employee Morgan Johnston took this photo of the people who showed up in the Financial District when the airline launched an ambitious campaign to give away free tickets by telling Twitter users where to show up. (Credit: Morgan Johnston)

From CNET:

NEW YORK--It was apparently one step short of a cattle stampede when low-cost airline JetBlue used its Twitter account to announce that as part of its 10th anniversary celebration it would be giving out about a thousand free round-trip tickets at three undisclosed locations in Manhattan on Wednesday.

Read more ....

Smell of Salt Air Surprisingly Detected a Mile High and 900 Miles Inland

The reddish glow from the city lights of Boulder, Colo., is the result in part of the light being scattered by haze particles. UW scientists have discovered unexpected chemistry involving the pollutants that make up the haze. (Credit: Phil Armitage)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Mar. 11, 2010) — The smell of sea salt in the air is a romanticized feature of life along a seacoast. Wind and waves kick up spray, and bits of sodium chloride -- common table salt -- can permeate the air.

It is believed that as much as 10 billion metric tons of chloride enters the air mass through this process each year, but just a tiny fraction -- perhaps one-third of 1 percent -- does anything but fall back to the surface.

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Studying Snail Shells to Build Better Body Armor

The protective armor of a rare iron-plated gastropod mollusk, the so-called "scaly-foot gastropod." Credit: A. Warén, Swedish Museum of Natural History

From Live Science:

Christine Ortiz is an associate professor of Materials Science and Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass. Recently Ortiz and a team of researchers at the National Science Foundation-supported Materials Research Science and Engineering Center at MIT reported on the protective armor of a rare iron-plated gastropod mollusk, the so-called "scaly-foot gastropod." The snail thrives 2.5 miles below the central Indian Ocean, within the Kairei Indian hydrothermal vent field, and its shell is fused with granular iron sulfide. Understanding the physical and mechanical properties of the snail could improve load-bearing and protective materials in everything from aircraft hulls to sports equipment. You can read more about the iron-armored snail in a recent NSF press release, and you can learn more about Ortiz as she answers the ScienceLives 10 questions below.

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How The Web Has Changed Us

Watch CBS News Videos Online

From The CBS:

Yahoo! Survey Finds Reading, Writing, Commerce, Cooking and Dieting Changed By Internet Access

(CBS) When was the last time you thumbed through a cookbook? Or used a phonebook? Most of us now rely on a computer to get the most basic information in an instant.

Popular search engine Yahoo! is celebrating its 15th birthday this week, and they launched a survey looking at just how much our lives have changed since the Web took hold. Heather Cabot, Yahoo!'s Web life editor, shared the survey's surprising results on "The Early Show."

The survey highlights the responses of more than 1,800 Internet users ages 25 to 64.

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How It Works: Upscaling 2-D Video To 3-D

Watch 2-D Home Movies of Yourself Watching 3-D TV...In 3-D!

From Popular Science:

3-D TVs are finally going on sale--sans content. So some sets are claiming the ability to add a third dimension to your 2-D broadcasts.

More than a year after the first consumer 3-D-ready HDTVs were demoed at CES, the next generation of sets are going on sale this week. But, aside from the new TVs, glasses, and Blu-ray players, the question of content remains. While there are already brand partnerships with networks like Discovery and ESPN, that's just the tip of the iceberg. As an alternative, the two companies with 3-D TVs but without major brand-name cable partners (Samsung and Toshiba) showed off sets that could convert 2-D video to 3-D in real time.

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