Google Working With Intel, Sony, Logitech On TV Technology

From The Wall Street Journal:

Google Inc. has lined up some big partners--including Intel Corp. and Sony Corp.--in the Internet giant's recent quest to move its technology into the living room, people familiar with the situation say.

The joint effort, which is in its preliminary stages, includes software to help users navigate among Web-based offerings on TVs and serve as a platform for other developers to target in creating new programs, these people say. The technology could be included with future TVs, Blu-ray players or set-top boxes, they added.

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Solar Storms Create 'Killer Electrons'

A stream of charged particles from the Sun hits Earth's magnetosphere. Credit: NASA

From Cosmos:

SYDNEY: 'Killer electrons' - electrons circling Earth that wreck satellites and can cause cancer in astronauts - are created when Solar storms create shockwaves in the Earth's protective magnetic bubble, scientists said.

The Earth's magnetic field abounds with charged, fast moving particles that orbit up to 64,000 km above the surface. When a severe solar storm - a stream of energetic particles emanating from the Sun - hits the Earth's magnetic field, it creates a shockwave that boosts the number of particles by up to ten times as much.

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The CIA Predictioneer: Using Games To See The Future

Three decades of getting it right (Image: Ethan Hill/Contour by Getty Images)

From New Scientist:

MY HOROSCOPE this week says that now is the perfect time to relocate, or at least de-clutter. I know it's nonsense, but I can't help wishing there was a genuine way to predict the future.

Perhaps there is. One self-styled "predictioneer" believes he has found the answer. Bruce Bueno de Mesquita is a professor of politics at New York University and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University in California. In his new book, The Predictioneer (The Predictioneer's Game in the US), he describes a computer model based on game theory which he - and others - claim can predict the future with remarkable accuracy.

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Rewriting The Decline (CO2 and Temperature)

Above: Matthews 1976, National Geographic, Temperatures 1880-1976

From Watts Up With That?:

The great thing about old magazines is that once published, they can’t be adjusted. Jo Nova has a great summary of some recent work from occasional WUWT contributor Frank Lansner who runs the blog “Hide the Decline” and what he found in an old National Geographic, which bears repeating here. – Anthony

Jo Nova writes:

Human emissions of carbon dioxide began a sharp rise from 1945. But, temperatures, it seems, may have plummeted over half the globe during the next few decades. Just how large or how insignificant was that decline?

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How Plants Put Down Roots

One week old seed of the thale cress with embryo. (Credit: Martin Bayer / Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Mar. 16, 2010) — In the beginning is the fertilized egg cell. Following numerous cell divisions, it then develops into a complex organism with different organs and tissues. The largely unexplained process whereby the cells simply "know" the organs into which they should later develop is an astonishing phenomenon.

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Prehistoric Shark Attack Reconstructed

The skeleton of a dolphin, preserved for 4 million years, shows bite marks across its ribs from the shark attack that killed it. Credit: Giovanni Bianucci

From Live Science:

A shark attack that took place 4 million years ago has just been reconstructed from the extinct hunter's fossilized victim – a dolphin.

Scientists investigated a well-preserved 9-foot-long dolphin (2.7 meters) discovered in the Piedmont region of northern Italy. From the remains, the researchers not only finger-pointed the attacker but also how the thrashing went down, suggesting the shark took advantage of the dolphin's blind spot.

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How Facebook Overtook Google To Be The Top Spot On The Internet

From Fortune/CNN:

What the Hitwise numbers do — and don't — tell us about the coming showdown between the Internet's largest web properties.

Facebook has dethroned Google! Sort of! Well, ok, not really. For the week ending March 13, the social networking site got more traffic than its competitor in the United States, according to a blog post by industry tracker Hitwise. But be careful how you slice your numbers. While many pundits may use this data to validate predictions that Facebook will eventually beat Google (GOOG) at its own game, the social networking startup has yet to pull ahead in any real sense.

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A Supersonic Jump, From 23 Miles In The Air

From New York Times:

Ordinarily, Felix Baumgartner would not need a lot of practice in the science of falling.

He has jumped off two of the tallest buildings in the world, as well as the statue of Christ in Rio de Janeiro (a 95-foot leap for which he claimed a low-altitude record for parachuting). He has sky-dived across the English Channel. He once plunged into the black void of a 623-foot-deep cave, which he formerly considered the most difficult jump of his career.

But now Fearless Felix, as his fans call him, has something more difficult on the agenda: jumping from a helium balloon in the stratosphere at least 120,000 feet above Earth. Within about half a minute, he figures, he would be going 690 miles per hour and become the first skydiver to break the speed of sound. After a free fall lasting five and a half minutes, his parachute would open and land him about 23 miles below the balloon.

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Natural Gas: An Unconventional Glut

From The Economist:

Newly economic, widely distributed sources are shifting the balance of power in the world’s gas markets.

SOME time in 2014 natural gas will be condensed into liquid and loaded onto a tanker docked in Kitimat, on Canada’s Pacific coast, about 650km (400 miles) north-west of Vancouver. The ship will probably take its cargo to Asia. This proposed liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant, to be built by Apache Corporation, an American energy company, will not be North America’s first. Gas has been shipped from Alaska to Japan since 1969. But if it makes it past the planning stages, Kitimat LNG will be one of the continent’s most significant energy developments in decades.

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China's Internet Users Top 384 Million

From Xinhuanet:

BEIJING, Jan. 15 (Xinhua) -- China reported 384 million Internet users by the end of 2009, up 28.9 percent, or 86 million, from a year ago, said a report from the China Internet Network Information Center on Friday.

Internet users surfing through mobile phones increased by 120 million to top 233 million, about 60.8 percent of the total Internet population, thanks to expanding third-generation (3G) business, said the report.

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Overcoming Blindness: Other Senses Compensate in Just 10 Minutes

From ABC News:

New Study on 'Neuroplasticity' Shows How Quickly Brain Adapts When Sight, Hearing Cut Off.

Four bikers headed off down a street in Southern California, safely navigating through traffic and past parked cars, and turned onto a narrow bike path leading up a steep hillside. None of them veered off the dirt path, and all safely avoided boulders along the way, always conscious of their surroundings and any possible obstacles.

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FCC Broadband Plan Promises High-Speed Internet For 100 Million More Americans By 2015

A Series of Tubes At Terremark's Miami headquarters, undersea Internet cables emerge from the Atlantic and connect to the rest of the country John B. Carnett

From Popular Science:

Today the Federal Communications Commission unveiled its plan to expand broadband Internet access to 100 million more Americans within the next five years. The plan calls both for the expansion of wired networks in under-serviced areas, and for the dedication of more wireless spectrum for Internet use as opposed to television. Largely deficit-neutral, the plan has bipartisan support in the current Congress, in part because contentious issues of net neutrality and privacy were not tackled by the FCC's plan. As you remember, PopSci called for an improvement to the nation's broadband infrastructure last year

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Seven Alternatives To The Apple iPad

From Crunch Gear:

Wait! Stop. Before you hand over Apple your credit card and pre-order the iPad, you may want to check out the other touchscreen options available now and in the near future. The iPad isn’t the only game in town. Sure, it might have a fancy-pants interface, but each of the follow seven tablets win the hardware fight, which is just as important to a lot of consumers.

Of course the hardware only tells part of the story. The iPad has a leg up on all of these options because of the user-friendly iPhone interface, but it’s not like you’re dropping $600+ on a tablet for your parents, right?

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Methane May Be Building Under Antarctic Ice

From Wired News/Science News:

BALTIMORE — Microbes living under ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland could be churning out large quantities of the greenhouse gas methane, a new study suggests.

sciencenewsIn recent years scientists have learned that liquid water lurks under much of Antarctica’s massive ice sheet, and so, they say, the potential microbial habitat in this watery world is huge. If the methane produced by the bacteria gets trapped beneath the ice and builds up over long periods of time — a possibility that is far from certain — it could mean that as ice sheets melt under warmer temperatures, they would release large amounts of heat-trapping methane gas.

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Golden Bullet For Cancer? Nanoparticles Provide Targeted Version Of Photothermal Therapy For Cancer

Infrared images made while tumors were irradiated with a laser show that in nanocage-injected mice (left), the surface of the tumor quickly became hot enough to kill cells. In buffer-injected mice (right), the temperature barely budged. This specificity is what makes photothermal therapy so attractive as a cancer therapy. (Credit: WUSTL)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Mar. 16, 2010) — In a lecture he delivered in 1906, the German physician Paul Ehrlich coined the term Zuberkugel, or "magic bullet," as shorthand for a highly targeted medical treatment.

Magic bullets, also called silver bullets, because of the folkloric belief that only silver bullets can kill supernatural creatures, remain the goal of drug development efforts today.

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Video Games May Hinder Learning For Boys

Video games could hinder academic performance for boys, a new study finds.
Credit: Dreamstime.

From Live Science:

Parents who buy their children a video game system might want to be careful that all the fun doesn't interfere with their learning. A new study suggests owning a game system could hinder academic development, at least for young boys.

The results show that boys given a PlayStation II are slower to progress in their reading and writing skills and have more learning problems reported by their teachers than those not given a system.

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Hurtling Star On A Path To Clip Solar System

Heading our way (Image: ESO)

From New Scientist:

A star is hurtling towards us. It will almost certainly clip the outskirts of the solar system and send comets towards Earth – though not for a while.

Vadim Bobylev of the Pulkovo Observatory in St Petersburg, Russia, modelled the paths of neighbouring stars using data from the European Space Agency's Hipparcos satellite and from ground-based measurements of the speeds of stars.

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Startups Focus On AI At South By Southwest

From Technology Review:

A new crop of startups aims to bring artificial intelligence to the masses.

South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive has a reputation as being the place for social Web startups to hit the headlines. Twitter found one of its first big audiences at the event in 2007, and attendees are among the most eager adoptees of new social Web tools.

To harness this cutting-edge mood, last year the event's organizers launched the Microsoft BizSpark Accelerator, a competition showcasing 32 Web-focused startups. This year's competition starts today.

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Iceberg Forensics: Predicting The Planet's Future With Antarctic Ice

From Popular Mechanics:

In the last million years, the North American ice sheet has formed and completely melted about 10 times. Ice is melting once again—simultaneously, across the globe—and the science research vessel and drilling ship JOIDES Resolution has been seeking out clues to how ice sheets may respond to a warming climate. Onboard in Antarctica, Trevor Williams reports on the role that ice has played throughout geologic history and what a new iceberg in the Southern Ocean can tell us about the future for the planet.

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Rolling Martian Avalanche Greets The Spring

Martian Avalanche Keep those red rocks rolling NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

From Popular Science:

Springtime on Mars means the thaw of carbon dioxide ice in the northern hemisphere. And when the dry ice goes, the party's over for any trapped debris that then goes tumbling down Martian cliffs in spectacular images such as this.

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Metal Nano-Particles Suspend Human Cells In Magnetic Scaffolding For Easy Organ Manufacturing

Image: Cells Floating In a Magnetic Field: Nano3D Biosciences, via Technology Review

From Popular Science:

While scientists have become rather adept at transforming generic skin cells into specialized organ cells, crafting the organs themselves has proven far more difficult. Since the 3-D architecture of most organs is as important to their function as their cellular makeup, 2-D cell cultures are not very useful for building a replacement heart from scratch. To solve that problem, most organ makers create a scaffolding for the cells to grow on.

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Heat: A Visual Tour of What's Hot

From Cool Infographics:

Our friend, Jess Bachman from WallStats.com, created Heat: A Visual Tour of What’s Hot or Not in the Universe for Rasmussen College. This fun infographic lines up real-life examples across the entire scale of temperature.

I really like this one, its fun. Basically it a huge ordered list of temperatures. Sometimes it just helps to see everything all in one go, to add some perspective. Also there are cool factoids and such scattered about. To support my work please digg it and tweet it or otherwise spread the good word! Thanks y’all.

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Why Drugs Don't Help Diabetes Patients' Hearts

From Time Magazine:

Doctors at the annual meeting of the American College of Cardiology in Atlanta on Sunday got some surprising news on their first day of sessions. Researchers presented three studies revealing that some of the most widely prescribed medications to reduce the risk of heart disease in Type 2 diabetes patients appeared not to provide much benefit at all.

People with diabetes are twice as likely as nondiabetics to suffer a heart attack — most diabetes patients die of heart disease — and for years, physicians have used aggressive drug treatments to lower that risk. To that end, the goal has commonly been to lower blood sugar or control blood-sugar spikes after eating, lower triglycerides and reduce blood pressure in diabetes patients to levels closer to those of healthy, nondiabetic individuals. By using medication to treat these factors, which are linked to a higher risk of heart attack and stroke in other patients, doctors assumed they would also be reducing the risk in people with diabetes.

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SEC: Hacker Manipulated Stock Prices

From Threat Level/Wired:

U.S. regulators are moving to freeze the assets and trading accounts of a Russian accused of hacking into personal online portfolios and manipulating the price of dozens of stocks listed on the Nasdaq Stock Market and New York Stock Exchange.

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Can You Alter Your Memory?

Image: Douglas Jones

From The Wall Street Journal:

Doctors Try New Therapy for Phobias; Taking the Sting Out Of Childhood Upsets.

Is it possible to permanently change your memories? A group of scientists thinks so. And their new techniques for altering memories are raising possibilities of one day treating people who suffer from phobias, post-traumatic stress disorder and other anxiety-related conditions.

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Super Supernova: White Dwarf Star System Exceeds Mass Limit

Cosmologists use Type Ia supernovae, like the one visible in the lower left corner of this galaxy, to explore the past and future expansion of the universe and the nature of dark energy. (Credit: High-Z Supernova Search Team, HST, NASA)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Mar. 16, 2010) — An international team led by Yale University has, for the first time, measured the mass of a type of supernova thought to belong to a unique subclass and confirmed that it surpasses what was believed to be an upper mass limit. Their findings, which appear online and will be published in an upcoming issue of the Astrophysical Journal, could affect the way cosmologists measure the expansion of the universe.

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7 Ways To Raise Your Risk Of Stroke

From Live Science:

Stroke is the number three killer in the United States, affecting almost 800,000 people each year, according to the National Stroke Association. These "brain attacks" occur when blood flow to the brain is interrupted (an ischemic stroke) or when a blood vessel in the brain leaks or bursts (a hemorrhagic stroke). For 144,000 people each year, the result is death. Hundreds of thousands of others are left with long-term disabilities.

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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.

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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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