Ancient Pre-Human Skeleton May Contain Shrunken Brain

The cranium of the newly identified species, Australopithecus sediba, was found at the Malapa site, South Africa. Credit: Photo by Brett Eloff courtesy of Lee Berger and the University of the Witwatersrand.

From Live Science:

A shrunken brain may potentially lie inside the fossil skull of a newfound candidate for the immediate ancestor to the human lineage, researchers now reveal.

This new species, dubbed Australopithecus sediba, was accidentally discovered in South Africa by the 9-year-old son of a scientist. Two members of this hominid were introduced to the world last week — a juvenile male and an adult female, who might have known each other in life and who could have met their demise by falling into the remains of the cave where they were discovered.

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The 10 Best Mathematicians

Pythagoras, from a 1920s textbook. Photograph: © Blue Lantern Studio/Corbis

From The Guardian:

Alex Bellos selects the maths geniuses whose revolutionary discoveries changed our world.

Pythagoras (circa 570-495BC)

Vegetarian mystical leader and number-obsessive, he owes his standing as the most famous name in maths due to a theorem about right-angled triangles, although it now appears it probably predated him. He lived in a community where numbers were venerated as much for their spiritual qualities as for their mathematical ones. His elevation of numbers as the essence of the world made him the towering primogenitor of Greek mathematics, essentially the beginning of mathematics as we know it now. And, famously, he didn't eat beans.

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Profile: Julian Assange, The Man Behind Wikileaks

Julian Assange

From Times Online:

They seek him here, they seek him there, but the founder of the whistleblowing website Wikileaks is as elusive as a modern-day pimpernel.

Julian Assange dreamt that one day the internet would streamline the leaking of state secrets. Last week his whistleblowers’ website posted its most explosive leak yet: a secret video shot by an American attack helicopter of Iraqi civilians and a Reuters photographer being mown down, apparently in cold blood.

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Images Mark 20 Years Of Hubble Telescope

Hubble Telescope

From The Telegraph:

The most dramatic and significant images of the universe taken by the Hubble Space Telescope have been named to mark the iconic telescope's 20th anniversary in space.

In the two decades since its launch, the Hubble Space Telescope has transformed the way we see and understand our universe.

In pictures: 3D space pictures: stereo images of moons, galaxies and nebulae

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New Super-Heavy Element Discovered That Points Towards 'Strange Materials Of The Future'

From The Daily Mail:

Physicists have discovered a new super-heavy element that had been labeled a nuclear 'missing link' by scientists.

The element 117 is roughly 40 per cent heavier than lead and has been given the temporary name ununseptium, which refers to its atomic number.

Researchers believe the element points towards a concoction of more massive and stable elements that could be used to create strange and unpredictable new materials.

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First Footage From World's Deepest Volcanic Vents

From New Scientist:

At this depth, the water is hot enough to melt lead, and the pressure it exerts means that every square centimetre has to withstand the weight of five hefty men.

"It was like wandering across the surface of another world," says Bramley Murton, a geologist at the National Oceanographic Centre (NOC) in Southampton, UK, who piloted the Hy-Bis underwater vehicle around these deep volcanic vents and filmed them for the first time.

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Happy 50th Birthday To The Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence!

SETI's Allen Telescope Array via SETI Institute

From Popular Science:

Celebrating half a century of no aliens

Fifty years ago today, on April 8th, 1960, a Cornell astronomy professor named Frank Drake pointed a radio telescope at the star Tau Ceti in the hope of hearing broadcasts from extraterrestrial intelligence. Naturally, he didn't hear anything out of the ordinary. But with this experiment, Drake began the decades-long search for aliens, known as the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), that celebrates its 50th anniversary today. Over the last half century, SETI has failed at its initial goal of contacting aliens, but succeeded mightily in bringing new attention to astronomy, helping to develop cloud computing, and inspiring generations of new scientists.

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'World Needs A Barometer Of Life'

From The BBC:

The world needs a "barometer of life" to prevent ecosystems and species being lost forever, scientists have warned.

Existing schemes, they said, did not include enough species from groups such as fungi and invertebrates to provide a detailed picture of what is at risk.

Writing in the journal Science, the researchers said the barometer would increase the number of species being assessed from almost 48,000 to 160,000.

The data would help identify areas in need of urgent action, they added.

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CSN Editor On Vacation, Will Be Back Soon

Update: Taking Easter off with family. Will return on Monday, April 12.

Yup .... took a little vacation. Will be back soon.

US Launches Agency To Monitor Evereyone

Army Biometrics U.S. Army Staff Sgts. Jerrod McClure, foreground, and Aaron McFarland, 1st Battalion, 8th Infantry Regiment, input Iraqi's data into a biometrics system Dec. 15, 2008, in Nimrud, Iraq, as part of the application process for Iraqis applying to work on a road repair project in the city. U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. JoAnn S. Makinano

U.S. Government Launches Official Agency to Manage Biometric Database -- Popular Science

All hail BIMA, the new U.S. biometrics agency.

Collecting fingerprints and other biometric data has long allowed law enforcement and the military alike to track down wanted individuals, solve cases, or just keep tabs on people. Now what was a U.S. government task force under the U.S. Army has officially become a full-scale national security agency in charge of biometrics, according to the Secrecy News blog run by the Federation of American Scientists.

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Picking Our Brains: Can Ee Regenerate The Brain?

The nervous system has 10,000 different types of neuron (Image: Jean Livet)

From New Scientist:

YOU were born with all the brain cells you'll ever have, so the saying goes.

So much for sayings. In the 1990s, decades of dogma were overturned by the discovery that mammals, including people, make new neurons throughout their lives. In humans, such "neurogenesis" has been seen in two places: neurons formed in the olfactory bulb seem to be involved in learning new smells, while those born in the hippocampus are involved in learning and memory.

Read more ....

Bats Could Inspire New Radar Systems

Bats emit high-pitched sounds to locate obstacles and prey as they fly Photo: CORBIS

From The Telegraph:

Bats which have evolved to avoid having their echo signals blocked by interference could help scientists develop more efficient sonar and radar systems.

Bats emit high-pitched sounds to locate obstacles and prey as they fly, but when travelling in packs there is a risk the noises might overlap and interfere.

A similar problem arises when a bat chases a moth through thick foliage. Signals bouncing off the leaves can overlap and set up interference.

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Could Toads Be Used To Warn Humans Of Impending Natural Disasters?

Man's best friend? Scientists believe toads have a sixth sense

From The Daily Mail:

The toad has long been a favourite magical companion of witches and wizards. Now it seems that the humble amphibians may have picked up some magical skills of their own.

Scientists have discovered that common toads have a sixth sense about natural disasters - and can predict when an earthquake is about to strike.

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Better Military Technology Does Not Lead to Shorter Wars, Analysis Reveals

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Mar. 31, 2010) — It is generally assumed that military technology that is offensive rather than defensive in nature leads to shorter wars. Yet, a new doctoral thesis from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, shows that this assumption is not correct.

For long, researchers have thought that offensive military technology, such as armoured cars and attack jets, makes it easier to shorten the duration of a war. It is also generally perceived that when the offensive technology is more effective than the defensive technology, it is more advantageous to start a war.

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Which States Pay Highest Gas Prices

(Click Image To Enlarge)
Gas Prices as a percent of income varies by state. See how each state fares. Credit: Karl Tate/LiveScience

From Live Science:

Everyone grumbles when prices at the pump rise, but some drivers pay more depending on where they live. A new study shows how gas price spikes hurt the wallets of drivers in some states more than in others.

On average, Mississippi drivers spent more than 6 percent of their annual income on gas in 2009, compared to drivers in Connecticut and New York who spent just 2.5 percent of their income on gas. But a price spike similar to the one in July 2008 would have worsened the imbalance — Mississippi drivers would have seen driving costs shoot up to 11 percent as opposed to just 4.3 percent for Connecticut and New York. [See gas prices in your state.]

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Undersea Search Resumes For France Flight 447

From Discovery News:

On June 1, 2009, Air France Flight 447 disappeared in turbulent weather en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. For the remainder of the summer, two major efforts were launched by search and rescue crews to find the remains of the plane and the 228 people who had been on board, with great hopes of also finding the two data recorders. So far, 51 bodies and 1,000 pieces of wreckage have been found, but not the data recorders, which only emit signals for 30 days.

Finding the so-called black boxes is key to understanding what happened to the airplane.

Read more ....

Can Common Herbs Extend Your Life?

From ABC News:

Cinnamon and Ginseng Stretch Life of a Worm; Will They Stretch Yours?

Most Americans have used herbal drugs during the past year, even though in nearly all cases there is no clear scientific evidence that they work. Now, an international team of scientists has found a way to collect that evidence, and even determine which components of very complex compounds are doing the work, and which aren't.

Read more ....

Greenpeace Issues Warning About Data Centre Power

From The BBC:

Greenpeace is calling on technology giants like Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo and Facebook to power their data centres with renewable energy sources.

Their electricity often comes from utility companies which generate power from burning coal, says the group.

Greenpeace estimates that data centres will use 1,963 billion kilowatt hours of electricity by 2020.

Read more ....

Mobile Nuclear Reactors Could Provide Power And Jet Fuel For Military, DARPA Says

Navy Aircraft Could nuclear-powered carriers use their reactors and seawater to provide jet fuel for their aircraft? U.S. Navy/Stephen Rowe

From Popular Science:

Making U.S. Navy carrier groups and Army bases more self-sufficient and energy-efficient could mean turning to mobile nuclear reactors. The Pentagon's DARPA scientists have put forth the modest proposal of deploying miniature reactors to convert hydrogen and carbon into military jet fuel, as well as providing power, The Register reports.

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Oceanology: Tethered Antenna Keeps Subs In Touch

There's a sub below (Image: Brooke Ocean Technology)

From New Scientist:

ROBOTIC submarines have always had trouble when it comes to picking up GPS signals and communicating with their operators. That's because radio signals do not travel far underwater. If the submarines do not surface regularly in order to check their position, they run the risk of drifting off-course.

This problem could now be solved, thanks to a wing-like antenna that piggybacks on small submarines. The antenna ascends to the surface on a tether as and when needed, enabling satellite communications, including GPS readings. It can even carry a camera to serve as a kind of periscope for the sub's controller.

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My Comment: The interesting line in this report is the last one ....

.... the US navy is interested in using autonomous submarines to watch for seaborne attacks ....

Nasa Astronaut Gets Ready For Blast-Off

From The Telegraph:

Technicians at a space centre in Kazakhstan have hoisted a rocket on to its launch pad ahead of Friday's blast-off.

A NASA astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts will be inside and will travel to the International Space Station.

NASA's Tracy Caldwell Dyson and Russians Alexander Skvortsov and Mikhail Kornienko are to blast off at 10.04am (0404 GMT) Friday for their six-month mission in the orbiting science lab.

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The Male Brain: More Complex Than You Think

Coneyl Jay / Corbis

From Time Magazine:

Despite all that old talk about Mars and Venus, men and women are much more biologically alike than not. But differences in the way our brains are built shed light on everything from the way we flirt to the way we fight to how we raise our boys, says neuropsychiatrist Dr. Louann Brizendine in her provocative new book, The Male Brain. The author talked to TIME about sex, the daddy brain and why some men may be built to cheat.

Read more ....

Orca The Dolphin Killer

The six-ton hunter chased the female dolphin through the waves before slamming into her, flipping her 30 feet into the air

From The Daily Mail:

This is the shocking moment a killer whale leapt from the sea to kill an exhausted dolphin.

The six-ton hunter had chased the female dolphin through the waves before swimming up under her and slamming into her, flipping her 30 feet into the air and breaking her back.

The dolphin died almost instantly and the killer whale, or orca, and the rest of its pod then closed in to devour her and her helpless youngster, turning the sea red.

Read more ....

Spammers Turn To Social Networks

Photo: Fake friends: This screenshot shows real users who befriended a bogus Facebook user created by George Petre and colleagues. Credit: BitDefender

From Technology Review:

They get results by exploiting a social network's trusting environment.

As users have flocked to social networks, so, inevitably, have spammers. And according to a recent experiment, users are much more receptive to spam sent via a social network than over e-mail.

Read more ....

Scientists Reverse Alzheimer's-Like Memory Loss in Fruit Flies

In a new study, neuroscientists succeeded in preventing memory loss in fruit flies caused by brain plaques similar to those thought to cause Alzheimer's disease in humans (Credit: iStockphoto)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Mar. 30, 2010) — By blocking the cellular signaling activity of a protein, a team of neuroscientists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) has prevented memory loss in fruit flies caused by brain plaques similar to those thought to cause Alzheimer's disease in humans. The study also resolves a long-standing controversy about the role of this protein, PI3 kinase, which was previously thought to have a protective function against the disease.

Read more ....

Bees See Color 3 Times Faster Than Humans

Bees have surprisingly fast color vision, about 3 to 4 times faster than that of humans depending on how it's measured, a new study finds. Credit: dreamstime

From Live Science:

Bees see color at about triple the speed that humans do, a new study finds.

The findings are the first to measure bumblebee color vision speed and show how it compares with that of monochromatic vision, or the "black-and-white" vision used to track motion.

Read more ....

Jupiter's Red Spot Has Warm Core

Bottom: Infrared picture of the Red Spot taken by VLT in Chile on 18 May 2008. Top: Visible-light image, which was obtained by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope on 15 May 2008. These images show the interaction of three of Jupiter's largest storms — the Great Red Spot and two smaller storms nicknamed Oval BA and Little Red Spot. Credit: ESO/NASA/JPL/ESA/L. Fletcher

From Cosmos:

SYDNEY: Jupiter's Great Red Spot is "extremely complicated", with a core that is warmer and spins in the opposite direction, scientists have found.

The Great Red Spot (GRS) is a storm three times the size of Earth, which spins mostly counter clockwise. It has persisted since at least 1831, and is the most recognisable feature on the striped planet.

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10 Questions The LHC May Answer

From Discovery News:

It's been just over a year since the Large Hadron Collider, the world's most powerful particle accelerator, suffered a serious malfunction that shut it down only nine days after going online. But as of this weekend, the LHC is back up and running.

Scientists will use the collider to recreate conditions following the Big Bang, by accelerating beams of subatomic particles (protons and lead ions, called hadrons) around a massive underground racetrack.

Read more ....

'Allergic' to Electronics: Man Sues Neighbor Over Gadget Use

From ABC:

Santa Fe Man Said He Has 'Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity'.

No TV. No computer. No cell phone. Electronically speaking, he said, his home is more 1980 than 2010.

The Santa Fe man, 59, said, intellectually, he has no problem with technology. It's just that, physically, he can barely tolerate it, he said.

Read more ....

Climate Science Must Be More Open, Say MPs

Photo: Professor Phil Jones' scientific reputation is "intact"

From The BBC:

MPs investigating the climate change row at the UK's University of East Anglia (UEA) have demanded greater transparency from climate scientists.

The Commons Science and Technology Committee criticised UEA authorities for failing to respond to requests for data from climate change sceptics.

But it found no evidence Professor Phil Jones, whose e-mails were hacked and published online, had manipulated data.

Read more ....

Picking Our Brains: Nine Neural Frontiers

From New Scientist:

The human brain is the most astoundingly complex structure in the known universe. Yet we are starting to unravel some of its mysteries, thanks to advances in brain imaging, genetics, stem cell research and more. We explore the latest findings from the hottest topics in neuroscience.

Read more ....

Genetic Shock A Surprising Court Ruling In America May Loosen The Drug Industry’s Grip On Important Genes

From The Economist:

PERSONALISED medicine has proved an elusive dream. Since the decoding of the human genome, biotechnology companies have claimed that by matching a person’s genetic make-up with specialised treatments, they can tailor drugs to maximise benefits and minimise side effects. Alas, researchers have discovered that the link between a given person’s genetic make-up and specific diseases is much more complex than they had hoped. The tantalising vision remains out of reach.

Read more ....

A Slow Mind May Nurture More Creative Ideas

White matter writ large (Image: UCLA Lab of Neuro Imaging)

From New Scientist:

AS FAR as the internet or phone networks go, bad connections are bad news. Not so in the brain, where slower connections may make people more creative.

Rex Jung at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque and his colleagues had found that creativity correlates with low levels of the chemical N-acetylaspartate, which is found in neurons and seems to promote neural health and metabolism.

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Threat Level Privacy, Crime and Security Online Isohunt Ordered to Remove Infringing Content

From Threat Level:

A U.S. judge is ordering Isohunt, one of the world’s leading BitTorrent search engines, to remove all infringing content. Isohunt’s operator said Tuesday that the decision would likely shutter the site, which has 30 million unique monthly visitors.

The injunction targeting Isohunt follows similar rulings against competing pirate sites like Mininova and The Pirate Bay, although the Bay has thus far eluded compliance.

Read more ....

Moral Judgments Can Be Altered

In a new study, researchers disrupted activity in the right temporo-parietal junction by inducing a current in the brain using a magnetic field applied to the scalp. They found that the subjects' ability to make moral judgments that require an understanding of other people's intentions -- for example, a failed murder attempt -- was impaired. (Credit: Graphic by Christine Daniloff)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Mar. 30, 2010) — MIT neuroscientists have shown they can influence people's moral judgments by disrupting a specific brain region -- a finding that helps reveal how the brain constructs morality.

To make moral judgments about other people, we often need to infer their intentions -- an ability known as "theory of mind." For example, if a hunter shoots his friend while on a hunting trip, we need to know what the hunter was thinking: Was he secretly jealous, or did he mistake his friend for a duck?

Read more ....

Mystery of Great Civilization's Destruction Revealed

The religious complex of Angkor Wat was center of a civilization that depended for irrigation on a vast network of canals, embankments and reservoirs. Credit: Charles J. Sharp.

From Live Science:

Climate change might have helped bring about the fall of the ancient Khmer civilization in Angkor, Cambodia, nearly 600 years ago, new research suggests.

Historians have given various explanations for the fall of the empire that stretched across much of Southeast Asia between the ninth and 14th centuries (801 to 1400), from land overexploitation to conflict with rival kingdoms. But the new study offers strong evidence that two severe droughts, punctuated by bouts of heavy monsoon rain, could have weakened the empire by shrinking water supplies for drinking and agriculture, and damaging Angkor's vast irrigation system, which was central to its economy.

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How It Works: Taser's Electrified Shotgun Slug

From Popular Science:

It’s midnight. You’re a cop patrolling the wrong side of town when you spot a mugging. The assailant is about 40 feet away, out of range of your stun gun. You shout, but he darts down an alley. It’s a dead end. The crook picks up a bottle, hurls it at your head, and makes a break for the street. You draw your gun.

Read more ....

Assault Breacher Vehicles Beat Bombs In Afghanistan

From Popular Mechanics:

Marine corps engineers in Afghanistan have a new beast of a vehicle to help them defeat explosive booby traps.

The civilian mechanics at Anniston Army Depot in Alabama usually only fix vehicles for the Army, not design them for the Marine Corps. But as Marines push into contested areas of Afghanistan, their engineers face a persistent threat from roadside bombs. The mechanics at Anniston saw they could build a safe ride for these military engineers by adding off-the-shelf equipment to an M1A1 Abrams battle tank. The result, called the Assault Breacher Vehicle (ABV), maximizes the depot staff’s experience at fixing the M1A1 and their ability to mount heavy engineering equipment, including a 12-foot plough, onto its hull. The Army donated excess tank parts from its inventory to create the ABV.

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My Comment: This is a monster.

New iPhone Could End AT&T's U.S. Monopoly

From The Wall Street Journal:

Apple Inc. plans to begin producing this year a new iPhone that could allow U.S. phone carriers other than AT&T Inc. to sell the iconic gadget, said people briefed by the company.

The new iPhone would work on a type of wireless network called CDMA, these people said. CDMA is used by Verizon Wireless, AT&T's main competitor, as well as Sprint Nextel Corp. and a handful of cellular operators in countries including South Korea and Japan. The vast majority of carriers world-wide, including AT&T, use another technology called GSM.

Read more ....

Oceanology: Robot 'Gliders' Swim The Undersea World

Engage the wave drive (Image: Liquid Robotics)

From New Scientist:

THE way we study oceans could be transformed by a high-tech "surfboard" that generates its own power from sunlight and water waves. The device is capable of navigating at sea for months at a time and recently completed a 4000-kilometre trip from Hawaii to San Diego, California.

Read more ....

Cern's Giant Collider Is Back – And The Hunt For Fundamental New Insights Is On

The Large Hadron Collider is set for record-breaking high-energy particle experiments after an 18-month delay for repairs. Photograph: Reuters

From The Guardian:

• Two beams of protons will be collided at record energy levels
• Large Hadron Collider may find Higgs boson, or 'God particle'

The largest, most complex scientific instrument in the world will begin its long-delayed hunt for new particles, forces and extra dimensions on Tuesday at Cern, the European Nuclear Research Organisation, on the outskirts of Geneva.

Read more ....

Picking Our Brains: What Are Memories Made Of?

Want to forget a fright? (Image: WIN-Initiative/Getty)

From New Scientist:

MEMORIES are the basic stuff of thought. We access our stores of knowledge every time we perform a task, communicate through speech or formulate the simplest concepts. Yet the physical form of memory has long been mysterious. What changes occur in the brain when a new memory is encoded?

Read more ....

Atom Smasher Will Help Reveal 'The Beginning'

Physicists gather at CERN to witness results of the LHC's first half-power particle collisions. Photograph courtesy Maximilien Brice, CERN

From The Washington Post:

GENEVA -- The world's largest atom smasher threw together minuscule particles racing at unheard of speeds in conditions simulating those just after the Big Bang - a success that kick-started a megabillion-dollar experiment that could one day explain how the universe began.

Scientists cheered Tuesday's historic crash of two proton beams, which produced three times more energy than researchers had created before and marked a milestone for the $10 billion Large Hadron Collider.

Read more ....

US Marines Embrace Web 2.0

[Photo: USMC; Linker: MY]

In About-Face, Marines Embrace Web 2.0 -- The Danger Room

Last summer, the U.S. Marine Corps took a draconian approach to Web 2.0, issuing a sweeping ban on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and other social media sites from its networks.

In an order issued yesterday, the service changed course, issuing guidelines to encourage “responsible and effective use” of social networking technology. “The Marine Corps embraces and strives to leverage the advances of internet-based capabilities,” the directive states. “Effective immediately, internet-based capabilities will be made available to all MCEN [Marine Corps Enterprise Network] users.”

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My Comment: I call this a positive direction. Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc. they all add to the morale and well being of our soldiers.

$500 Million Launcher Lacks One Thing: Rocket

The Constellation Program's Ares I-X test rocket roars off Launch Pad 39B at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Oct. 28. At right is space shuttle Atlantis. Photo courtesy of Scott Andrews

From MSNBC:

Space industry tense over pending demise of Constellation program.

CAPE CANAVERAL, FLA. - Anyone need a $500 million, 355-foot steel tower for launching rockets into space?

There's one available at NASA's Kennedy Space Center. Brand new, never been used.

The mobile launcher has been built for a rocket called the Ares 1. The problem is, there is not yet any such thing as an Ares 1 rocket — and if the Obama administration has its way, there never will be.

Read more ....

For One Tiny Instant, Physicists May Have Broken A Law of Nature

This image of a full-energy collision between gold ions shows the paths taken by thousands of subatomic particles produced during the impact. (Credit: Image courtesy of Yale University)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Mar. 30, 2010) — For a brief instant, it appears, scientists at Brook­haven National Laboratory on Long Island recently discovered a law of nature had been broken.

Action still resulted in an equal and opposite reaction, gravity kept the Earth circling the Sun, and conservation of energy remained intact. But for the tiniest fraction of a second at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), physicists created a symmetry-breaking bubble of space where parity no longer existed.

Read more ....

Mysterious Lead Coffin Found Near Rome

The lead coffin archaeologists found in the abandoned ancient city of Gabii, Italy could contain a gladiator or bishop. Credit: University of Michigan.

From Live Science:

Archaeologists found a 1,000-pound lead coffin while digging in the ruins of an ancient city near Rome last summer. The mission now is to determine who or what is buried inside.

The project – which is headed by Nicola Terrenato, a professor of classical studies at the University of Michigan – is the largest American-led dig in Italy in the past 50 years.

Read more ....

'Uranium-Eating' Bacteria To Clean-Up Radioactive Sites

Ranger Mine - a uranium mine in Kakadu National Park, Australia.

From Cosmos:

SYDNEY: Some bacteria have the capacity to stabilise uranium contaminated sites, and if they are used they could reducing the chances of these sites contaminating major waterways and ecosystems, U.S. scientists have said.

Of the millions of tonnes of bacteria living within the Earth's subsurface, some are able to transform the oxidative state of uranium, which defines how the element with interact with oxygen to form various molecules. They change it from the radioactive, toxic and water soluble uranium (VI) to the less soluble, stationary and therefore less harmful uranium (IV) as part of their normal growth.

Read more ....

With Processor Speeds Stagnating, Researchers Look Beyond Silicon Toward Computing's Future

Flexible Silicon More flexible circuits can help silicon stay relevant in the future of computing Science/University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

From Popular Mechanics:

After a breathless race through the '80s and '90s, desktop computer clock speeds have spent the last decade languishing around the 3 gigahertz mark. That stagnation in processing speeds has prompted scientists to debate whether it's time to move beyond semiconductors -- and what better place to debate than in the journal Science? Ars Technica gives a top-down overview of several future paths laid out in the journal's latest issue by researchers such as Thomas Theis and Paul Solomon of IBM.

Read more ....

James Lovelock: Humans Are Too Stupid To Prevent Climate Change

Humans are too stupid to prevent climate change, according to the British scientist James Lovelock. Illustration: Murdo Macleod

From The Guardian:

In his first in-depth interview since the theft of UEA emails, the scientist blames inertia and democracy for lack of action.

Humans are too stupid to prevent climate change from radically impacting on our lives over the coming decades. This is the stark conclusion of James Lovelock, the globally respected environmental thinker and independent scientist who developed the Gaia theory.

Read more ....

Sex Infection Gonorrhea Risks Becoming "Superbug"

From Reuters:

The sexually transmitted disease gonorrhea risks becoming a drug-resistant "superbug" if doctors do not devise new ways of treating it, a leading sexual health expert said.

Catherine Ison, a specialist on gonorrhea from Britain's Health Protection Agency said a World Health Organization (WHO) meeting in Manila next week would be vital to efforts to try to stop the bug repeatedly adapting to and overcoming drugs.

"This is a very clever bacteria. If this problem isn't addressed, there is a real possibility that gonorrhea will become a very difficult infection to treat," she said in a telephone interview.

Read more ....

YouTube's 50 Best Videos

From Time Magazine:

YouTube — breeding ground for the Web's wackiest and wildest viral videos — turns 5 in 2010. In recognition, TIME takes a look back at the site's 50 greatest hits

YouTube's most viewed video of all time is an unlikely champion. Seen more than 170 million times since its posting in May 2007, "Charlie Bit My Finger" was never meant to be anything more than a family flick. But the Internet's hive mind saw something it liked and catapulted the clip, which depicts a laughing British baby gnawing on the finger of his crying brother, past "Evolution of Dance" as YouTube's views champ by the fall of 2009.

Read more ....

How The Human Brain Got Bigger By Accident And Not Through Evolution

Colin Blakemore believes the human brain became bigger through genetic accident and not evolution. Photograph: David Hartley / Rex Features

From The Guardian:

Oxford neurobiologist Colin Blakemore tells Robin McKie why he thinks a mutation in the human brain 200,000 years ago suddenly made us a super-intelligent species.

According to Woody Allen, it is his second favourite organ and it absorbs more than 25% of the energy that our bodies generate. But why? For what purposes did the human brain evolve and why does it take so much of our physiological resources?

Read more ....

3DTVs Too Expensive For Mass Market

Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldana in Avatar, or Dances with Wolves in Space 3D, to give it its working title Photo: REUTERS

From The Telegraph:

A survey suggests that 53 per cent of consumers won’t pay more than £499 for 3DTVs, which currently retail at around £2,000.

Three dimensional television might be the latest product to be receiving all the hype, but a new survey suggests that just 1.4 per cent of consumers are willing to pay the £2,000 price tags that new sets typically carry.

In a survey for discount site VoucherCodes.co.uk, 28.6 per cent of those asked said they would like to buy a 3DTV but that current prices were far too high. More than half – 53 per cent – said that they would only be willing to pay up to £499.

Read more ....

The Father Of Civilisation: Alexander The Great

Alexander the Great: The Greek leader made Alexandria a place of knowledge, discovery and sexual intrigues

From The Daily Mail:

There is not, and has never been, another city to match it. It was a glittering metropolis, home to the most sexually charismatic queen of all time, founded by a man whose megalomaniac ambitions knew no bounds.

It was a buzzing hub that boasted one of the seven wonders of the world, where intellectual geniuses from both East and West met to tussle and debate in a library containing all the knowledge on the planet.

Read more ....

Physicists Detect Rare Geo-Neutrino Particles, Peek Into Earth's Core

Inside the scintillator at Borexino. (Credit: Borexino Collaboration)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Mar. 29, 2010) — Using a delicate instrument located under a mountain in central Italy, two University of Massachusetts Amherst physicists are measuring some of the faintest and rarest particles ever detected, geo-neutrinos, with the greatest precision yet achieved. The data reveal, for the first time, a well defined signal, above background noise, of the extremely rare geo-neutrino particle from deep within Earth.

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