Do Cell Phones Cause Cancer?

From Discovery News:

There are safety-warning labels on cigarettes and alcohol. Now some groups are advocating that similar cautions be printed on cell phones.

Recently, a bill in the Maine state senate proposed a label warning users, especially children and pregnant women, of the risks of brain cancer from electromagnetic radiation emanating from the device.

But the Maine legislature voted down the bill in March, stating that the scientific evidence does not indicate a public health risk.

Yet, the debate rages on. Can cell phones really cause cancer?

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Maxed out: How Long Could You Survive Without Food Or Drink?

David Blaine went without food for 44 days (Image: Scott Barbour / Getty)

From New Scientist:

How long can a human survive without food or water? In theory, when you finally run out of body fat, protein and carbohydrates, your body runs out of energy and stops functioning. Jeremy Powell-Tuck, a retired clinician who fed David Blaine after his starvation stunt in London in 2003, isn't so sure that this is the lethal point. "You're more likely to die before then," he says. Fat people would only be able to survive for longer if they had enough vital water-soluble B vitamins in their system to help metabolise fat stores. So it is possible that a person could die of starvation and still be fat.

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Nasa's Solar Dynamics Observatory Returns First Images

SDO sees the Sun's whole disc but can then zoom in to view fine detail

From The BBC:

Nasa's Solar Dynamics Observatory has provided an astonishing new vista on our turbulent star.

The first public release of images from the satellite record huge explosions and great looping prominences of gas.

The observatory's super-fine resolution is expected to help scientists get a better understanding of what drives solar activity.

Launched in February on an Atlas rocket from Cape Canaveral, SDO is expected to operate for at least five years.

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NASA's Earth Day Gift Runs On a 56,832-Core, 128-Screen Climate Research Supercomputer

NASA's Advanced Supercomputing Facility at Ames Research Center This ain't NASA's first supercomputer.

From Popular Science:

Earth Week is upon us, and NASA has prepared a very special gift for the blue planet. Dwarfing the iPods that we customarily give each other to celebrate another year of existence, NASA put together NEX, a planetary data-crunching tool that uses a 56,832-core, 128-screen supercomputer to blend global satellite data and sophisticated modeling software with an online collaborative culture aimed at helping scientists work together toward better climate change research.

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'Brain Training' Games Do Not Improve Mental Skills, Study Says

The results contradicted some of the claims of the brain-training industry.

From The Independent:

Brain training games do not work, according to a study into claims that it is possible to "exercise" the brain with computer tests.

A mass experiment involving nearly 11,500 members of the public failed to find any improvement in mental performance after people regularly used brain-training games on their computers for a period of six weeks.

Scientists said that the results contradicted some of the claims of the brain-training industry, which regularly promotes its computer games as a method of improving a person's mental skills through "exercising".

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Global Temperatures Push March 2010 To Hottest March On Record

Temperature anomaly is the difference from average, which gives a more accurate picture of temperature change. In calculating average regional temperatures, factors like station location or elevation affect the data, but those factors are less critical when looking at the difference from the average. (Credit: NOAA/National Climatic Data Center/NESDIS)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Apr. 21, 2010) — The world's combined global land and ocean surface temperature made last month the warmest March on record, according to NOAA. Taken separately, average ocean temperatures were the warmest for any March and the global land surface was the fourth warmest for any March on record. Additionally, the planet has seen the fourth warmest January -- March period on record.

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Study: Bomb's Shock Waves May Electrify the Brain

A computer simulation showed how a shock wave from bomb blasts can make skulls generate electric fields. Credit: Karen K. Y. Lee.

From Live Science:

The blast waves from explosions could jolt the skull into generating electricity, potentially damaging the brain, scientists now suggest.

Although the burns and shrapnel wounds that explosions can inflict are their most obvious hazards, perhaps the greatest danger comes from a blast's shock wave. These rapidly generate ripples in a person's innards, potentially causing traumatic brain injuries with deleterious effects ranging from a simple concussion to long-term impaired mental function.

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Lousy DNA Reveals When People First Wore Clothes

From Wired Science:

ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexisco — For once lice are nice, at least for scientists investigating the origins of garments.

Using DNA to trace the evolutionary split between head and body lice, researchers conclude that body lice first came on the scene approximately 190,000 years ago. And that shift, the scientists propose, followed soon after people first began wearing clothing.

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Britain Heads Google’s European Censorship List

Google says it decided to make the figures available in the interests of transparency

From Times Online:

The British Government made more requests for content to be removed from Google last year than any other country in Europe, according to figures released by the company today.

Between July and December last year, Google received 1,166 data requests from British government agencies, of which 59 were requests for content to be removed. Google complied with 76.3 per cent of the removal requests.

France made 846 data requests, but fewer than ten removal requests, of which 66.7 per cent were successful.

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School Lunch Helping Make Americans Too Fat To Enlist?

© Richard Hutchings/CORBIS

From Time Magazine:

More than a quarter of all Americans between the ages of 17 to 24 are too overweight to join the military, according to a new report highlighted by the Associated Press. That many Americans are too tubby to meet the basic entry requirements for military service isn't new—in 2008 roughly 12,000 would-be soldiers failed the initial military physical because they were overweight, and last year the Pentagon lamented the fact that, between obesity, medical and physical problems, illegal drug use and other issues, 75% of military-age Americans were ineligible for service.

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Google Map Reveals Britain Is Third In The World For 'Big Brother' Requests About Its Citizens

The Google Government Requests tool shows how many data and censorship demands the search giant receive every six month

From The Daily Mail:

The UK Government has made over 1,000 requests for information about its citizens from Google in the last six months, the internet search giant revealed today.

It came third out of roughly 100 countries where Google operates and was only ranked behind Brazil and the U.S.

The figures came to light as Google launched a new tool that reveals where it faces governmental pressure to censor material and turn over personal information about its users.

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New iPhone Prototype Leaked?

From ABC News:

Technology Web Site Gizmodo Says It Got Its Hands on Lost Next Generation iPhone.

A prototype of the next generation of the iPhone -- scheduled for release this summer -- seems to have been left behind in a Northern California bar. Snapped up by patron who sold it to a tech news site, it has set off a game of corporate intrigue worthy of the Cold War.

Apple, which makes the iPhone, has built its towering technology reputation on secrecy. Last month, BusinessWeek reported that software developers testing the then-unreleased iPad had to promise to keep the device tethered to a fixed object in a room with blacked-out windows, and then send the company a photograph to prove compliance.

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South Korea Developing Underwater Search-and-Rescue Robot Crawlers

Underwater swimmers and crawlers could speed up rescue efforts for incidents such as the recent sinking of a South Korean Navy frigate.

From Popular Science:

South Korea's flock of robotic teachers look and sound goofy, but the nation is deadly serious about its latest project: developing aquatic robots by 2016 which can swim and crawl their way across the seafloor several miles down for search and rescue purposes, according to the Korea Times.

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Obama Consigns Moon Landings To History

Buzz Aldrin on the Moon, 20 July 1969, during the Apollo 11 mission. Aldrin is among those who support the ending of the planned Moon landing programme. NASA/ AP

From The Independent:

President's vision for Nasa rules out return to lunar surface – and divides Apollo astronauts.

Standing near the spot where the US launched its first space missions, Barack Obama attempted to sell his plans for the future of Nasa last night, predicting that his new programme for the space agency will protect thousands of jobs and send astronauts to Mars within his lifetime.

The President told a crowd of 200 people at the Kennedy Space Centre
at Cape Canaveral that he remains committed to space exploration, despite his controversial decision earlier this year to cancel plans for a new mission to the Moon.

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Why Aviation Industry Has Cloudy Knowledge Of Risks From Volcanic Ash

From The Guardian:

Tests for higher-risk flying conditions may have helped in current crisis but manufacturers said no.

That a cloud of volcanic ash can bring European flights to a standstill has raised serious questions over the aviation industry's efforts to understand the risks of flying in such conditions.

Rules laid down by the International Civil Aviation Organisation prohibit flights through any amount of volcanic ash, but aircraft and engine manufacturers have never fully investigated the effects of flying in ash clouds. What information they have has been gleaned from inspecting planes after they have flown into ash plumes by accident.

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Why Volcanoes Are Dangerous

Ash Cloud Reminds Us That We Should All Be Afraid Of Volcanoes -- The Telegraph

Eyjafjallajökull's giant cloud of ash is a nuisance, but a supervolcano's catastrophic eruption could threaten the fabric of civilisation, says Kate Ravilious.

Every so often the Earth chooses to remind us that we really aren't in control of this planet. The volcanic eruption in Iceland, which began on Wednesday, is just such a reminder. As ash spews out across northern Europe, grounding all flights across Scandinavia and the UK, we begin to realise how powerless we humans are.

Read more ....

Giant Sequoias Yield Longest Fire History From Tree Rings

This cross-section of a giant sequoia tree shows some of the tree-rings and fire scars. The numbers indicate the year that a particular ring was laid down by the tree. (Credit: Tom Swetnam.)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Apr. 21, 2010) — A 3,000-year record from 52 of the world's oldest trees shows that California's western Sierra Nevada was droughty and often fiery from 800 to 1300, according to new research.

Scientists reconstructed the 3,000-year history of fire by dating fire scars on ancient giant sequoia trees, Sequoiadendron giganteum, in the Giant Forest of Sequoia National Park. Individual giant sequoias can live more than 3,000 years.

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Is 3-D TV Dangerous?

From Live Science:

3-D television looks awesome, but can it be hazardous to your health?

That's what many are wondering now that electronics giant Samsung issued guidelines on its Web site warning consumers of potential health risks associated with the emerging technology.

The warning advises parents to monitor their children as they watch 3-D, and cautions that it could trigger seizures:

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Supercomputers Map Pathogens As They Emerge And Evolve

A screenshot from a Supramap study of avian influenza, with red lines representing the spread of drug-resistant strains and the white lines drug susceptible strains. Credit: Ohio Supercomputing Center

From Cosmos:

BRISBANE: Instead of simply focussing on human infections, infectious disease researchers can now track the complex interactions, movement and evolution of the pathogens themselves using supercomputers.

The researchers are using a new program called Supramap, which operates on the computing systems at Ohio State University and the Ohio Supercomputer Center.

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The Coming Tide of Global Climate Lawsuits

From Wired Science:

The Prunerov power station is the Czech Republic’s biggest polluter: Its Its 900-foot-high smokestack pushes a plume of white smoke high above the flat, featureless fields of northern Bohemia. Prunerov reliably wins a place on lists of Europe’s dirtiest power plants, emitting 11.1 million tons of carbon dioxide each year. So when CEZ Group, the state-controlled utility, proposed an overhaul to extend the facility’s life for another quarter of a century, protests flared — including one from a place about as far from the sooty industrial region as you can get, a place of tropical temperatures and turquoise seas with not a smokestack in sight. This January, the Federated States of Micronesia, some 8,000 miles away in the Pacific Ocean, lodged a legal challenge to the Prunerov plant on the grounds that its chronic pollution threatens the island nation’s existence.

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Study: Brain Exercises Don't Improve Cognition

Brain-training tasks improve performance in the trained tasks alone, rather than improving cognitive performance overall. artpartner-images / Photographer's Choice RF / Getty Images

From Time Magazine:

You've probably heard it before: the brain is a muscle that can be strengthened. It's an assumption that has spawned a multimillion-dollar computer game industry of electronic brain-teasers and memory games. But in the largest study of such brain games to date, a team of British researchers has found that healthy adults who undertake computer-based "brain-training" do not improve their mental fitness in any significant way.

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Space Shuttle Discovery Lands (Video)

Revealed: The Hapless Apple Engineer Who Lost Top-Secret 4G iPhone Prototype After A Beer-Fuelled Night Out

Already a T-shirt marking Gray Powell's error is on sale

From The Daily Mail:

It has happened to most of us at some point: you arrive home after a night out and can’t remember what on earth you did with your phone.

But - unluckily for this man - a mobile left behind on a bar stool at a German beer garden in Redwood City, California, has set alarm bells ringing with an intrigue worthy of the Cold War.

For a website is claiming that the forgotten phone wasn’t just any old mobile. Gadget blog Gizmodo says it was a secret prototype of the next generation of the iPhone.

And if so, Apple employee Gray Powell has just made his 27th birthday unforgettable.

Read more ....

Climate Science Skepticism: 5 Controversial Claims

From ABC News:

Is Earth Really Warming? Are Humans Responsible? Why Climate Skeptics Doubt

As Earth Day approaches, climate change is climbing back into the public consciousness. But though most climatologists agree that humans are driving global warming, surveys suggest that public concern about climate change is waning.

A Gallup poll in March found that 48 percent of Americans believe the global warming issue is "exaggerated," which is up from 41 percent in 2009 and 31 percent in 1997.

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Maxed Out: What's The Human Speed Limit?

Not quite as fast as the speed of light (Image: Seiko Press Service / Getty)

From New Scientist:

Last year, Usain Bolt stunned athletics fans when he hacked 0.11 seconds off his previous world record for the 100-metre sprint. But what's the ultimate human speed limit?

Intrigued by this question, Mark Denny at Stanford University, California, decided to work out how fast a human could possibly sprint 100 metres. He examined previous records for various athletics competitions - and greyhound and horse races for good measure - since the 1920s, and found that performances in many events followed a similar pattern, improving steadily until they reached a plateau. Horses in the Kentucky Derby, for example, appeared to approach their speed limit in 1949. Since then any improvements have become minimal and increasingly rare.

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Report: Global Net Speeds Keep Bumping Up

(Credit: Akamai)

From CNET:

The fastest are getting faster.

Eight of the top 10 countries or regions in terms of Internet speed saw a boost in the final quarter of 2009, according to Akamai's "State of the Internet Report" released Tuesday.

Among those top areas, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Japan grabbed the best Internet performance globally, averaging connection speeds higher than 7.5 megabits per second (Mbps) in the fourth quarter. Although South Korea actually was hit by a 29 percent decline in performance year over year, it still snagged the No. 1 spot at 11.7 Mbps.

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Routine Lifting May Not Be As Bad For Your Back As Thought, Research Suggests

Tapio Videman is a researcher in the University of Alberta's Faculty of Rehabilitation Medicine. (Credit: Photo courtesy the University of Alberta)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Apr. 15, 2010) — Tapio Videman says back disorders in the working population are among the most costly illnesses in developed countries around the world. Disc degeneration is the main suspected origin of severe back symptoms and the main target in spine surgery.

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Another Iceland Volcano Under Watch

Visible (left) and infrared (right) images of Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull volcano, acquired April 17, 2010, from the Hyperion instrument onboard NASA's Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) spacecraft. Image credit: NASA/JPL/EO-1 Mission/GSFC/Ashley Davies

From Live Science:

News reports earlier today that another volcano on Iceland had erupted just as Eyjafjallajokull was beginning to calm down turned out to be false. But scientists are warily keeping their eye on one of Eyjafjallajokull's neighbors, which has been known to erupt following its sister.

An MSNBC Twitter feed and one other news service ran reports that a volcano called Hekla had erupted on Iceland today. Those rumors turned out to be false, but even if Hekla had blown its top today, it would have been "purely coincidental," said Jay Miller, a volcano researcher at Texas A&M University.

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Maxed Out: How Long Can We Concentrate For?

Surgeons have to concentrate for hours on end (Image: OJO Images / Rex Features)

From New Scientist:

It's a challenge that most of us have faced when up against an essay deadline, a late-night crisis in the office or perhaps a long car drive. Just how long can we push ourselves mentally before our brain needs a break?

For people in jobs where concentration is critical, like truck drivers, power-plant operators or airline pilots, a 12-hour shift is the limit for most. But pity doctors: complex surgery can go on for hours longer than that, although the lengthiest operations tend to be shared by more than one team.

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Five Biggest Volcano Eruptions In Recent History

This picture is of a June 12, 1991, eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in the Philippines – one of the smaller eruptions that preceded the main eruption on June 15. That eruption was the biggest since 1912 – a 6 on the Volcanic Explosivity Index. The eruption of Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull volcano rates a 2 or 3. Newscom

From Christian Science Monitor:

The eruption at Eyafjallajökull volcano in Iceland has been hugely disruptive to world travel. But as a volcanic event, it's barely worth mentioning.

By the measure of the Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI) – a sort-of Richter scale for eruptions – the current outburst is probably a 2 or a 3, experts say. In other words, eruptions like Eyjafjallajökull happen virtually every year somewhere in the world.

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Apple Requests Return Of Lost iPhone Prototype

Photo: Gizmodo posts photos of what it says is the next version of the iPhone. (Credit: Screenshot by Erica Ogg/CNET)

From CNET:

Gizmodo said Monday evening it is making arrangements to return an errant device that is believed to be a prototype of the next iPhone, following a request from Apple's legal department, which Gizmodo calls verification of the device's authenticity.

The tech blog site had revealed early Monday that it was in possession of a device it concluded to be a prototype of the unreleased and as-yet-unannounced iPhone 4G. The next-generation device was reportedly found last month on the floor of a San Francisco Bay Area bar after it was apparently left by a customer identified as an Apple employee.

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A Saturn Spectacular, With Gravity’s Help

SEVEN MORE YEARS Brent Buffington, from left, David Seal and John C. Smith arranged models of Jupiter and Saturn in a viewing room at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in Pasadena, Calif. Robert Benson for The New York Times

From The New York Times:

When it comes to voyages of discovery, NASA’s venerable Cassini mission is about as good as it gets.

In six years of cruising around the planet Saturn and its neighborhood, the Cassini spacecraft has discovered two new Saturn rings, a bunch of new moons and a whole new class of moonlets. It encountered liquid lakes on the moon Titan, water ice and a particle plume on the moon Enceladus, ridges and ripples on the rings, and cyclones at Saturn’s poles. Cassini also released a European space probe that landed on Titan. And Cassini has sent back enough data to produce more than 1,400 scientific papers — at last count.

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Bureaucracy Linked To A Nation's Growth

Two of the conquest inscriptions on Building J (ca. 100 BC). Each inscription shows an upside down head with closed eyes signifying conquest on the bottom, a "hill" glyph signifying generalized place in the middle, and a third element on top that varies among inscriptions signifying specific place name. (Credit: Charles S. Spencer, AMNH, used with permission)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Apr. 20, 2010) — "Bureaucracy is the death of all sound work," said Albert Einstein, sharing a popular view about bureaucracy grinding progress to a halt.

But it now appears that the organizing functions of bureaucracy were essential to the progressive growth of the world's first states, and may have helped them conquer surrounding areas much earlier than originally thought. New research conducted in the Valley of Oaxaca near Monte Albán, a large pre-Columbian archaeological site in southern Mexico, also implies that the first bureaucratic systems may have a lasting influence on today's modern states.

Read more ....

Mysterious Volcano Lightning Creates Pretty Pictures`

Lightning in the ash plume of Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull volcano. Credit: Olivier Vandeginste.

From Live Science:

It may look like the special effects from a disaster movie, but the bolts of lightning photographed in the plume of the ash-spewing Icelandic volcano are real. Thing is, the process that creates volcano lightning remains a bit of a mystery.

Several photographers have taken pictures of the stunning light show shooting from the angry mouth of Eyjafjallajokull, which has been pumping a cloud of ash into the atmosphere for several days. In addition to the spectacular electric storm in its plume, the volcano has created colorful sunsets around the world with its ash, which has also hampered air travel over Europe.

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A Trick Of The Light -- Mankind’s Ability To Look For Planets Like Earth Just Got Five Times Bette

First rock from the sun

From The Economist:

THREE centuries have passed since the polymath Sir Christopher Wren predicted that “a time will come when men will stretch out their eyes—they should see planets like our Earth.” By most astronomers’ accounts, that time is just about nigh. Indeed, detecting big planets orbiting other stars is no longer tricky—nearly 450 such exoplanets have been catalogued. Smaller, rocky planets orbiting at a comfortable distance from their stars—as the Earth does—remain more elusive.

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Head-Ramming Dino Had 'Gears' in Skull

A reconstruction of Texacephale langstoni shows how the dinosaur may have used its head. Nicholas Longrich

From The Telegraph:

The new Texas dino featured a skull with a domed top and side bones that may have allowed its skull bones to mesh on impact.

A new species dinosaur found in Texas featured flanges on the side of its skull that may have allowed its skull bones to mesh like gears -- a useful feature when it likely rammed heads with other dinosaurs, say researchers.

"It's possible that this would prevent the skull bones from dislocating under stresses," speculated Nicholas Longrich, a postdoctoral associate in Yale University's Department of Geology and Geophysics who was project leader for a study about the find published in the latest issue of the journal Cretaceous Research.

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The Image Microsoft Doesn't Want You To See

Worn out: Some of the workers making computer accessories for Microsoft at a Chinese factory

From The Daily Mail:

Showing Chinese sweatshop workers slumped over their desks with exhaustion, it is an image that Microsoft won't want the world to see.

Employed for gruelling 15-hour shifts, in appalling conditions and 86f heat, many fall asleep on their stations during their meagre ten-minute breaks.

For as little as 34p an hour, the men and women work six or seven days a week, making computer mice and web cams for the American multinational computer company.

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Is God A Mathematician?

From afar, Richard Feynman seemed as dangerous as plutonium (Image: CERN/SPL)

From New Scientist:

THE physicist Richard Feynman said, "It doesn't seem to me that this fantastically marvellous universe, this tremendous range of time and space and different kinds of animals, and all the different planets, and all these atoms with all their motions, and so on, all this complicated thing can merely be a stage so that God can watch human beings struggle for good and evil - which is the view that religion has. The stage is too big for the drama."

Read more ....

New Tech Sees Dead People

Using hyperspectral imaging, scientists from McGill University have found unmarked animal graves with special cameras that measure changes in the light coming from soil and plants. (Getty Images)

From ABC News:

Technology Can Detect Chemicals Released by Decomposing Bodies

A spooky sounding technology is finding old, unmarked graves. Using hyperspectral imaging, scientists from McGill University have found unmarked animal graves with special cameras that measure changes in the light coming from soil and plants.

Hyperspectral imaging collects and processes light from across the electromagnetic spectrum, including visible light as well as ultraviolet and infrared light. The research could help police solve missing persons cases or reveal new mass graves from hundreds, if not thousands, of years ago.

Read more ....

The Page: An E-Ink Newspaper That Won't Smudge Your Fingers

From Gizmodo:

For some reason I'm skeptical that the one thing keeping newspaper readers from switching to E-Ink readers is the form factor, but that doesn't make this semi-transparent E-Ink newspaper display concept any less cool.

The key word, of course, is concept, but flexible/foldable displays aren't anything new. Nor are interactive content or E-Ink. It's bringing these concepts together in a workable package that might take some time. Meanwhile, though, here's how it would ideally work (without all the wobbly images):

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Microsoft Debuts 'Fix It' Program

From The BBC:

Microsoft has launched "Fix It" software that keeps an eye on a PC and automatically repairs common faults.

The software basically adds the automatic diagnostics system in Windows 7 to older versions of Microsoft's operating system.

The software, currently available as a trial or beta version, is intended for users of Windows XP and Vista.

The package also tries to anticipate how security updates will affect a PC before they are installed.

Read more ....

Why Can't Planes Fly Through Volcanic Ash? NASA Found Out The Hard Way

Jet Engine Meets Volcanic Ash This British Airways engine experienced a run in with a volcanic ash plume in 1982. Image: Eric Moody, British Airways

From Popular Science:

If you’ve been anywhere near a television or Web enabled device in the last week (and you must have been), you know that a volcanic eruption in Iceland has grounded airline flights across Europe and even halted a few flights into the northeastern-most areas of Canada. What you probably don’t know is how to pronounce the name of the volcano (Eyjafjallajökull) or why an eruption in Iceland is grounding flights in London, Madrid and Berlin.

Read more ....

Dry Regions Becoming Drier: Ocean Salinities Show an Intensified Water Cycle

An Argo robotic profiling instrument being deployed from the research vessel, Southern Surveyor. (Credit: Alicia Navidad)

From Live Science:

ScienceDaily (Apr. 18, 2010) — The stronger water cycle means arid regions have become drier and high rainfall regions wetter as atmospheric temperature increases.

The study, co-authored by CSIRO scientists Paul Durack and Dr Susan Wijffels, shows the surface ocean beneath rainfall-dominated regions has freshened, whereas ocean regions dominated by evaporation are saltier. The paper also confirms that surface warming of the world's oceans over the past 50 years has penetrated into the oceans' interior changing deep-ocean salinity patterns.

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Will The Iceland Volcano Change The Climate?

This image, acquired on 15 April 2010 by Envisat's Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS), shows the vast cloud of volcanic ash sweeping across the UK from the eruption in Iceland, more than 1000 km away. The ash, which can be seen as the large grey streak in the image, is drifting from west to east at a height of about 11 km above the surface Earth. Credit: ESA

From Live Science:

The vast plume of material spewing from this week's eruption of an Icelandic volcano is reddening sunsets and clouding skies across Europe. If the eruptions continue and get bigger — a possibility given the explosive history of Iceland's volcanoes — even the global climate could be affected. But the current eruption is too wimpy to have any significant impact, scientists say.

The eruption of Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull volcano may be treating European sky watchers to spectacular sunsets and hampering air travel due to the ash and gas it has spewed into the atmosphere. But "there will be no effect on climate," said Alan Robock of Rutgers University, who studies the effects of volcanic eruptions on climate.

Read more ....

Ash Cloud Reminds Us That We Should All Be Afraid Of Volcanoes

From The Telegraph:

Eyjafjallajökull's giant cloud of ash is a nuisance, but a supervolcano's catastrophic eruption could threaten the fabric of civilisation, says Kate Ravilious.

Every so often the Earth chooses to remind us that we really aren't in control of this planet. The volcanic eruption in Iceland, which began on Wednesday, is just such a reminder. As ash spews out across northern Europe, grounding all flights across Scandinavia and the UK, we begin to realise how powerless we humans are.

Read more ....

Space Shuttle Discovery Soars Over Crystal Clear Caribbean On Long Journey Home

Astronaut Soichi Noguchi sent this amazing picture of the underside of the Discovery Shuttle from the International Space Station

From The Daily Mail:

Gliding over the deep blue waters of the Caribbean, the shuttle Discovery has started its long journey back to Earth.

The crew, including a record-breaking trio of female astronauts, wrapped up a two-week mission on the International Space Station on Saturday before undocking from the orbiter.

Pilot Jim Dutton performed a loop the loop, which gave ISS astronaut Soichi Noguchi a fantastic view of the shuttle's well-weathered underside. Mr Noguchi was quick to snap the impressive sight and share his pictures with his 200,000 followers on Earth.

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The Biggest Bangs In History

From New Scientist:

The colossal Toba supervolcanic eruption 74,000 years ago was big – but not the biggest in Earth's history. Here's our rundown of chart-topping blasts from the past.


The Tunguska event

One of the 20th century's most notorious bangs happened at 7.14 am on 30 June 1908. At that moment, something exploded with enormous force over the Tunguska river in Siberia, Russia.

The resulting shock wave flattened trees over an area of 2000 square kilometres, and people tens of kilometres away were knocked off their feet.

Read more ....

For Prom, Teens Let YouTube Do The Asking

From ABC News:

High School Students Woo Would-Be Prom Dates With Online Creativity.

Sweaty-palmed, tongue-tied teens take note: If you want to score a date to the prom, asking the simple question just might not cut it anymore.

Hallway conversations and handwritten notes might have worked for previous generations, but with prom season under way, high school students across the country are turning to YouTube to give an age-old rite of passage a new media moment of fame.

Read more ....

This Is Apple's Next iPhone

From Gizmodo:

You are looking at Apple's next iPhone. It was found lost in a bar in Redwood City, camouflaged to look like an iPhone 3GS. We got it. We disassembled it. It's the real thing, and here are all the details.

While Apple may tinker with the final packaging and design of the final phone, it's clear that the features in this lost-and-found next-generation iPhone are drastically new and drastically different from what came before. Here's the detailed list of our findings:

Read more ....

Water - Another Global 'Crisis'?

Sharper, more intense rains may reduce the water available to farmers

From The BBC:

If you look at the numbers, it is hard to see how many East African communities made it through the long drought of 2005 and 2006.

Among people who study human development, it is a widely-held view that each person needs about 20 litres of water each day for the basics - to drink, cook and wash sufficiently to avoid disease transmission.

Yet at the height of the East African drought, people were getting by on less than five litres a day - in some cases, less than one litre a day, enough for just three glasses of drinking water and nothing left over.

Read more ....

Behind The Air Force's Secret Robotic Space Plane

Behind The Air Force's Secret Robotic Space Plane -- Popular Mechanics

Move over NASA. The U.S. Air Force has spent decades on the concept: an unmanned space plane that can be used to spy, reposition satellites, possibly even bomb targets, then return to base. A successful launch next week could turn that vision into a reality.

When the engines of a 19-story Atlas V ignite in April at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, the liftoff will look like any other for the workhorse launch vehicle. After about 4 minutes, the engines will cut off and the rocket's first stage will fall away, freeing the second stage to boost the upper section of the rocket into low Earth orbit.

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My Comment: A lot of eyes are now focused on this program .... from NASA to foreign powers. After many years and mega-billions spent .... they better succeed.

A Mobile Touchscreen Projectable On Any Flat Surface

Light Blue Optics Light Touch Price not set; lightblueoptics.com Gregor Halenda

From Popular Science:

This tiny projector casts images that you can click and swipe.

When you go to a restaurant in the near future, you might order your food by poking at icons on your table -- they'll vanish when the plates arrive, and spilled drinks won't do them any harm. Light Blue Optics's pico projector is the first to turn any flat surface into a computer touchscreen. It beams a 10-inch display, which can show photos, videos, Web sites or apps running on its simple interface, and uses an infrared sensor to track your fingers' movements. Done browsing?

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Climatologists Ponder Earth's Missing Heat

From Science A Go-Go:

Astonishingly, climatologists can't account for roughly half of the heat that is believed to have built up on the Earth in recent years. "The heat will come back to haunt us sooner or later," lament National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) scientists in an article in the journal Science.

The scientists believe that satellite sensors, ocean floats, and other instruments used to measure energy are inadequate to track this "missing" heat, which may be building up in the deep oceans or elsewhere in the climate system. "The reprieve we've had from warming temperatures in the last few years will not continue. It is critical to track the build-up of energy in our climate system so we can understand what is happening and predict our future climate," said NCAR scientist Kevin Trenberth, the article's lead author.

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Good Prospects For Extraterrestrial Life? Rocky Planets 'Are Commonplace' In Our Galaxy

An artist's impression of a massive asteroid belt in orbit around a star. (Credit: NASA-JPL / Caltech / T. Pyle (SSC))

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Apr. 17, 2010) — An international team of astronomers have discovered compelling evidence that rocky planets are commonplace in our Galaxy. Leicester University scientist and lead researcher Dr Jay Farihi surveyed white dwarfs, the compact remnants of stars that were once like our Sun, and found that many show signs of contamination by heavier elements and possibly even water, improving the prospects for extraterrestrial life.

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Icelandic Volcano Creates Beautiful Sunsets

The sky was colored by ash from the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland in April. Apr. 15, 2010, Northeastern outskirts of Athens, Greece. Image © Anthony Ayiomamitis. Used with permission

From Live Science:

The plume of ash from Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull volcano, which is now inching across Europe's skies, is creating vivid red sunsets while thwarting airline travel plans. The phenomenon could last for days, and depending on how long the volcano continues to erupt, it could spread volcanic clouds all around the Northern Hemisphere, a scientist says.

The volcanic sunsets might even be glimpsed from the United States if the volcano keeps erupting, but chances for that are slim, experts say.

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Supercomputers Map Pathogens As They Emerge And Evolve

A screenshot from a Supramap study of avian influenza, with red lines representing the spread of drug-resistant strains and the white lines drug susceptible strains. Credit: Ohio Supercomputing Center

From Cosmos:

BRISBANE: Instead of simply focussing on human infections, infectious disease researchers can now track the complex interactions, movement and evolution of the pathogens themselves using supercomputers.

The researchers are using a new program called Supramap, which operates on the computing systems at Ohio State University and the Ohio Supercomputer Center.

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