Body's Response To Repetitive Laughter Is Similar To The Effect Of Repetitive Exercise, Study Finds

A new study looks at the effect that mirthful laughter and distress have on modulating the key hormones that control appetite. (Credit: iStockphoto/Wouter Van Caspel)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Apr. 26, 2010) — Laughter is a highly complex process. Joyous or mirthful laughter is considered a positive stress (eustress) that involves complicated brain activities leading to a positive effect on health. Norman Cousins first suggested the idea that humor and the associated laughter can benefit a person's health in the 1970s. His ground-breaking work, as a layperson diagnosed with an autoimmune disease, documented his use of laughter in treating himself -- with medical approval and oversight -- into remission. He published his personal research results in the New England Journal of Medicine and is considered one of the original architects of mind-body medicine.

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Oil Slick From Rig Collapse Seen From Space

The oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico that resulted from the explosion and collapse of an oil rig can be seen in this image from NASA's Aqua satellite. Credit: MODIS Rapid Response Team

From Live Science:

The oil slick that is expanding from the site of an oil rig collapse last week has been spotted from space by a NASA satellite.

An estimated 42,000 gallons of oil per day are leaking from an oil well in the Gulf of Mexico after an oil rig caught fire and then sank into the ocean waters last week.

The only oil evident in the water at first was that which had been on the rig itself at the time it exploded on April 20. Over the weekend, officials working on the oil spill discovered that water was also leaking from the pipe that led up to the rig from the well some 5,000 feet (1,524 meters) below on the seafloor.

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Out For The Count: Why Levels Of Sperm In Men Are Falling

Father of the man: researchers believe that a man's fertility as an adult may be largely laid down in the few months before and after his birth. JENNIFER JACQUEMART / REX FEATURES

From The Independent:

Levels of 'viable' sperm in human males are falling – and scientists believe they now understand the cause. Infertility can begin in the womb, says Steve Connor.

If scientists from Mars were to study the human male's reproductive system they would probably conclude that he is destined for rapid extinction. Compared to other mammals, humans produce relatively low numbers of viable sperm – sperm capable of making that long competitive swim to penetrate an unfertilised egg.

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Dinosaurs 'Killed Off By A Sudden Drop In Temperature And NOT By A Comet'

Evidence? This Jurassic ammonite discovered in Svalbard, Norway reveals the sudden drop in temperature which may have contributed to the extinction of the dinosaurs, scientists believe.

From The Daily Mail:

Dinosaurs were wiped off the face of the Earth by a sudden drop in temperature and not by a comet striking the planet, scientists claimed today.

Researchers studying fossils in Norway have discovered that the world's seas plummeted 9C from 13C to just 4C around 137million years ago.

They believe this was caused by a sudden change in the Atlantic Gulf Stream - a phenomenon many experts fear is about to happen again.

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The Secrets Of Intelligence Lie Within A Single Cell

Modelling the neuron as little more than a simple on/off switch is a big mistake (Image: Dan Webber)

From The New Scientist:

LATE at night on a sultry evening, I watch intently as the predator senses its prey, gathers itself, and strikes. It could be a polecat, or even a mantis - but in fact it's a microbe. The microscopic world of the single, living cell mirrors our own in so many ways: cells are essentially autonomous, sentient and ingenious. In the lives of single cells we can perceive the roots of our own intelligence.

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Police Seize Gizmodo's Computers In iPhone Probe

Gizmodo editor Jason Chen in a video embedded in his April 19 post titled "This is Apple's next iPhone." (Credit: Gizmodo.com/Screenshot by CNET)

From CNET:

Police have seized computers and servers belonging to an editor of Gizmodo in an investigation that appears to stem from the gadget blog's purchase of a lost Apple iPhone prototype.

Deputies from the San Mateo County Sheriff's office obtained a warrant on Friday and searched Jason Chen's Fremont, Calif., home later that evening, Gizmodo acknowledged on Monday.

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Field Guide: What's The Best Smartphone Operating System?

From Popular Mechanics:

Sure, a smartphone's specs matter—you'll want one with a fast processor, bright screen and decent camera. But the horsepower is wasted if the phone is difficult to use. When it comes to user experience, nothing is more important than a phone's operating system (OS). Here's what you need to know about the five top smartphone platforms.

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The Army Wants To Smell Your Fear

Smelling Threats from a Distance Using people's unique scents to identify them before they get too close to troops could save soldiers' lives.

The Army Wants Olfactory Sensors That Can Smell Potential Perps At A Distance -- Popular Science

If something doesn’t smell right, the Army wants to know about it. But while the Pentagon has been angling for a biosensors that can smell fear or nervousness in a person’s bodily emanations for some years now, the Army wants something more: The ability to “uniquely identify an individual based on scent” from a distance or even days after the person has left the scene.

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The “CSI Effect”

From The Economist:

Television dramas that rely on forensic science to solve crimes are affecting the administration of justice.

OPENING a new training centre in forensic science (pictured above) at the University of Glamorgan in South Wales recently, Bernard Knight, formerly one of Britain’s chief pathologists, said that because of television crime dramas, jurors today expect more categorical proof than forensic science is capable of delivering. And when it comes to the gulf between reality and fiction, Dr Knight knows what he is talking about: besides 43 years’ experience of attending crime scenes, he has also written dozens of crime novels.

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Is The U.S. Experiencing A Rocket Motor Shortage, And Will It Impact National Security?

U.S. Spy Satellite Program Could Be Undermined By Flagging Demand For Rocket Motors -- Lexington Institute

Amy Butler of Aviation Week & Space Technology reported last week that the super-secret National Reconnaissance Office will be launching new spy satellites over the next two years at the highest rate since the Reagan era. Butler quotes NRO director Bruce Carlson as stating that several "very large, very critical" spacecraft will be sent into orbit by his agency -- presumably systems that collect imagery of surface targets or eavesdrop on the radio-frequency transmissions of potential adversaries. Combined with impending launches of new military-communications and missile-warning satellites, news of the spy-satellite payloads will come as welcome news to the nation's endangered rocket-motor industry.

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Hat Tip: Defense Industry Daily

My Comment: Someone has taken the eye off the ball on this one.

Don’t Talk To Aliens, Warns Stephen Hawking

Hawking has depicted what kinds of alien could be out there

From Times Online:

THE aliens are out there and Earth had better watch out, at least according to Stephen Hawking. He has suggested that extraterrestrials are almost certain to exist — but that instead of seeking them out, humanity should be doing all it that can to avoid any contact.

The suggestions come in a new documentary series in which Hawking, one of the world’s leading scientists, will set out his latest thinking on some of the universe’s greatest mysteries.

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A Counter Argument That Our Obesity Epidemic Is Not A Threat To National Security

From Slate:

The obesity epidemic has nothing to do with national security.

"My name's Dewey Oxberger; my friends call me 'Ox'. You might've noticed I've got a slight weight problem," said John Candy to his fellow Army recruits in the 1981 film Stripes. "So I figured while I'm here, I'll lose a few pounds. I'm gonna walk out of here a lean, mean fightin' machine!"

In real life, the 6-foot-2, 300-pound Ox wouldn't have made it through the barracks door. The movie's release coincided with a new weight-control program in the U.S. military. Recruits were already screened for height and weight; now they'd be checked for body fat percentage, too. It's been 30 years since Stripes came out, and the rate of obesity among adults has doubled. A report out this week estimates that 27 percent of all Americans of recruitment age—that's 9 million young adults—are too fat to fight for their country. At a press conference Tuesday, Sen. Richard Lugar, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, and a group of retired generals and admirals warned that our poor diets and lack of exercise have now become a danger to homeland security.

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My Comment: I could not have said it any better.

Humans Cannot Multitask (Even Women)

The research showed that humans prefer a simple choice of two options,
rather than three or more. ALAMY

From The Independent:

Study finds the structure of the brain means we struggle to do more than two jobs at once.

The human mind may be inherently incapable of dealing with more than two tasks at a time according to a study showing that "multi-tasking" skills are limited by the physical division of the brain into two hemispheres.

Scientists have found that when people have to carry out two tasks simultaneously their brains divide each job up so that one is performed largely by the left side of the brain and the other is carried out mainly on the right.

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Energy Research Spending Seen As Chump Change

From Future Pundit:

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and former Dupont CEO Chad Holliday say we spend too little on energy R&D and energy is a big problem.

But our country is neglecting a field central to our national prospect and security: energy. Although the information technology and pharmaceutical industries spend 5 to 15 percent of their revenue on research and development each year, U.S. companies' spending on energy R&D has averaged only about one-quarter of 1 percent of revenue over the past 15 years.

And despite talk about the need for "21st-century" energy sources, federal spending on clean energy research -- less than $3 billion -- is also relatively small. Compare that with roughly $30 billion that the U.S. government annually spends on health research and $80 billion on defense research and development.

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Volcanic Eruption In Eyjafjallajökull And Fimmvörðuháls In Iceland 2010 (Pics from Flickr)

The Gallery of pictures is here.

Volcanic Ash Cloud: Stunning Northern Lights Images Captured Over Iceland

The Northern Lights are seen through a valley leading away from Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull volcano Photo: REUTERS

From The Telegraph:

A series of spectacular images of the Northern Lights have been captured over the ash plume from the Iceland Volcano.

The incredible images show in amazing detail the sky lit up in amazing green colour above the Eyjafjallajökull volcano.

In the images, captured by New York-based photographer Lucas Jackson, red lava can also be seen spewing from the top of the active volcano.

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Facebook Wants To Control The Web, Like It Or Not

From InfoWorld:

Facebook wants to dictate how you log in and share content across the Web. Should you let them? Cringely says nyet.

Mark Zuckerberg may look and sound like the irritatingly self-satisfied rich kid you always hated in high school, but I’ll say this for him: He’s got cojones the size of tractor tires.

Facebook just made a play to take over the entire Web -- or at least, the parts that get the most traffic -- via its new "social graph,” officially unveiled at this week’s F8 confab.

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Experimental Explanation Of Supercooling: Why Water Does Not Freeze In The Clouds

Droplet of a gold-silicon liquid alloy on a silicon (111) surface. Pentagonal clusters formed at the interface exhibit a denser structure compared to solid gold and prevent the liquid from crystallization at temperatures as low as 300 Kelvin below the solidification temperature. (Credit: Graphics by M. Collignon)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Apr. 23, 2010) — Supercooling, a state where liquids do not solidify even below their normal freezing point, still puzzles scientists today. A good example of this phenomenon is found everyday in meteorology: clouds in high altitude are an accumulation of supercooled droplets of water below their freezing point.

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Flying Car Could Transform Warfare

From Live Science:

The Defense Advanced Projects Agency (DARPA) has cleared the Transformer (TX) program for takeoff. If it flies, by 2015 U.S. soldiers will be able to ride into battle aboard a four-person flying car that can cruise in the air like an airplane, drive on the ground like an SUV, rove 250 miles on one tank of fuel and not require a runway to get airborne.

DARPA, the Department of Defense office that is tasked with exploring futuristic technologies that may have military applications, held an industry day workshop for companies earlier this year to solicit proposals for developing a prototype vehicle. Proposals are due May 27.

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Climate Scientist Sues Newspaper For 'Poisoning' Global Warming Debate

Andrew Weaver with the IPCC's 2007 report on which he was a lead author.
Photograph: Ray Smith.

From The Guardian:

Climate modeller Andrew Weaver launches libel action in Canada for publishing 'grossly irresponsible falsehoods'.

One of the world's leading climate scientists has launched a libel lawsuit against a Canadian newspaper for publishing articles that he says "poison" the debate on global warming.

In a case with potentially huge consequences for online publishers, lawyers acting for Andrew Weaver, a climate modeller at the University of Victoria, Canada, have demanded the National Post removes the articles not only from its own websites, but also from the numerous blogs and sites where they were reposted.

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IPad’s Rivals Are On The March

From Times Online:

As Apple prepares to unleash the iPad in Britain, its rivals are preparing their fightback, rushing to create and release their own tablet computers, devices already dubbed the “iPad killers”.

Moreover, the attack on the iPad is coming on several fronts. The mobile phone maker Nokia is believed to be planning a similar machine designed mainly to read electronic books. Microsoft is flirting with the idea of creating a tablet. Even Google could enter the fray with a slate of its own.

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Obama’s NASA Blueprint Is Challenged In Congress

From The New York Times:

WASHINGTON — President Obama may have hoped that a speech a week ago at the Kennedy Space Center would sway skeptics to his proposed space policy, but a Congressional hearing on Thursday gave little signs that the lines of contention have shifted yet.

Opponents like Richard C. Shelby, the Republican senator from Alabama where NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center has been leading the design of the Ares I rocket that the Obama administration would like to cancel, continued to denounce Mr. Obama’s plans. Those plans call for ending NASA’s current Constellation program that was to send astronauts back to the moon and turning to private companies for transportation into orbit.

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Maxed Out: How Long Can You Go Without Sleep?

Randy Gardner went without sleep for 11 days (Image: Don Cravens/Getty)

From New Scientist:

On 28 December 1963, Randy Gardner, a 17-year-old schoolboy in San Diego, California, got up at 6 am feeling wide awake and raring to go. He didn't go back to sleep again until the morning of 8 January 1964. That's 11 days without sleep.

Gardner's 264 hours remains the longest scientifically verified period without sleep, breaking the previous record of 260 hours. It was described in a 1965 paper by sleep researcher William Dement of the Stanford University School of Medicine in California, who stayed awake with Gardner for the final three days.

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SETI Releases Its Collected Data To The Public, Wants Open-Source Search For Whatever's Out There

The Allen Telescope Array Radio? What is this, the 1930s? Aliens, hit us back on Twitter. We're @Earth284. SETI, via MSNBC

From Popular Science:

Your chance to spot 50 years' worth of sneakily concealed aliens.

Over the past decade, those who wished to contribute to SETI's mission of locating life elsewhere in the universe could leave their computers on running a special screensaver and donate their unused computing power to the cause. Now, SETI director Jill Tarter is asking people around the globe to get more involved in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence by opening up SETI's servers to the public calling for a worldwide, open source contribution to the search.

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Mobile Phones, Cancer And Alzheimer's Disease: The Ultimate Study Is Launched

From The Telegraph:

The world's biggest study into whether mobile phones cause cancer and other diseases has been launched by British scientists.

More than 250,000 people in five different countries will take part in the research which is expected to last more than 30 years and cost millions of pounds.

Experts hope the investigation will help settle once and for all the ongoing debate about the safety of mobile phones.

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In Deep Sea, Waves With a Familiar Curl

From The New York Times:

Scientists exploring the deep sea have discovered a distinctive kind of breaking wave. The finding reveals the presence of a subtle new force that can stir the dark seabed, and it helps to explain some of the nuances of planetary recycling and the provision of food to abyssal life.

The discovery also illustrates the radical nature of the insights that lay behind the start of the scientific revolution some four centuries ago.

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Wow! Celebrate Hubble’s 20th With Best Space Image Ever

From Wired Science:

We were already dreading the day Hubble dies, but this mind-blowing new image released to celebrate the space telescope’s 20th anniversary makes us wish for eternal life for the famous satellite even more.

This new gem rivals what may be Hubble’s most famous image, a shot of the Pillars of Creation taken in 1995. The shot above is of a star-forming region in the Carina Nebula. The enormous pillar of gas and dust is 3 light-years tall. The seam in the middle is the result of new stars forming and emitting powerful gas jets that are ripping the pillar apart.

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Dream A Little Dream Of Recall

From Science News:

Nap-time reveries may show that sleeping brain is making memories.

People who have nap-time dreams about a task that they’ve just practiced get a big memory boost on the task upon awakening, Harvard researchers report.

Those who dream about anything else have no such enhanced recall, the team reports in a paper published online April 22 in Current Biology. Neither do those who stay awake, even if they think about the task.

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Several Different Species Of Killer Whales Likely

Killer whale. Scientists report finding strong genetic evidence supporting the theory there are several species of killer whales (Orcinus orca, also known as orcas) throughout the world's oceans. (Credit: iStockphoto/Evgeniya Lazareva)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Apr. 22, 2010) — In a report published April 22 in the journal Genome Research, scientists report finding strong genetic evidence supporting the theory there are several species of killer whales (Orcinus orca, also known as orcas) throughout the world's oceans.

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Toilet Paper Problem: Good Raw Material Being Wiped Out

From Live Science:

A shortage of high-quality paper for recycling could mean scratchy toilet tissue. To keep consumers happy and avoid any chafed rear ends, companies are now on a quest to find new paper supplies, according to an article in the current issue of Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN).

The problem: Consumers once could fill up large bins with their recycled newspapers, magazines and print paper. But as electronic communication surges, these sources of recycled paper are becoming scarce.

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Epicenter Mind Our Tech Business Beyond the iPad: Massive MultiTouch Displays Have Big Social Potential

Photo courtesy MultiTouch

From Epicenter:

Apple appears to have been right in betting that people would embrace a big version of the iPod Touch; the increased sense of intimacy with no keyboard or mouse chaperons is palpable. But even larger touchscreens, like the one the Finnish company MultiTouch let us play around with last week, can track each fingertip of a large group of people — a key distinction that enables a more social set of behaviors, because multiple people can use them at the same time.

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Modified Viruses 'Can Destroy Cancer Cells'

Cancer Research UK funded the study into gene therapy. Photograph: Graham Turner

From The Guardian:

Development could lead to treatments tailored to different diseases, say research groups.

Viruses can be modified to seek out and destroy cancer cells, scientists said today. Laboratory tests at Leeds University have shown how proteins can be added to a virus to enable it to recognise unique markers on the surface of tumours.

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Facebook Sets Up Google-War With Vast Expansion Through Open Graph

From Times Online:

Facebook has announced plans to spread its influence more widely across the internet by weaving its service into all websites.

Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive of the social networking site which has 400 million regular users worldwide, has set his sights on beating Google.

Mr Zuckerberg described how users would be guided around the web by their connections and interests rather than a search engine.

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Accidents Don’t Slow Gulf Of Mexico Drilling

From New York Times:

As the Coast Guard was trying to assess the potential environmental effect of the oil rig explosion near Louisiana, industry officials said Thursday that they did not expect drilling in the Gulf of Mexico’s deep waters to be curtailed.

“It’s a tragedy, but at the end of the day we are not going to stop doing things that need to be done,” said Larry Goldstein, a director of the Energy Policy Research Foundation. Eleven workers remained missing Thursday, and several others were injured seriously.

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Bright Future Projected For Hand-Held Games

Flex your skills (Image: Human Media Lab/Queens University)

From New Scientist:

Zi Ye and Hammad Khalid of the Human Media Lab at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, have devised a way of using a shoulder-mounted projector system to display - and play - a game on a bendy A4-sized sliver of plastic. Sensors in the screen allow gameplay to be controlled by bending, shaking or tapping it.

A prototype of the system, called Cobra, was shown last week at the Computer-Human Interaction meeting in Atlanta, Georgia. It runs games on a computer housed in a shoulder pouch, while the pouch's straps hold a small projector that shines images onto the flexible screen, held by the gamer.

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Fix Farsightedness By Sleeping In Your Contacts

Reshaping the Cornea with Contact Lenses Image courtesy of Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya

From Popular Science:

What if you could go to sleep with a vision problem and wake up with a crystal-clear view of the world? A Spanish optometrist not only says this is possible, but he actually wants you to sleep in your contacts. His patented contact lenses, designed to achieve the same effect of corneal reshaping surgery, can correct vision defects like myopia (nearsightedness) and stigmatism – and now hyperopia (farsightedness) – without taking sharp instruments or lasers to your eyes.

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Red Wine Bolsters Brain Against Strokes

From The Telegraph:

Red wine protects the brain from damage after a stroke, new research suggests.

Researchers discovered that a compound found in red grape skins and seeds lessens the effect of a blood clot on the brain and aids recovery.

It could be so effective that the substance, known as resveratrol, reduces the long-term brain damage by as much as 40 per cent.

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Millions Of Computers Shut Down As Faulty Anti-Virus Program Causes Havoc Around The Globe

Big freeze: A faulty software update from McAfee led to thousands of PCs repeatedly rebooting in offices, hospitals and schools around the world

From The Daily Mail:

Computers in companies, hospitals and schools around the world slowed down or froze after an antivirus program identified a normal Windows file as a threat.

While the problem has now been identified, IT technicians are today having to deal with extra workloads to ensure their systems are protected.

Antivirus vendor McAfee Inc confirmed that yesterday a software update had caused its antivirus program for corporate customers to target a harmless file, leading PCs to repeadedly reboot themselves.

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Researchers Create 'Sound Bullets': Highly Focused Acoustic Pulses Could Be Used As Sonic Scalpels And More

Researchers have built a nonlinear acoustic lens that produces highly focused, high-amplitude acoustic signals, drawing inspiration from "Newton's cradle" (shown above). (Credit: iStockphoto)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Apr. 21, 2010) — Taking inspiration from a popular executive toy ("Newton's cradle"), researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have built a device -- called a nonlinear acoustic lens -- that produces highly focused, high-amplitude acoustic signals dubbed "sound bullets."

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Eyjafjallajokull Volcano's Ash Cloud Explained

From Live Science:

The eruption of Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull volcano during April 2010 has been remarkable for the effects of its ash cloud. The ash cloud created phenomenal lightning displays, colored sunsets red across much of Europe, and forced flight cancellations for several days. Here's what's going on:

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CIA-Backed Group Investing In Lens Start-Up

Image: LensVector's tiny lens uses no moving parts. (Credit: LensVector)

From CNET:

LensVector, a Silicon Valley start-up working on new lens technology that rids mobile phones of moving parts, has secured new funding to tailor its products for a group with a particular interest in tiny cameras: the United States intelligence community.

Specifically, In-Q-Tel, the CIA-based organization that invests in technology companies, has funded the Mountain View, Calif.-based start-up, said LensVector Chief Executive Derek Proudian. In addition, LensVector also is being paid to develop specific products through the deal with IQT.

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Virtual Reality Makes Real-World Cash, Boosts Self-Esteem

From ABC News:

FarmVille, Wee World, Second Life Attract Millions of Users, But at What Cost to Society?

Last year, a man who goes by the moniker "Sal9000" married the love of his life in a ceremony that was streamed live online. The 27-year-old lives in Tokyo. His bride "Nene" lives inside a Nintendo DS handheld video game.

Sal9000 paid real money to marry a virtual woman, and he is not alone. Well, technically he's not.

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Diving Deep Into A Solar Prominence (SDO First Light)

April 21, 2010 -- What you're seeing here is the highest resolution photograph of the sun available to date, part of a brand new series of NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) observations. The SDO mission promises "10 times better clarity than a high-definition television," NASA says, and this first SDO image doesn't disappoint.

From Discovery News:

Taken from a series of movies of bubbling plasma erupting to the solar surface, this is a close-up shot of what's called an expanding solar prominence, seen in extreme ultraviolet light. We are basically looking deep into the throat of the fine structure of an eruption on our nearest star.

The light we are seeing in this observation is generated by plasma heated to around 50,000 Kelvin (twice as hot as a bolt of lightning). A solar prominence is a looped structure of hot plasma, wrapped in magnetic fields from the sun's "surface" (or the photosphere), projecting high into the solar atmosphere (the sun's corona). But this is only one of the many eyes of SDO; it is already revolutionizing our understanding of the sun.

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Maxed Out: How Cold Can You Get And Live?

Chill out, this won't hurt a bit (Image: Ty Milford / Getty)

From New Scientist:

Humans hate being cold, and for good reason: our long-limbed bodies are exquisitely adapted to lose heat, not to retain it. This makes perfect sense in the intense heat of the African savannah, where humans evolved. Without our technological adaptations to cold - clothing, heating, shelter - that's where we'd all still be living, says Mike Tipton of the University of Portsmouth, UK, who studies human thermoregulation.

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Skywatchers Set For Meteor Show

From The BBC:

Stargazers are preparing for a sky show as the annual Lyrids meteor shower gets underway on Wednesday.

The shower is named after the constellation Lyra, from which the meteors appear to originate.

The meteor shower peaks early on Thursday 22 April (GMT), when 10-20 meteors per hour are expected to be visible under favourable conditions.

Scientists say the best time to observe the meteor shower is during the dark hours before dawn.

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U.S. Treasury Jumps On 3-D Bandwagon, Unveils Redesigned Benjamins

New Benjamin A founding father gets a new look on the new $100 bill U.S. Treasury

From Popular Science:

Fun 3-D holograms give Mr. Ben Franklin a facelift for the new decade.

A running battle between the U.S. Treasury and the counterfeiting efforts of drug lords and North Korea just got even more high-tech, with 3-D interactivity. Now everyone can check the authenticity of their Benjamins, courtesy of color-changing and moving images of bells and numbers.

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Magnesium Power: White-Hot Energy

From The Economist:

New power sources could be made using magnesium.

STORING energy is one of the biggest obstacles to the widespread adoption of alternative sources of power. Batteries can be bulky and slow to charge. Hydrogen, which can be made electrolytically from water and used to power fuel cells, is difficult to handle. But there may be an alternative: magnesium. As school chemistry lessons show, metallic magnesium is highly reactive and stores a lot of energy. Even a small amount of magnesium ribbon burns in a flame with a satisfying white heat. Researchers are now devising ways to extract energy from magnesium in a more controlled fashion.

Read more ....

We May All Be A Little Bit Neanderthal As Study Finds Species Interbred Twice With Humans

A new study suggests that most of us have some Neanderthal genes in our DNA. Scientists believe our ancestors may have bred twice with the extinct species

From The Daily Mail:

It won't come as a surprise to anyone wandering around Britain's city centres late on a Friday night. But scientists have discovered that most people have a little bit of Neanderthal man in them.

A major DNA study suggests that our ancestors interbred with the Neanderthals at least twice tens of thousands of years ago - and that their genes have been carried down the millennia ever since.

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Embracing Silence In A Noisy World -- A Book Review

From New York Times:

What is silence? I am profoundly deaf in my left ear (I have a cochlear implant). The ear is useless for hearing, though it makes a pleasant decorative ornament and serves as a place to display earrings and anchor glasses; no sound can penetrate it. You would think that profound deafness is as silent as it gets. And yet it is not quiet in there. I hear deep space sounds, a hollow hum that washes in and fades away, changes in pitch and volume.

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Smell Your Way to a Longer Life? Odors That Represent Food or Indicate Danger Can Alter An Animal's Lifespan

New research reveals that specific odors that represent food or indicate danger are capable of altering an animal's lifespan and physiological profile by activating a small number of highly specialized sensory neurons. (Credit: iStockphoto/Jodi Jacobson)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Apr. 20, 2010) — What does the smell of a good meal mean to you? It may mean more than you think. Specific odors that represent food or indicate danger are capable of altering an animal's lifespan and physiological profile by activating a small number of highly specialized sensory neurons, researchers at the University of Michigan, University of Houston, and Baylor College of Medicine have shown in a study in the online, open-access journal PLoS Biology.

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Naps And Dreams Boost Learning, Study Finds

From Live Science:

Scientists have long wondered why we sleep and why we dream. A new study provides evidence for some long-held notions that sleep and dreams boost learning and help us to make sense of the real world. Even naps can help, the researchers found.

Test subjects who dreamt about a challenging task performed it better than those who didn't have such dreams.

Read more ....

Second, More Powerful Icelandic Volcano Likely To Explode Soon

Lava spews from a volcano as it erupts this week near Eyjafjallajokull, whose explosion last week caused the major airspace shutdown. REUTERS

From The Independent:

Despite grounding 100,000 flights across Europe, battering a beleaguered airline industry, stranding hundreds of thousands of travellers, disrupting schools and businesses, and giving homes under flight paths their first peace and quiet in decades, the current volcano eruption may be only a teaser of chaos to come.

Read more ....

What Facebook's Latest Means For The Web

From CNET News:

SAN FRANCISCO--It can't be explained as succinctly as "a widget platform" or "a universal log-in," but Facebook's panoply of announcements on Wednesday at the company's F8 developers conference reveal some of the social network's most audacious moves yet.

Facebook has now built deeper, stronger pipes that will pull in more information from partner sites and push more social-media capabilities out to them in turn--Open Graph, which integrates third-party data into Facebook in a far more complex way than its Facebook Connect predecessor; Social Plugins, which add a smattering of social features to those publishers; and the revamped Graph API, which overhauls Facebook's platform code to make it simpler and more flexible.

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The Air Force 'Baby Space Shuttle,' Secret And Reusable

From ABC News:

The Air Force’s “baby space shuttle” is ready for launch Thursday night from a launch pad at Cape Canaveral. The X-37B looks like a smaller version of the shuttle, and will be America’s second re-usable spacecraft, except it’ll be run by the military and be piloted by remote control. The 29 foot-long craft is designed to stay in orbit as long as 270 days (9 months) and it carries a secret payload of experiments.

"Secret" is the operative word. The Air Force isn’t saying how long it will be in orbit beyond saying that it won’t be a quick up-and-down test. It won’t describe what experiments will be aboard. They’re also touchy about media descriptions that it’s going to usher in the weaponization of space.

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