Marine Life Census Charts Vast Undersea World

This new copepod, Ceratonotus steiningeri, was first discovered 5,400 metres deep in the Angola Basin in 2006. It was also collected in the southeastern Atlantic, as well as some 13,000 kilometres away in the central Pacific Ocean. Scientists are puzzled about how it achieved such widespread distribution and avoided detection for so long. Credit: Jan Michels

From Cosmos:

LONDON: Results of the first ever global marine life census have been unveiled, revealing a startling overview after a decade-long trawl through the murky depths.

The Census of Marine Life estimated there are more than one million species in the oceans, with at least three-quarters of them yet to be discovered.

The US $650-million international study discovered more than 6,000 potentially new species, and found some species considered rare were actually common.

Read more ....

What Makes Us Age? Ticking of Cellular Clock Promotes Seismic Changes in Chromatin Landscape Associated With Aging

Each time a cell divides, the protective "caps" at the tip of chromosomes (red and green dots) erode a little bit further. As telomeres wear down, their DNA undergoes massive changes in the way it is packaged. These changes likely trigger what we call "aging." (Credit: Image: Courtesy of Dr. Jan Karlseder, Salk Institute for Biological Studies)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Oct. 4, 2010) — Like cats, human cells have a finite number of lives: once they divide a certain number of times (thankfully, more than nine) they change shape, slow their pace, and eventually stop dividing -- a phenomenon called "cellular senescence."

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UFO Forces Closure of Chinese Airport

From Live Science:

They're baaaaaack! A Chinese airport reportedly had to divert passenger jets to prevent them from colliding with a UFO earlier this month.

The airport in Baotou, Inner Mongolia kept three flights from Shangai and Beijing circling overhead and shut down for an hour on Sept. 11 until the mysterious bright lights had vanished.

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Strong Magnets With Printed Poles Have Endless Engineering Applications

From Popular Mechanics:

The Brilliant Idea: Magnets printed with multiple poles, opening the door to myriad applications.

Larry Fullerton set out to invent a self-assembling magnetic toy that would fuel his grandchildren’s passion for science. Instead, he invented a way to manipulate magnetic fields that redefines one of the fundamental forces of nature.

Fullerton’s breakthrough tramples the long-held assumption that magnets have two opposing poles, one on each side. He found that if he used heat to erase a magnetic field, he could then reprogram material to have multiple north and south poles of differing strengths. “People look at magnets as having a north pole and a south pole. That limits your thinking,” he says. “I came along from the field of radar and said, ‘Hey, that’s not a magnet—it’s a vector field!’”

Read more ....

Micro-Engraved Lenses Give Perfect Vision To Both Near- And Far-Sighted Eyes

Bifocals (Old.) Frank C. Müller

From Popular Science:

Near-sighted? Far-sighted? Middle-sighted? It doesn't matter--this "scratched" lens has you covered.

An inability to see both near and faraway objects isn't uncommon, but the classic solution--bifocals--is hardly cutting-edge. I mean, thanks, Ben Franklin, but how about something more modern? A new type of engraved lens, invented by an Israeli researcher, allows the eye to see perfectly whether the object is nearby or in the distance, without adjusting perspective. No matter your vision, these lenses claim to provide perfect clarity.

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Wind Farms Can Affect Local Weather Patterns

One of the solutions would be changing the rotor design

From The BBC:

Wind farms, especially big ones, generate turbulence that can significantly alter air temperatures near the ground, say researchers.

As turbines often stand on agricultural land, these changes could in turn affect crop productivity.

In the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the team says the impact could be reduced by changing rotor design.

Another option would be to site farms in areas with high natural turbulence.

Read more ....

See The Future With A Search

Image: Eye candy: This visualization shows the connections between different places, companies, and people, following a search using Recorded Future. Credit: Recorded Future

From Technology Review:

A Web startup demos a "predictive" search engine.

A startup called Recorded Future has developed a tool that scrapes real-time data from the Internet to find hints of what will happen in the future. The company's search tool spits out results on a timeline that stretches into the future as well as the past.

The 18-month-old company gained attention earlier this year after receiving money from the venture capital arms of both Google and the CIA. Now the company has offered a glimpse of how its technology works.

Read more ....

Eyes-On, Glasses Off, With Toshiba's Glasses-Less 3D TV

From CNN:

(CNET) -- Ceatec doesn't officially start until tomorrow, but Toshiba is already getting the lion's share of the buzz here on the show floor, with its Glasses-less 3D TV.

The device was announced last night, and people flocked to the demonstration in a dark makeshift theater today, where the wait was nearly an hour early this morning. The reason? Because finally, mercifully, a TV maker has come up with a way to watch 3D at home without those ridiculous plastic glasses.

Read more ....

British University Scientists Win Nobel Prize For Physics For Discovery Of Atom-Thick Carbon Layer 200 Times Stronger Than Steel

The Swedish academy of sciences in Stockholm announces the winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics today

From The Daily Mail:

* Graphene could lead to new super-fast electronics
* Bonds between carbon atoms are the strongest in nature
* Scientist: I'll just muddle on as before after win

Two British-based scientists have shared the Nobel Prize for physics for their discovery of a new material that is only an atom thick and which could change the future of electronics.

Russian-born Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, both from Manchester University, today won the prize for their 'groundbreaking experiments' with graphene - a microscopic flake of carbon.

Read more ....

Stuxnet: Fact Vs. Theory

From CNET:

The Stuxnet worm has taken the computer security world by storm, inspiring talk of a top secret, government-sponsored cyberwar, and of a software program laden with obscure biblical references that call to mind not computer code, but "The Da Vinci Code."

Stuxnet, which first made headlines in July, (CNET FAQ here) is believed to be the first known malware that targets the controls at industrial facilities such as power plants. At the time of its discovery, the assumption was that espionage lay behind the effort, but subsequent analysis by Symantec uncovered the ability of the malware to control plant operations outright, as CNET first reported back in mid-August.

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The Language That Lovers Share Is A 'Window' Into The State Of Their Relationship

From The Telegraph:

Couples develop their own language of love that ebbs and flows depending on the state of their relationship, scientists believe.

Those deeply in love speak and write alike, mimicking and repeating words and phrases that each other use.

But if the relationship sours then the common language breaks down and they begin to sound more like strangers again.

Read more ....

Dinosaurs Significantly Taller Than Previously Thought, Research Suggests

Photo: Dinosaur bones have rounded ends with rough surfaces that mark where blood vessels fed large amounts of cartilage in the joint. The cartilage could have added 10 percent or more to the height of a dinosaur. (Credit: Casey Holliday/University of Missouri)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Oct. 1, 2010) — It might seem obvious that a dinosaur's leg bone connects to the hip bone, but what came between the bones has been less obvious. Now, researchers at the University of Missouri and Ohio University have found that dinosaurs had thick layers of cartilage in their joints, which means they may have been considerably taller than previously thought. The study is being published this week in the journal PLoS ONE (Public Library of Science).

Read more ....

Bedbugs Q&A: Everything You Need To Know (And More)

Louis Sorkin, an entomologist at the American Museum of Natural History, observes bedbugs he keeps in jars and feeds with his own blood. Courtesy of AMNH/LSorkin.

From Live Science:

After decades of apparent absence, bedbugs are back with a vengeance. The bugs have returned to U.S. cities, infesting hotels, schools, apartments, homes, stores and offices. The tiny bloodsuckers are known to leave red, itchy marks on their victims, as well as a social stigma.

But where did bedbugs come from, what harm do they really cause, and why the sudden resurgence?

Read more ....

Instant Expert: Rebuilding Human Minds

Memory Lost, Memory Gained koppillustration.com

From Popular Science:

Scientists hope to strengthen aging brains by tweaking the behavior of DNA.

Age-related memory loss—the kind where you remember friends from decades ago but can’t remember your grandchildren—is largely a mystery, but a class of com-pounds used to treat cancer has given neuroscientists clues to its molecular underpinnings. Scientists also suspect that the compounds responsible for this insight, called histone deacetylase inhibitors, could significantly slow memory loss—perhaps for years. (Two drugs used now to treat memory loss and Alzheimer’s disease work only for a short time.)

Read more ....

Is This Apple Ap Going To Help Terrorists?

Threat: Security experts have slammed a £2 phone app which gives specific details about in-flight aircraft

Phone App That Tracks Planes 'Is Aid To Terrorists Armed With Missiles' - -The Daily Mail

A mobile phone application costing less than £2 which tracks the precise location of passenger aircraft in the sky is a serious terrorist threat and should be banned, according to a security expert.

The Plane Finder AR app for the Apple iPhone and Google’s Android allows users to point their phone at the sky and see the position, height and speed of nearby aircraft. It also shows the airline, flight number, departure point, destination and even the likely course.

Read more ....

My Comment: Yup .... we found the enemy and it is us.

The Slippery Slope To Obesity

Not a good start (Image: Wade/Getty)

From New Scientist:

REWARD pathways in the brains of overweight people become less responsive as they gain weight. This causes them to eat more to get the same pleasure from their food, which in turn reduces the reward response still further.

Eric Stice, a psychologist at the University of Texas at Austin, and colleagues used fMRI brain scans to monitor 26 obese or overweight volunteers as they sipped either a tasty milkshake or a flavourless liquid resembling saliva. They compared the effect of both drinks on brain activity in the dorsal striatum, a key part of the brain's reward circuitry. Six months later, they retested the volunteers.

Read more ....

Oldest High-Altitude Settlements Discovered

The Ivane Valley in Papua New Guinea appears covered in mist in this photo. Click to enlarge this image. Glenn Summerhayes and Andrew Fairbairn

From Discovery News:

The remains of fires, stone tools and food surface at six campsites dating back up to 49,000 years.

The world's oldest known high-altitude human settlements, dating back up to 49,000 years, have been found sealed in volcanic ash in Papua New Guinea mountains, archaeologists said Friday.

Researchers have unearthed the remains of about six camps, including fragments of stone tools and food, in an area near the town of Kokoda, said an archaeologist on the team, Andrew Fairbairn.

Read more ....

Dolphin Species Attempt 'Common Language'

A Guyana dolphin leaps to escape the attention of a bottlenose dolphin

From The BBC:

When two dolphin species come together, they attempt to find a common language, preliminary research suggests.

Bottlenose and Guyana dolphins, two distantly related species, often come together to socialise in waters off the coast of Costa Rica.

Both species make unique sounds, but when they gather, they change the way they communicate, and begin using an intermediate language.

That raises the possibility the two species are communicating in some way.

Read more ....

Video: Robots Now Guarding Nevada Nuke Site

From The Danger Room:

Citizens of Nevada, you can now relax. The Nevada National Security Site, home to tens of millions of cubic feet of low-level radioactive waste — and location of over a thousand Cold War nuclear weapons tests — is now being guarded by robots. The first of a planned trio of Mobile Detection Assessment Response Systems, or MDARS, is currently patrolling some of the more remote sections of the 1,360 square mile facility.

Read more ....

My Comment: The Terminator movies do not seem like science fiction anymore.

Study Identifies More Than A Million Ocean Species

Photograph: British Antarctic Survey

From The Guardian:

The Census of Marine Life is finally complete after a decade of work by 2,700 scientists from 80 countries.

It is the culmination of a decade of work by 2,700 scientists from 80 countries, who went on more than 540 expeditions into the farthest reaches of the most mysterious realm on the planet – the world's oceans.

Today, the US$650m Census of Marine Life (COML) project announced the culmination of its work, concluding that the deep is home to more than a million species – of which less than a quarter are described in the scientific literature.

Read more ....

Mission To Search For Alien Life In Outer Atmosphere

Photo: REUTERS

From The Telegraph:

Life from outer space could be surviving on the outer fringes of the Earth's atmosphere, according to scientists who are to launch a mission to search for bacteria that could be living there.

In science fiction films the search for aliens involves travelling across the galaxy to planets millions of miles away.

But scientists believe they could be close to discovering alien life forms much closer to home – on the outer fringes of Earth's atmosphere.

Read more ....

Geology: A Trip To Dinosaur Time

From Nature News:

A project to drill a 10-kilometre-deep hole in China will provide the best view yet of the turbulent Cretaceous period. Jane Qiu reports.

The rock columns on the table are not much to look at. More than a metre long, 10 centimetres in diameter and mostly made up of oil shale and sandstone, they are a dull greyish green. But these, says Wang Chengshan, a geologist at the China University of Geosciences in Beijing, "are not ordinary rocks".

Read more ....

No Evidence for Clovis Comet Catastrophe, Archaeologists Say

These are Clovis Points. (Credit: David Meltzer)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Oct. 1, 2010) — New research challenges the controversial theory that an ancient comet impact devastated the Clovis people, one of the earliest known cultures to inhabit North America.

Writing in the October issue of Current Anthropology, archaeologists Vance Holliday (University of Arizona) and David Meltzer (Southern Methodist University) argue that there is nothing in the archaeological record to suggest an abrupt collapse of Clovis populations.

Read more ....

Americans' Sex Lives Exposed by New Survey

From Live Science:

Americans, on average, use a condom one in four times when they have vaginal sex, according to a recent survey that also finds men think women are having orgasms more than they are.

This new sex survey shows that condom use has increased among some groups, but promoting condom use – which prevents the spread of sexual transmitted diseases like AIDS – should remain a health priority, according to Michael Reece, the director of the Center for Sexual Health Promotion at Indiana University, which conducted the survey.

Read more ....

Google Street View Captures Dead Bodies--Real Ones

Google Street View cars being readied for action in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
(Credit: CC Racum/Flickr)

From CNET News:

Whenever Google sends its Street View cameras to a new country, there is always more revealed than was anticipated.

And so is the case with the launch of Google Street View in Brazil.

Just a day after the service launched, up popped a couple of corpses. One, on the Avenida Presidente Vargas in Rio, the other in Belo Horizonte.

Read more ....

This Year's Ig Nobel Prize: Fruit Bat Fellatio, Whale Snot, And More Weird Science

From Popular Science:

The Ig Nobel Prize studies are not a joke, but that's not to say you won't laugh.

If the MacArthur "Genius" Grants announced earlier this week were too staid for you, the Ig Nobel Prize (now in its 20th year--here's last year's coverage) might be the scientific awards presentation for you. The Ig Nobels aren't a joke; every winning study has a legitimate scientific purpose and execution, making real discoveries and solving real problems. But they're also all chosen for their ability to "make you laugh and then make you think." This year's winners include remote-controlled whale snot retrieval, the benefits of roller coaster riding on asthma sufferers, and our own personal favorite which you may remember: transit planning by slime mold

Read more ....

The E-Type For The 21st Century: 205mph Electric Hybrid Supercar From Jaguar That Costs £200,000

Click on Image to Enlarge

From The Daily Mail:

A sexy new 205mph Jaguar supercar that blends sporting looks and performance with the latest ‘green’ technology is set to rock the prestigious Paris Motor Show when it is officially unveiled today.

The new two-seater Jaguar C-X75 is a £200,000 electric hybrid vehicle uses hi-tech jet-turbine know-how from the aviation industry to sprint from rest to 62 mph in just 3.5 seconds and up to 100mph in just 5.5 seconds.

Read more ....

Gravity Genius: How I Will Spend Half A Million Bucks

Genius at work, really (Image: Darren McCollester/MacArthur Foundation)

From New Scientist:

Among this year's 23 recipients of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation's "genius award", who have won $500,000 each, no strings attached, is Nergis Mavalvala, a quantum physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a collaborator on the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory.

Read more ....

The Awesome Power Of Galaxy Cluster Mergers

From Discovery News:

The scales are mind-boggling and the physics is cutting edge, so how do you go about simulating the collision of two galactic clusters? Using some of the most powerful computers in the world, researchers at Argonne National Laboratory, the Flash Center at the University of Chicago and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics have done just that.

Read more ....

British IVF Pioneer Robert Edwards Wins Nobel Prize

Photo: Robert Edwards with the first "test tube baby" Louise Brown and her own child

From The BBC:

British scientist Robert Edwards, the man who devised the fertility treatment IVF, has been awarded this year's Nobel prize for medicine.

His efforts in the 1950s, 60s and 70s led to the birth of the world's first "test tube baby" in July 1978.

Since then nearly four million babies have been born following IVF.

The prize committee said his achievements had made it possible to treat infertility, a medical condition affecting 10% of all couples worldwide.

Read more ....

Giddy-Up: Half A Century Of Cyborgs

From Discover Magazine:

To celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the word “cyborg,” Tim Maly of Quiet Babylon is running a 50-post tumblr of quotations and articles about, well, cyborgs. The first post gives us the space-oriented (and rather wordy) origin of the term:

For the exogenously extended organizational complex functioning as an integrated homeostatic system unconsciously, we propose the term “cyborg”.

- Manfred E. Clynes and Nathan S. Kline Cyborgs and Space (ASTRONAUTICS, Issue 13 September, 1960)

Read more ....

The Robotic Otter: Underwater Robot That Swims With Flippers And Can Be Controlled With A Tablet Computer

The AQUA robot uses flippers to move and now will no longer need to be tethered

From The Daily Mail:

Scientists have developed a remote-controlled robot that can receive and carry out commands while underwater.

AQUA is small and nimble, with flippers rather than propellers, and is designed for intricate data collection from shipwrecks and reefs.

The robot, designed by a team of universities from Canada, can be controlled wirelessly using a waterproof tablet computer.

Read more ....

Best Of The Ig Nobel Prizes 2010

From New Scientist:

Are the Ig Nobels losing their edge? The venue for this year's ceremony honouring science that "makes you laugh, then makes you think" was Harvard's Sanders Theater – a splendidly sober Victorian building that's housed many dignified graduations and historic lectures. The capacity audience was permitted to throw paper airplanes only during two designated intervals, rather than whenever the fancy took them. And the first cash prizes in the awards' 20-year history raised the ugly suspicion that the Ig Nobels will become yet another awards ceremony that's all about money.

Read more ....

Finding E.T. May Become Harder If Aliens Go Digital

From Space.com:

Scientists may have an extra challenge when it comes to detecting alien civilizations: a time limit.

A new study suggests that intelligent aliens, if their technological progression is similar to that of humanity's, are likely to have moved away from noisy radio transmissions to harder-to-hear digital signals within a 100-year time frame. That offers Earth just a narrow window in which to pick up any signals from extraterrestrial civilizations.

Read more ....

First Beer Brewed For Drinking in Space Will Undergo Testing in Low-Gravity Pub

Sending Beer Into Space Original images by epicbeer and nashpreds99 on Flickr

From Popular Science:

With the announcement that Boeing plans to take tourists into space in five years, it was really only a matter of time before somebody started thinking about refreshments. Because where would space tourism be without space beer? Luckily, Astronauts4Hire, a non-profit space research corporation, has the situation in hand. They are about to test an Australian beer that's brewed and bottled especially for consumption in microgravity.

Read more ....

Jaguar's C-X75 Concept: A 205MPH Electric Supercar

Jaguar C-X75 Jalopnik

From Popular Science:

Happy 75th birthday to British automaker Jaguar! As a birthday present, they've actually given us something new to drool over: A 780 hp mostly-electric supercar capable of hitting 250 mph with a whopping 500-mile range, all wrapped in a body inspired by the 1966 XJ13, the car the chief designer calls "possibly the most beautiful Jaguar ever made."

Read more ....

Splitting The Check As Easy As 'Bumping' Phones

Paypal app lets you transfer money with a cell phone 'bump'.
(Courtesy ACCESS COMMUNICATIONS)

From The ABC News:

PayPal's New App Lets Customers Transfer Money by Touching iPhones Together.

It's the one major drawback of a group dinner out: The check arrives, and everyone struggles to pay in a chaotic clash of cards, cash and IOUs.

But the newest version of an iPhone app from PayPal attempts to take the pain out of splitting the bill.

Read more ....

Dinosaurs Were Taller Than Thought

From Live Science:

As if dinosaurs weren't already giant to begin with, new research indicates they were even taller than was thought.

Although researchers had a good idea how tall dinosaurs stood based on their skeletons, it turns out that parts of their bodies that didn't fossilize might have boosted their height by at least 10 percent.

Read more ....

The Edge Of The Solar System Is A Weird And Erratic Place

From Discover Magazine:

The edge of the solar system is not some static line on a map. The boundary between the heliosphere in which we live and the vastness of interstellar space beyond is in flux, stretching and shifting more rapidly than astronomers ever knew, according to David McComas.

Read more ....

Ancient Streetview: Now Google Can Take You To The Historic Pavements Of Pompeii And Stonehenge

Internet users can look at Pompeii's ancient streets from the comfort of their own homes

From The Daily Mail:

They are some of the most spectacular and unique places on the planet.

Now Google has taken tourism to the next level by allowing people from around the world to see monuments like Stonehenge, the streets of Pompeii and the remote landscapes of Antarctica from the comfort of their own living room.

But instead of the usual Google Streetview cars which have become a familiar sight on British streets, the new snaps were taken using a special Google tricycle.

Read more ....

Social Sensitivity Trumps IQ In Group Intelligence

Greater than the sum of its parts (Image: WestEnd61/Rex Features)

From New Scientist:

If you're a headhunter looking for someone to work in a group, you might want to stop chasing down the most intelligent candidates. Group intelligence depends less on how smart individuals are and more on their social sensitivity, ability to take turns speaking, and the number of women in the group.

So says Anita Woolley from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and colleagues, having measured group intelligence and the influences that individuals have on it.

Read more ....

Darpa's Self-Aiming "One Shot" Sniper Rifle Scheduled For Next Year

Snipers An Army sniper team in Afghanistan. Wikimedia Commons/U.S. Army

From Popular Science:

A sniper crouches near an open window and zooms in on his target, who sits a half-mile away. He peers through a scope and holds his breath, preparing to squeeze the trigger. But it’s windy outside, and he can't afford a miss. What to do?

A new DARPA-funded electro-optical system will calculate the ballistics for him, telling him where to aim and ensuring a perfect shot, no matter the weather conditions.

Read more ....

My Comment: One shot, one kill .... regardless of the weather. Now we are talking about the ultimate sniper weapon .... and one that (unfortunately) will end up being used against us.

At The Paris Auto Show, Supercars And Stylish Concepts

Kia Pop Concept Jon Alain Guzik

From Popular Science:

In 1898 the world's first auto show was held in Paris at the Tuilleries Gardens. Only a few vehicles were on display, and people were so skeptical of this new mode of transportation -- Le Car -- that exhibitors had to drive their automobiles from Versailles to Paris to prove their validity.

Read more ....

Photo: The latest launch, to test key technologies and gather data, is China's second lunar mission

From The BBC:

A Chinese rocket carrying a probe destined for the Moon has blasted into space.

A Long March 3C rocket with the Chang'e-2 probe took off from Xichang launch centre at about 1100 GMT.

The rocket will shoot the craft into the trans-lunar orbit, after which the satellite is expected to reach the Moon in about five days.

Chang'e-2 will be used to test key technologies and collect data for future landings.

Read more ....

The Flintstones Turns 50: The Five Dumbest Moments

From The Christian Science Monitor:

The Flintstones is a classic. Fifty years after the show first aired, Fred, Wilma, and the gang are still popular enough to gain a seat atop Google's homepage. But their place in the cartoon pantheon doesn't mean that they're infallible. The Flintstones did some pretty stupid things in their day. Here are five of the dumbest. Click through to read them all.

- Chris Gaylord

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Faces Of Facebook: Who's Who In 'The Social Network'?

From ABC News:

Hollywood Film About Mark Zuckerberg and Friends Opens Nationally Today.

Mark Zuckerberg may the biggest face attached to Facebook, but he's not the only one. "The Social Network," the controversial story about the world's most powerful social network, has a colorful cast of characters -- on screen and off.

Read more ....

It's The End Of The World: 8 Potential Armageddons

From FOX News:

Oil plumes threaten to choke the oceans and methane gas explosions shoot sky high -- and those are hardly the biggest threats facing the Earth. From cosmic rays to asteroid impacts to the threat of general destruction, our planet may be less safe than you think.

Here are the top eight risks to life as we know it, detailed by scientists and science fiction writers -- and whether it's even possible to save ourselves.

Read more ....

Surprise: Solar System "Force Field" Shrinks Fast

Shown in a Hubble Space Telescope image, the "astrosphere" around the star L.L. Orionis approximates the heliosphere around our solar system. Image courtesy ESA/NASA

From The National Geographic:

NASA craft reveals unexpected unpredictability of our protective bubble.

It's cold, dusty, and bereft of planets, but the outskirts of our solar system are anything but dull, according to increasing evidence from NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) craft.

As charged particles flow out from the sun, they eventually bump up against interstellar medium—the relatively empty areas between stars. These interactions "inflate" a protective bubble that shields Earth and the entire solar system from potentially harmful cosmic rays (solar system pictures).

Read more ....

NASA's Future Looks Bleak Amid Policy Shift

From The L.A. Times:

The demise of the Constellation moon rocket means 7,000 job losses in a year. Funding for a heavy-lift rocket for asteroid missions will be comparably less than that for the moon rocket.

Reporting from Washington — A new law passed by Congress this week finally gives NASA some badly needed direction, but the future of the space agency remains bleak — at least in the near term.

Read more ....

Reports From The Hive, Where The Swarm Concurs

The author, on Appledore Island, watching a swarm launch into flight from the vertical board that he uses as a swarm mount. The two feeder bottles on the mount provide sugar syrup to keep the swarm well fed. From the book “Honeybee Democracy” by Thomas D. Seeley

From The New York Times:

What can we learn from the bees? Honeybees practice a kind of consensus democracy similar to what happens at a New England town meeting, says Thomas D. Seeley, author of “Honeybee Democracy.” A group comes to a decision through a consideration of options and a process of elimination.

Read more ....

Ray Kurzweil’s Blio E-Book Launch Met With Confusion, Controversy

From Gadget Lab:

This week, K-NFB, an e-reading company founded by Ray Kurzweil and the National Federation for the Blind, launched its much-anticipated Blio reading app and e-book store. Blio was immediately and widely panned by publishers, developers and readers.

“Many of the failures are fundamentally at odds with the one thing that Kurzweil was touting above all else: accessibility,” wrote Laura Dawson, a digital reading industry consultant, formerly of BarnesAndNoble.com. K-NFB initially promised to make e-books more accessible to blind readers; yet Windows, currently its only enhanced books platform, has known text-to-speech conversion issues.

Read more ....

Scribd Facebook Instant Personalization Is A Privacy Nightmare

From Epicenter:

Online document sharing site Scribd hooked up with Facebook to create “instant personalization” so Scribd users can get reading recommendations based on their Facebook likes and what their friends are sharing. Sounds interesting, right?

But the document sharing and embedding service has created a privacy nightmare that involves drafting users who are already logged into Facebook without offering a clear opt out process either on the site or through e-mail.

Read more ....

How To Cyber Attack A Nuclear Plant

Photo: Going nuclear: The Stuxnet computer worm may have designed to infiltrate an Iranian nuclear facility in Natanz, 180 miles south of Tehran. Credit: Getty Images

A Way To Attack Nuclear Plants -- Technology Review

Industrial computer systems are typically far less secure than they should be, experts say.

For the last few months, a sophisticated computer worm has wriggled its way between some of the most critical control systems in the world.

The timing of the worm's release, combined with several clues buried in its code, has led some experts to speculate that the worm, dubbed Stuxnet, was originally designed to sabotage an Iranian nuclear facility, possibly the enrichment plant in Natanz, roughly 180 miles south of Tehran. This week, officials in Iran confirmed that Stuxnet had been found on systems inside the plant, although they denied that it had caused any harm.

Read more ....

The Supernova's Secrets Cracked At Last?

Hank Childs / Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

From Time Magazine:

Most stars end their lives in a whimper — our own sun will almost certainly be one of them — but the most massive stars go out with an impressive bang. When that happens, creating what's known as a Type II supernova, the associated blast of energy is so brilliant that it can briefly outshine an entire galaxy, give birth to ultra-dense neutron stars or black holes, and forge atoms so heavy that even the Big Bang wasn't powerful enough to create them. If supernovas didn't exist, neither would gold, silver, platinum or uranium. The last time a supernova went off close enough to earth to be visible without a telescope, back in 1987, it made the cover of TIME.

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Budget Deal Propels NASA On New Path

From Wall Street Journal:

House's Passage of $58 Billion Compromise Bill Funds Commercial Space Travel, More Robotic Deep-Space Missions.

In unusual bipartisan fashion, the House on Wednesday approved a three-year $58-billion compromise bill intended to revive NASA's manned-exploration programs while funding plans for pioneering private rockets able to blast astronauts into orbit.

Capping nearly a year of intense industry turmoil, agency uncertainty and congressional debate, the vote reflected last-minute decisions by House leaders from both parties to embrace a previously-passed Senate blueprint for NASA, though it doesn't completely satisfy any of the rival interest groups or regional factions maneuvering to shape the agency's future.

Read more ....

Google Launches Latin Translation Tool

Google has added Latin to its list of languages on Google Translate

From The Telegraph:

Google Translate, a service that can instantly translate entire web pages or chunks of text in to another language, has added Latin to its list.

Google Translate supports more than 50 languages, including minority languages such as Welsh and Haitian Creole, and the addition of Latin is sure to please scholars and traditionalists.

In a blog post, written entirely in Latin, Jakob Uszkoreit, a senior engineer at Google, said that Latin was far from a “dead language”.

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Heard For The First Time In 2,000 years: Scientists Post Readings Of Ancient Babylonian Poems Online

A clay tablet known as the Jursa tablet that proves the existence of a Babylonian official in the Bible

From The Daily Mail:

The ancient language of Babylonian can be heard for the first time in almost 2,000 years after Cambridge University scholars posted readings and poems online.

Babylonian, one of the chief languages of Ancient Mesopotamia, dates back as far as the second millennium BC but died out around 2,000 years ago.

However, Cambridge historians have resurrected the ancient tongue by discovering how the language was pronounced and spoken.

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Rivers Threatened Around The World

From New Scientist:

The water supplying 80 per cent of the world's population is exposed to "high levels of threat". That's the conclusion of a study that surveys the status of rivers throughout the world, and looks at their effects on both humans and the ecosystem at large.

Writing in this week's Nature (vol 467, p 555), Charles Vorosmarty of the City College of New York and colleagues pull together a swathe of data on factors affecting water security, from dams that reduce river flow to the pollution and destruction of wetlands.

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'Giant' Step Toward Explaining Differences In Height Among People

Scientists have identified hundreds of genetic variants that together account for about 10 percent of the inherited variation of height among people. (Credit: iStockphoto/Stefanie Timmermann)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 29, 2010) — An international collaboration of more than 200 institutions, led by researchers at Children's Hospital Boston, the Broad Institute, and a half-dozen other institutions in Europe and North America, has identified hundreds of genetic variants that together account for about 10 percent of the inherited variation of height among people.

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Are UFOs Disarming Nuclear Weapons, And If So Why?

Did UFOs Disarm Nuclear Weapons? And If So, Why? -- Live Science

At an unusual press conference recently held in Washington, D.C., a UFO author and a half-dozen or so former U.S. military airmen asserted that "The U.S. Air Force is lying about the national security implications of unidentified aerial objects at nuclear bases and we can prove it." They claim that since 1948, extraterrestrials in spaceships have not only been visiting Earth but hovering over British and American nuclear missile sites and temporarily deactivating the weapons.

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My Comment: I am skeptical .... but these guys are former senior U.S. military airmen, and they should be listened to. Unfortunately .... they have no visible proof.

Lost Language Unearthed In Letter

Photo: A letter discovered in northern Peru in 2008 showing a column of numbers written in Spanish and translated into a language that scholars say is now extinct, is seen in this undated photo released by archaeologists September 22, 2010. (HANDOUT)

From CNews:

LIMA - Archaeologists say scrawl on the back of a letter recovered from a 17th century dig site reveals a previously unknown language spoken by indigenous peoples in northern Peru.

A team of international archaeologists found the letter under a pile of adobe bricks in a collapsed church complex near Trujillo, 347 miles (560 km) north of Lima. The complex had been inhabited by Dominican friars for two centuries.

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