A Lightning Show On Saturn

Detailed views ... Saturn's great white spot. Photo: AP/NASA

Saturn Puts On Spectacular Lightning Show -- Brisbane Times

LOS ANGELES: Saturn's Great White Spot, a recurring storm that has intrigued scientists since it was first observed in 1876, is a windy, towering cloud of ammonia and water spewing out super bolts of lightning.

Now astronomers and NASA's Cassini spacecraft, which has been orbiting Saturn since 2004, have captured the most detailed views to date of the phenomenon.

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Tuna Need Urgent Protection, Study Concludes

A school of bluefin tuna (Thunnus maccoyii).

CREDIT: NOAA Fisheries Service

From Live Science:

Five of the eight species of tuna now qualify as threatened or near-threatened, according to the world's main authority on the conservation status of animal species. The tuna face a bleak future if more isn't done to safeguard them from overfishing, researchers warn.

Published today (July 7), the draft assessment of the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List of Threatened Species shows most tuna species are declining.

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Top 10 Civilizations That Mysteriously Disappeared

From Toptenz.com:

Throughout our history, most civilizations have either met a slow demise or were wiped out by natural disasters or invasion. But there are a few societies whose disappearance has scholars truly stumped:

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Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratory Remains Closed As Wildfires Threaten Facility

Los Alamos Fire: EPA Testing for Radiation -- ABC News

The wildfire that surrounds the nuclear lab in Los Alamos, New Mexico, has grown to at least 61,000 acres amid mounting concerns about what might be in the smoke that's visible from space.

Such fear has prompted the Environmental Protection Agency to bring in air monitors, along with a special airplane that checks for radiation levels. So far officials have not been able to find anything.

"Our facilities and nuclear material are protected and safe," Laboratory Director Dr. Charles McMillan told ABC News.

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More News On The Los Alamos Fire

Los Alamos nuclear laboratory under siege from raging wildfire -- The Telegraph
Los Alamos nuclear laboratory threatened by wildfire -- The Guardian
Towns near NM fire, nuclear lab wary of smoke -- USA Today
Scientists monitor air as fire burns near NM lab -- Forbes/AP
Fire chief says Los Alamos lab is safe from wildfire -- CNN
Los Alamos nuclear lab to remain closed as New Mexico wildfire nears -- Washington Post
Los Alamos wildfire reaches lab, forces evacuation -- CNET
Mandatory evacuation ordered as blaze threatens Los Alamos -- MSNBC

A Look At Cyberwarfare And Hackers From A Russian Perspective

Evgeny Kaspersky was trained as a cryptologist and went on to co-found Kapersky Labs, which makes antivirus, anti-spyware, anti-spam and other online security products. In a recent SPIEGEL interview, he discussed a number of what he sees as worrying trends in cyber security. Regarding the new era of cyber war, he stated: "This war can't be won; it only has perpetrators and victims. Out there, all we can do is prevent everything from spinning out of control. Only two things could solve this for good, and both of them are undesirable: to ban computers -- or people." Sergei Chirikov/ AFP/ Getty Images

'I Fear the Net Will Soon Become a War Zone'. An Interview With Anti-Virus Pioneer Evgeny Kaspersky -- Spiegel Online

Evgeny Kaspersky is one of Russia's top Internet virus hunters and IT entrepreneurs. In a SPIEGEL interview, he discusses a raft of recent hacker attacks on multinationals, the "total professionals" behind the Stuxnet virus and his fear of both personal and widespread cyber violence.

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My Comment: I love interviews like this one, and this from Spiegel does not disappoint. On a side note, the Independent has an excellent story on the secret world of hackers and the anarchy that they can unleash on the web. That link is here.

Photos Of Space Shuttle Docked At Space Station

ISS Shuttle Docking NASA

First-Ever Photos of Space Shuttle Docked At Space Station -- Popular Science

How the once-in-a-lifetime photo-op came to be.

After a 5-month stay at the International Space Station, Italian astronaut Paolo Nespoli snapped one-of-a-kind photos of the Space Shuttle docked at the ISS, on his way back to Earth in a Soyuz craft. This is the very first time photos have captured an American orbiter docked to the International Space Station.

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Google Earth Goes Under the Sea

From Popular Science:

Google Earth broke new ground (new water?) when they took the world of virtual-earth-exploring into the oceans. Of course, the oceans are kind of big. They fill up nearly three-quarters of the earth's surface area, and most of that area hasn't been mapped out. But now you can tour roughly half of the known area without pulling on any SCUBA gear, thanks to Google's new underwater terrain explorer.

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Commentary On Europe's Organic Food Scare

Europe's Organic Food Scare -- Wall Street Journal

German Greens and their European Union acolytes have long fought scientific advances in food production and protection. After a spice manufacturer in Stuttgart employed the world's first commercial food irradiation in 1957, West Germany banned the practice in 1959 and has since allowed few exceptions. So it's no small scandal that the latest fatal E. coli outbreak has been linked to an organic German farm that shuns modern farming techniques.

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What Could A Solar Flare Do To Us?

CME NASA

When The Sun Unleashed Its Plasma Blast This Week, Earth Got Lucky -- Popular Science

What a predicted 2013 blast from the sun could mean for the U.S.

On Tuesday, the biggest solar flare in four years erupted from the sun, sending a mass of charged particles hurtling towards Earth. NASA announced that it was an M-2 (medium-sized) flare and an S1-class (minor) radiation storm. The electromagnetic pulse it induced created amazing auroras, but it could also damage satellites and radio communications. What would happen with an even stronger, larger flare? Something terrible...

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Ancient Language Dictionary Finished

Martha Roth, Editor in Charge of the Assyrian Dictionary at the University of Chicago, puts the final volume in the set of books. (Credit: University of Chicago)

Huge Ancient Language Dictionary Finished After 90 Years -- Science Daily

ScienceDaily (June 9, 2011) — An ambitious project to identify, explain and provide citations for the words written in cuneiform on clay tablets and carved in stone by Babylonians, Assyrians and others in Mesopotamia between 2500 B.C. and A.D. 100 has been completed after 90 years of labor, the University of Chicago announced June 5.

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My Comment: I look forward to them putting it online.

New 'Subatomic Particle' Likely A Fluke

The CDF detector, about the size of a three-story house, weighs about 6,000 tons. It recrods the "debris" emerging from each high-energy proton-antiproton collision produced by the Tevatron. CREDIT: Fermilab

From Live Science:

A report in April suggesting a giant atom smasher may have detected a never-seen-before subatomic particle had physicists at the edge of their seats with hope, albeit with a healthy dose of skepticism. Now an independent test of the results suggests it was just a fluke.

The tantalizing signal came from the Tevatron particle accelerator at the Fermilab physics laboratory in Batavia, Ill. Inside the accelerator there, particles race around a 4-mile (6.3 km) ring at near light speed. When two particles collide, they disintegrate into other exotic particles in a powerful outpouring of energy. [Wacky Physics: The Coolest Little Particles in Nature]

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Astonishing Image Captures Night Sky

The image, taken in the remote town of Denial Bay, a fishing village on the edge of the Great Australian Bight, was taken using a special 'time lapse' process Photo: ANDREW BROOKS

Pictured: Astonishing Image Captures Night Sky In Dazzling Formation -- The Telegraph

Exclusive: Lit up in the night sky, this spectacular picture shows a galaxy of stars in a dazzling formation more akin to a large-scale spinning wheel.

The astonishing image, taken in the heart of the Australian outback, was used simply by taking advantage of the earth's rotation.

Andrew Brooks, an amateur photographer, took the image using his camera, a tripod, his neighbour's lounge room light and a little patience while letting gravity do the rest.

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My Comment: This is why I love astronomy.

Most Apples Have Pesticide Residues

Apples Top List For Pesticide Contamination -- CBS News

That shiny little apple you're eating has a dirty little surprise. At least, that's what a food safety watchdog claims in its annual examination of government produce tests.

The Environmental Working Group says apples top its "Dirty Dozen" list of fruits and vegetables with the highest amounts of pesticides. "We found that nearly every apple sampled, 98 per cent, had pesticide residues," says Sonya Lunder, a senior analyst. "This is an accumulation of 48 different pesticides."

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My Comment: One more reason to go organic

An Army Of Hackers Are Now Informing For The FBI

A quarter of hackers in the US have been recruited by federal authorities, according to Eric Corley, publisher of the hacker quarterly, 2600. Photograph: Getty Images

One In Four US Hackers 'Is An FBI Informer' -- The Guardian

The FBI and US secret service have used the threat of prison to create an army of informers among online criminals

The underground world of computer hackers has been so thoroughly infiltrated in the US by the FBI and secret service that it is now riddled with paranoia and mistrust, with an estimated one in four hackers secretly informing on their peers, a Guardian investigation has established.

Cyber policing units have had such success in forcing online criminals to co-operate with their investigations through the threat of long prison sentences that they have managed to create an army of informants deep inside the hacking community.

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My Comment: I am skeptical that the FBI list of informers (in the hacking community) is that long .... but it is certainly an effective way to police the internet.

China's Drought Is Impacting World's Food Supplies

How Will China's Food Supply Weather the Year of Drought? -- Time

In China food supplies and food prices are deeply sensitive topics. So by the time the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization issued a special alert warning in February that a prolonged drought in the North China Plain was a “potentially serious problem” for the country's winter wheat crop, China's leaders had already mobilized. President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao made visits to farming regions in north China, pledging cash, equipment and manpower to ensure the crop survived.

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My Comment: The world is already at the brink of experiencing severe food shortages .... China's drought is only going to make the situation worse.

Number Of Internet-Connected Devices Set To Reach 15 Billion Globally By 2015

New generation of users: Almost three billion people are expected to be connected to the internet by 2015

Everybody's Doing It: Number Of Internet-Connected Devices Set To Reach 15 Billion Globally By 2015 -- The Daily Mail

Forecasters predict there will be 15billion internet-connected devices in use around the world by 2015 - more than two for every person on the planet.

The recent growth in mobile phones and tablets has already pushed the number of devices above the five billion mark.

And fresh technical developments - including internet-connected televisions and cars - will drive a new surge in appliance use in the next four years, according to technology giant Cisco.

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Endeavour's Mind-Boggling Cockpit Controls

(Click on Image to Enlarge)
Cluttered cockpit: Commander Mark Kelly and Italian astronaut Roberto Vittori sit on Endeavour's flight deck during what was the Nasa vessel's final mission

So, Where's The Ignition Switch? Endeavour's Mind-Boggling Cockpit Controls Revealed In All Their Glory -- The Daily Mail

Nasa shuttle is now bound for the California Space Center museum in Los Angeles

With hundreds of switches and buttons, and pieces of paper stuck to various hard surfaces, this is the somewhat chaotic cockpit of space shuttle Endeavour.

Commander Mark Kelly and Italian astronaut Roberto Vittori sit on the flight deck during what was the Nasa vessel's final mission.

With equipment strapped in place all around them, including a device taped to the back of a seat, the pair are jammed into their seats at the controls of the $2.2billion ship.

The cockpit is so crammed full of electronics, the astronauts are unable to stand when they climb in and out of their seats.

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Astronomers Capture A Milky Way 'Clone'

The large spiral galaxy named NGC 6744 Photo: ESO/PA

Milky Way 'Clone' Captured By European Astronomers -- The Telegraph

A striking image of a giant Milky Way ''clone'' has been captured by astronomers.

The bird's eye view of NGC 6744 gives a good idea of what our own galaxy would look like to a passing space traveller.

The spiral galaxy is around 30 million light years away in the southern constellation of Pavo, the Peacock.

In the new image from European Southern Observatory astronomers it is seen almost face on, so that the striking spiral arms are clearly visible.

NGC 6744 would almost be an identical twin of the Milky Way were it not for its size.

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A Leap Forward For DNA-Based Computers

A wiring diagram illustration depicts a system of 74 DNA strands that constitute the largest synthetic circuit of its type ever made. The circuit can compute the square root of numbers up to 15, though very slowly. (Lulu Qian / Caltech / June 2, 2011)

Research Marks A Leap Forward For DNA-Based Computers -- L.A. Times

A system involving 74 DNA strands can calculate square roots of numbers up to 15, though very slowly. Scientists say the goal is to devise computers that can interact directly with living cells — and perhaps fight disease.

Caltech researchers have produced the most sophisticated DNA-based computer yet, a wet chemistry system that can calculate the square roots of numbers as high as 15.

The system is composed of 74 strands of DNA that make up 12 logic gates comparable to those in a silicon-based computer, the researchers reported Thursday in the journal Science. But the system operates a little more slowly than a conventional computer: It takes as much as 10 hours to obtain each result.

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The Evolution of DARPA's Robotic Hummingbird

Video: The Evolution of DARPA's Robotic Hummingbird, From Start to Finish -- Popular Science

Of all the DARPA projects we follow here at PopSci--and regular readers know that we follow a lot of them--perhaps none has been quite so fascinating as the Nano Air Vehicle (NAV) program, a.k.a. the robotic hummingbird, which culminated earlier this year in a working prototype. So you can imagine our delight when DARPA released this short video chronicling the bird’s journey from drawing board to early prototype to crash test dummy to eventual functioning, camera-equipped nano air vehicle that fits in the palm of a hand.

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My Comment: I can easily see soldiers having this tech in their arsenal 5 years (or more) from now.

How Quantum Entanglement Will Help Computers Cool Themselves

The Tianhe-1A Supercomputer NVIDIA

Quantum Entanglement Means Computers Could Cool Themselves By Deleting Information -- Popular Science

But don't wipe your hard drives just yet.

It’s common empirical knowledge that computing generates heat--go ahead, touch the bottom of your MacBook--but a new paper in the journal Nature claims that it doesn’t have to. In fact, under the right conditions, theoretical physicists say that deleting data can actually produce negative heat--that is, it can have a cooling effect. That’s right, this is a quantum mechanics post. Exit now if you don’t want a headache to start the weekend.

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The Final Minutes of Air France 447

Photo: AF447 Rio-Paris plane flight data recorder are displayed during a press conference on May 12, 2011, in the French agency Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety (BEA) headquarters. Mehdi Fedouach/AFP/Getty Images

The Final Minutes Of Air France 447 -- Popular Science

Today, France's civil aviation authority released the first details from the flight data recorders of Air France 447, which wrecked in the Atlantic Ocean two years ago after taking off from Rio de Janeiro, killing everyone on board. The new information begins to fill in the picture of what happened up there, but leaves many open questions about both the actions of the crew and the subsequent behavior of the aircraft.

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Honeybee Losses Reported Over Winter

Honeybees are dying off and last winter U.S. populations dropped by 30 percent. NOAA

Heavy Honeybee Losses Reported Over Winter -- Discovery News

The 30 percent drop was significant, but was at least less steep than the previous winter.

* Honeybee colonies nationwide have reduced in number by 30 percent, based on a recent survey.
* The decline is higher than normal but is less than losses of 34 percent sustained for the previous winter.
* Experts encourage individuals to plant pollinator gardens and otherwise join in the fight to save honeybees.

Honeybee colonies in the United States reduced in number by 30 percent over the 2010-2011 winter, according to a recently released annual survey conducted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Apiary Inspectors of America (AIA).

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Phase Change Memory-Based 'Moneta' System

A view of the internals of the Moneta storage array with phase change memory modules installed. (Credit: UC San Diego / Steve Swanson)

Phase Change Memory-Based 'Moneta' System Points To The Future Of Computer Storage -- Science Daily

A University of California, San Diego faculty-student team is about to demonstrate a first-of-its kind, phase-change memory solid state storage device that provides performance thousands of times faster than a conventional hard drive and up to seven times faster than current state-of-the-art solid-state drives (SSDs).

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Air Pollution In Ancient Egypt

This mummy was discovered in Dakhleh Oasis, a remote outpost in southwest Egypt and lived around 1,800 years ago, at a time when the Romans occupied Egypt. Although much of the mummy remains are lost, the area around the lungs, where particulates were found, is well preserved. CREDIT: Photo courtesy Dakhleh Oasis Project.

Egyptian Mummies Hold Clues of Ancient Air Pollution -- Live Science

Ancient Egyptians may have been exposed to air pollution way back when, according to new evidence of particulates in the lungs of 15 mummies, including noblemen and priests.

Particulates, tiny microscopic particles that irritate the lungs, have been linked to a wide array of modern-day illnesses, including heart disease, lung ailments and cancer. The particulates are typically linked to post-industrial activities, such as fossil-fuel burning.

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Black Holes Spinning Faster Than Ever

An artist’s impression of the jets emerging from a supermassive black hole at the centre of the galaxy PKS 0521-36. Credit: Dana Berry / STScI

Black Holes Are Spinning Faster Than Ever -- Cosmos

PORTSMOUTH: The giant black holes in the centre of galaxies are on average spinning faster now than at any time in the history of the universe, according to two U.K. astronomers.

The new discovery was made using radio, optical and X-ray data, and suggests that the supermassive black holes that grow by swallowing matter will barely spin, while those that merge with other black holes will be left spinning rapidly.

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Windows 8 Tablets Set To Challenge iPad, Android

Microsoft demonstrated for the first time the next generation of Windows, internally code-named "Windows 8," at the D9 conference. The company calls it a "reimagining of Windows, from the chip to the interface." YouTube

From FOX News:

Watch your back, iPad. Look out, Android. Windows is coming.

Microsoft Windows president Steven Sinofsky showed off a prototype Windows 8 tablet at the All Things D conference in California this week -- the company's answer to Apple's "magical" device and Google's Android.

The new tablet-friendly operating system will function much like the Windows Phone 7 platform, with tiles you can flick around the screen, click to start an app, or reposition anyway you want.

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Cartoon Pic For Today

(Click on Image to Enlarge)

Californian Dolphin Gang Caught Killing Porpoises

Photo: Frustrated youth (Image: Mark P. Cotter)

From New Scientist:

SEEMINGLY random acts of violence by bottlenose dolphins on porpoises could be down to sexual frustration among young males.

Cases of the cetaceans killing other creatures for no apparent reason have been reported in UK waters. Now bottlenose dolphins have been seen attacking harbour porpoises in the Pacific Ocean. Crucially, these observations show for the first time that the attackers are young males (Marine Mammal Science, DOI: 10.1111/j.1748-7692.2011.00474.x).

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Hidden Hieroglyphs Found Inside The Great Pyramid

A composite of images taken by a robot of the floor of the Great Pyramid is shown. Red hieroglyphs are visible. Djedi Team

Robot Finds Hidden Hieroglyphs Inside Pyramid -- MSNBC

Secrets of 4,500-year-old tomb revealed in first images from behind mysterious doors.

A robot explorer sent through the Great Pyramid of Giza has begun to unveil some of the secrets behind the 4,500-year-old pharaonic mausoleum after it transmitted the first images behind one of its mysterious doors.

The images revealed hieroglyphs written in red paint that have not been seen by human eyes since the construction of the pyramid. The pictures also unveiled new details about two puzzling copper pins embedded in one of the so called "secret doors."

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How One Man And Half A Billion Honey Bees Help Feed America

The Beekeeper’s Lament: How One Man and Half a Billion Honey Bees Help Feed America By Hannah Nordhaus HarperCollins 336 pp

The Beekeeper's Lament: How One Man And Half a Billion Honey Bees Help Feed America -- Christian Science Monitor

Our bees are dying in apocalyptic numbers. What does it mean to us?

Bees are amazing. That’s the first reason to read The Beekeeper’s Lament, journalist Hannah Nordhaus’s rewarding account of migratory beekeeping and the mysterious scourge stalking the domestic bee population.

For the past week I’ve been telling everyone I’ve met stories from the miraculous lives of bees, like this one about the queen bee: Dihttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifd you know that she makes only one flight her entire life, when she’s a few days old, and that it’s out among the swarms of male drones where she intertwines with as many as she can before returning to her colony carrying all the sperm she’ll ever need over the course of a reproductive lifetime in which she’ll lay hundreds of thousands of eggs?

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VLT (Very Large Telescope) HD Timelapse Footage

This Time Lapse Video of the Very Large Telescope At Work is the Coolest Thing You'll See Today -- Popular Science

There’s very little we can write to preface the imagery below, so we’ll just set the scene and get out of the way. The video below was captured by Stephane Guisard and Jose Francisco Salgado at the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile’s Atacama Desert. And it might make you cry.

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My Comment: This looks so cool.

Why We Need A Good Night’s Sleep

A Good Night’s Sleep Isn’t a Luxury; It’s a Necessity -- New York Times

In my younger years, I regarded sleep as a necessary evil, nature’s way of thwarting my desire to cram as many activities into a 24-hour day as possible. I frequently flew the red-eye from California, for instance, sailing (or so I thought) through the next day on less than four hours of uncomfortable sleep.

But my neglect was costing me in ways that I did not fully appreciate. My husband called our nights at the ballet and theater “Jane’s most expensive naps.” Eventually we relinquished our subscriptions. Driving, too, was dicey: twice I fell asleep at the wheel, narrowly avoiding disaster. I realize now that I was living in a state of chronic sleep deprivation.

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Endeavour Returns Home For The Final Time (Video)

As Endeavour Returns Home For the Final Time, Atlantis Prepares for the Last Shuttle Launch Ever -- Popular Science

Sailing through the midnight sky to a picture-perfect landing in Florida, the country’s youngest spaceship came home for the last time Wednesday, leaving a completed space station in its wake. On a 16-day mission, the crew of space shuttle Endeavour installed a massive physics experiment and put the finishing touches on the ISS, completing the last scheduled spacewalks by shuttle crew members.

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How the Brain Processes Faces

Stimuli were matched with respect to low-level properties, external features and high-level characteristics. (Credit: Face images courtesy of the Face-Place Database Project, Copyright 2008, Michael J. Tarr)

How the Brain Processes Faces: Neural System Responsible for Face Recognition Discovered -- Science Daily

ScienceDaily (June 1, 2011) — Each time you see a person that you know, your brain rapidly and seemingly effortlessly recognizes that person by his or her face.

Until now, scientists believed that only a couple of brain areas mediate facial recognition. However, Carnegie Mellon University's Marlene Behrmann, David Plaut and Adrian Nestor have discovered that an entire network of cortical areas work together to identify faces. Published in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), their findings will change the future of neural visual perception research and allow scientists to use this discovery to develop targeted remedies for disorders such as face blindness.

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Claim Of Arsenic-Based Life Reignites Debate

This scanning electron micrograph shows a strain of the arsenic-eating bacterium called GFAJ-1. CREDIT: Science/AAAS.

Debate Reignited Over Claim of Arsenic-Based Life -- Live Science

One of the more heated scientific debates of recent years has been stirred up again with the publication of new criticisms of the reported finding of "arsenic life."

The prestigious journal Science published the criticisms today (May 27) along with a defense of the study, which Science had posted online this past December.

A team of researchers led by Felisa Wolfe-Simon of NASA's Astrobiology Institute had studied bacteria collected from California's Mono Lake and reported finding evidence that these microorganisms were substituting the poisonous molecule arsenic for the phosphorous usually used to build DNA.

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Hackers Finding The Holes In Net Safety

From Philly.com:

No security in cyber world.

Major hacking stories in the personal, political, and industrial worlds have shown recently how widespread cyber attacks - from the silly to the vicious - really are.

"They're happening every nanosecond - that's how you have to think," says Ray O'Hara, 2011 president of ASIS International, a security organization. "You just can't go to sleep at night, thinking you're secure."

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Photo: "Mrs Ples" is the most famous example of A. africanus from the Sterkfontein cave site

Ancient Cave Women 'Left Home' -- BBC

Analysis of early human-like populations in southern Africa suggests females left their childhood homes, while males stayed at home.

An international team examined tooth samples for metallic traces which can be linked to the geological areas in which individuals grew up.

The conclusion was that while most the males lived and died around the same river valley, the females moved on.

Similar patterns have been observed in chimpanzees, bonobos and modern humans.

Details of the study are published in a letter in Nature.

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Electrons Are Almost Perfectly Round

Electrons orbiting an atom Photo: ALAMY

Electrons Are Almost Perfectly Round, Scientists Discover -- The Telegraph

Electrons may be the most round natural objects in the universe, a study has discovered.

Researchers at Imperial College London have made the most accurate measurement yet of the shape of an electron, finding that it is almost a perfect sphere.

Experts found that the subatomic particles differ from being perfectly round by less than 0.000000000000000000000000001cm.

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Steve Jobs Returns From Medical Leave

Mr Jobs will launch Apple's new Mac software, Lion, and iO5, the next version of the firm's iPhone and iPad software

Steve Jobs Returns From Medical Leave For Launch Of Apple's Lion Operating System -- The Daily Mail

*He will launch Apple's new Mac software, Lion, and iO5, the next version of the firm's iPhone and iPad software

Apple chief executive Steve Jobs will return to the fray from medical leave next week to open the technology giant's annual developers' conference.

The company's inspirational boss, who has been gravely ill in recent months, will deliver the San Francisco event's keynote speech next Monday.

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The Older the Planet, the Greater Chance There's Life

Image: Astronomers have used the Kepler Space Telescope (seen in an artist's rendition, above) to locate likely planets orbiting stars beyond the sun.
NASA / Kepler Mission

In Search of Habitable Worlds: The Older the Planet, the Greater Chance There's Life -- Time

To date, the Kepler space telescope has found more than 1,200 likely planets orbiting stars beyond the sun — quite a haul for a satellite that's been flying for just over two years. The true prize Kepler is hunting for, of course, is not just any planet, but one that's a twin of Earth — about the size of our world, orbiting in a zone where the temperature range is like ours. All that would make it a prime place to look for life. Finding such a not-too-hot, not-too-cold world is probably just a matter of time, but even then, there will be one more factor to consider: how old the planet is.

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FYI: Why Are Escalators So Dangerous?

Crikey! Hazardous Crocs Getty Images/Washington Post

From Popular Science:

The escalator was patented in 1892, and the design hasn’t changed much since then. The landing platforms make entry and exit dicey endeavors—particularly when the moving stairs disappear beneath them, and all manner of clothing and body parts can get stuck. In recent years, escalators have torn the big toe from a Croc-wearing child in Singapore, bucked dozens of riders in Washington, D.C., and strangled a tipsy sushi chef when the hood of his sweatshirt got caught in the gap between the stairs and the landing platform.

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New Theory On How The Hawaiian Islands Were/Are Formed

Hot lava spills into the sea from under a hardened lava crust on the Big Island of Hawaii (file picture). Photograph by Patrick McFeeley, National Geographic

800-Mile-Wide Hot Anomaly Found Under Seafloor Off Hawaii -- National Geographic

Findings contradict long-held theory that a plume directly fuels Hawaii.

Hawaii's traditional birth story—that the volcanic islands were, and are, fueled by a hot-rock plume running directly to Earth's scorching core—could be toast, a new study hints.

Scientists say they've found solid evidence of a giant mass of hot rock under the seafloor in the region. But it's not a plume running straight from the core to the surface—and it's hundreds of miles west of the nearest Hawaiian island.

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My Comment: So much for all of that schooling that I received on how the Hawaiian islands were formed.

Has The Universe's 'Missing Mass' Been Found?

This NASA illustration photo shows stars that are forming in a dwarf starburst galaxy located about 30 million light years from Earth. A 22-year-old Australian university student has solved a problem which has puzzled astrophysicists for decades, discovering part of the so-called "missing mass" of the universe during her summer break. (AFP/NASA/File)

Aussie Student Finds Universe's 'Missing Mass' -- Yahoo News/AFP

SYDNEY (AFP) – A 22-year-old Australian university student has solved a problem which has puzzled astrophysicists for decades, discovering part of the so-called "missing mass" of the universe during her summer break.

Undergraduate Amelia Fraser-McKelvie made the breakthrough during a holiday internship with a team at Monash University's School of Physics, locating the mystery material within vast structures called "filaments of galaxies".

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A Closeup Of Black Hole Jets

Centaurus A Black Hole Jets This composite of visible, microwave (orange) and X-ray (blue) data reveals the jets and radio-emitting lobes emanating from Centaurus A's central black hole. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Galaxy Closeup Reveals Best-Ever Snapshot of Black Hole Jets -- Popular Science

A black hole with a mass of 55 million suns.

A gigantic black hole at the center of one of the Milky Way’s close neighbors is spewing jets of material into the cosmos, hurling gamma rays and radio waves into interstellar space. Now researchers in the U.S. and Germany peered at the galaxy with the closest-ever resolution, seeing galactic features up to 15 light-days across. That’s incredibly close for a galaxy 12 million miles away.

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American Demographic Changes

America's Tomorrow from PolicyLink on Vimeo.

The Changing Face Of America: Time-Lapse Map Reveals How Non-Whites Will Become The Majority In U.S. Within 30 Years -- the Daily Mail

By the year 2040, the majority of Americans will be people of colour - the minorities will have become the majority.

A fascinating new time-lapse map shows the increase in the non-white population across the decades.

It starts with 1990 and then predicts up to 2020, 2030 and 2040.

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A New 'Distant Object' Candidate Is Discovered

Researchers have unveiled a gamma-ray burst detected by NASA's Swift satellite in April 2009 as the latest candidate for the most distant object in the universe. (Credit: Gemini Observatory / AURA / Levan, Tanvir, Cucchiara)

Cosmic Explosion Is New Candidate For Most Distant Object In The Universe -- Science Daily

ScienceDaily (May 25, 2011) — A gamma-ray burst detected by NASA's Swift satellite in April 2009 has been newly unveiled as a candidate for the most distant object in the universe. At an estimated distance of 13.14 billion light years, the burst lies far beyond any known quasar and could be more distant than any previously known galaxy or gamma-ray burst. Multiple lines of evidence in favor of a record-breaking distance for this burst, known as GRB 090429B for the 29 April 2009 date when it was discovered, are presented in a paper by an international team of astronomers led by former Penn State University graduate student Antonino Cucchiara, now at the University of California, Berkeley.

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Did The Military Cause The Tornadoes That Devastated Joplin, Mo.?

Tornadoes Caused by Military?: Recent Events Fuel Conspiracy Theories -- ABC News

It's an astonishing claim: The tornado that ravaged Joplin, Mo., last Sunday, killing at least 125 people, was not a random act of nature but the result of an obscure military-backed research program in Alaska that shoots radio waves into the upper atmosphere.

Here's another one: The shooting rampage in Tucson last January that killed six people and wounded 13, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, was an elaborate government hoax that used actors to portray the victims.

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My Comment: Conspiracy theories .... or in my opinion .... people having too much time on their hands, but not enough time for some independent thought.

The Moon Is Filled With Water

Scientists at Brown University found super-tiny melt inclusions in lunar soil samples that opened the door for measurements that revealed the magnitude of water inside the moon. (Credit: Saal lab, Brown University)

Scientists Detect Earth-Equivalent Amount of Water Within the Moon -- Science Daily

ScienceDaily (May 26, 2011) — There is water inside the moon -- so much, in fact, that in some places it rivals the amount of water found within Earth.

The finding from a scientific team including Brown University comes from the first-ever measurements of water in lunar melt inclusions. Those measurements show that some parts of the lunar mantle have as much water as Earth's upper mantle.

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Babies And Their Ability To Reason

A baby watches objects bounce around an enclosure during an experiment on infant cognition. CREDIT: L. Bonatti & E. Teglas

Babies Are Capable of Complex Reasoning -- Live Science

Babies are sophisticated mini-statisticians, a new study finds, capable of making judgments about the probability of an event they've never seen before.

Using a computer model, researchers were able to accurately predict what a baby would know about a particular event if given certain information. The model may be useful in engineering artificial intelligence that reacts appropriately to the world, said study researcher Josh Tenenbaum, a cognitive scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The study also demonstrates just how savvy baby brains are, Tenenbaum told LiveScience.

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Skeleton Of Amazon Warrior Discovered In Scotland

Photo: Re-constructed heads of an unknown female and of a medieval knight whose skeletons were found during the recent refurbishment of the Palace at Stirling Castle.

From The Scotsman:

THE discovery of the remains of an aristocratic Scottish "Amazon", killed in battle during the Wars of Independence, is set to rewrite the history books.

Her skeleton was among the remains of five "high status" individuals - all of whom had suffered violent deaths - found beneath the paved floor of the "lost" Royal Chapel at Stirling Castle.

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Robot's Supersonic Air Jets Allow It To Climb Most Surfaces

Video: Robot's Supersonic Air Jets Allow It To Climb Just About Any Surface -- Popular Science

Many wall-walking robots mimic natural adhesives--like the sticky feet of geckos--to remain fixed to a surface while they scale it.

But this little bot uses nothing but a supersonic version of a well-known principle of fluid dynamics to cling to just about any surface--without the surface of its grippers ever actually touching it.

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Orion-Type Capsule Picked For Deep NASA Space Missions

Photo: The Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, or MPCV, shown with a launch escape rocket and service module. NASA plans to develop the capsule for use in future missions to deep space targets. (Credit: NASA)

NASA Picks Orion-Type Capsule For Deep Space Missions -- CNET

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla.--A version of the Bush administration's Orion moon capsule, written off by the Obama administration and then resurrected as a space station lifeboat, will be developed instead for use in future manned flights to deep space targets beyond Earth orbit, the agency announced today.

Douglas Cooke, associate administrator of NASA's Exploration Systems Mission Directorate, told reporters the Orion concept, described by former NASA Administrator Mike Griffin as "Apollo on steroids," is the most capable spacecraft currently on the drawing board for meeting the Obama administration's "flexible path" approach to deep space exploration.

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U.S. Congress Getting Ready To Tax The Internet

How Will States Tax Internet Downloads? Congress May Decide -- Epicenter

Here’s an interesting conundrum, posed by Representative Dennis Ross (R-Florida), at a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing held on Monday:

“Imagine you are sitting in Dulles airport in Virginia, waiting for a flight back to Florida,” Ross began in his opening remarks. “You download a music file from Apple, which is headquartered in California. The music is sent to you via a server in Oklahoma.”

Which of these states should be allowed to tax the sale?

Without a “clear national rule,” he warned at the hearing, “all four states may attempt to tax the transaction.”

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My Comment: Another tax grab .... get ready for it.

NASA's Mars Rover Spirit To Be Shut Down

NASA's Mars rover Spirit, shown in an artist's rendering, was expected to serve a three-month mission, but it provided scientists with a trove of information over more than six years of operation. (Reuters)

NASA Rover Spirit 'Revolutionized' How We See Mars -- L.A. Times

As the Martian rover falls silent for good, JPL scientists mourn Spirit's loss and celebrate its remarkable achievements that continued for years beyond its expected lifetime.

It was supposed to roam the surface of Mars for only three months and cover a distance of just a few hundred yards. Instead, NASA's Spirit rover traveled nearly five miles over five years, finding geological evidence that the Red Planet had once been warm and wet enough to have harbored life. Even after it got hopelessly stuck in the powdery soil of Gusev crater, the rover continued to make discoveries and beamed them to scientists millions of miles away.

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My Comment: Five years of discovery and excitement .... kudos to the engineers and scientists who made this possible.

Smallpox Eradication Decision Is Deferred Again

The viral disease was eradicated over 30 years ago. BBC

Smallpox-Destruction Deadline Delayed For 3 Years -- Wall Street Journal

Global health officials delayed setting a deadline Tuesday for destroying the last known stocks of smallpox for at least three years, a compromise that will enable the U.S. and Russia to continue researching medications to counter a bioterror attack.

The consensus at the World Health Assembly, the decision-making body of the World Health Organization, came after a contentious debate stretching over two days. It represents a compromise for the U.S., Russia and more than two dozen other countries that wanted to keep the virus stocks for at least another five years. Iran, China, Thailand and other countries objected to that timetable and some of its provisions.

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More News On The World's Smallpox Supply

WHO defers fixing date on destroying live smallpox -- Reuters
Decision Delayed on Eliminating Smallpox Stocks -- Global Security Newswire
UN Decides Not to Destroy Last Known Smallpox Stockpiles -- The Atlantic
World Health Organization Decides to Keep Smallpox Stocks ... For Now -- FOX News/Live Science
Smallpox decision deferred again -- BBC
Call to destroy smallpox delayed -- CBC
US and Russian smallpox stocks spared the chop -- Register

My Comment: To better understand the impact that smallpox has had on the history of man .... check out this link.

It Seems That Man Has Been At War With His Fellow Man For A Very Long Time

Bronze Age relic: Archaeologists have found the remains of around 100 bodies in the Tollense Valley in northern Germany, including this fractured skull

'Earliest' Bronze Age Battle Site Containing 100 Bodies Found On German River Bank -- The Daily Mail

Fractured skulls and broken bones found on a German river bank could point to the earliest site of a Bronze Age battle ever discovered.

Archaeologists uncovered the remains of around 100 bodies in the Tollense Valley in northern Germany, suggesting brutal hand-to-hand combat between warring tribes.

Bones had been battered, skulls were fractured and one body has an arrowhead buried more than 2cm inside it.

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My Comment: On the one hand, such a discovery is fascinating and informative of how we interacted (and fought) in ancient times. On the other hand .... it is depressing to know that our culture and approach to war has not changed .... with the exception that we now have better weapons.

Lots Of Multi-Planet Systems Found In Kepler Planet Hunt

This artist rendering provided by NASA shows a solar system comparison of the Kepler 11 solar system and ours. NASA/AP

Surprise Find In Kepler Planet Hunt: Lots Of Multi-Planet Systems -- Christian Science Monitor

NASA's Kepler spacecraft, which is searching for Earth-mass planets orbiting sun-like stars, is finding hundreds of candidate planets, and many more multi-planet systems than expected.

Two years into a 3-1/2-year mission, NASA’s Kepler spacecraft, hunting for planets orbiting some 165,000 stars in the constellation Cygnus, is uncovering planet candidates by the hundreds.

Many of these inhabit multi-planet systems that are unexpectedly flat – the inclination of the planets’ orbits within each of these systems are essentially the same, a feature that may hold clues about how these systems formed and evolved.

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