Scientist: Holographic Television To Become Reality

From CNN:

LONDON, England (CNN) -- Picture this: you're sat down for the Football World Cup final, or a long-awaited sequel to the "Sex and the City" movie and you're watching all the action unfold in 3-D on your coffee table.

It sounds a lot like a wacky dream, but don't be surprised if within our lifetime you find yourself discarding your plasma and LCD sets in exchange for a holographic 3-D television that can put Cristiano Ronaldo in your living room or bring you face-to-face with life-sized versions of your gaming heroes.

The reason for renewed optimism in three-dimensional technology is a breakthrough in rewritable and erasable holographic systems made earlier this year by researchers at the University of Arizona.

Dr Nasser Peyghambarian, chair of photonics and lasers at the university's Optical Sciences department, told CNN that scientists have broken a barrier by making the first updatable three-dimensional displays with memory.

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Nobel Prize For Medicine 2008

From left, Francoise Barre-Sinoussi, Luc Montagnier and Harald zur Hausen. (Stephane De Sakutin/AFP; Olivier Maire/AP; Alex Grimm /Reuters ) (Photo From International Herald Tribune)

3 Share Nobel Prize For Work On AIDS And Cancer
-- Yahoo News/AP

STOCKHOLM, Sweden - Three European scientists shared the 2008 Nobel Prize in medicine on Monday for separate discoveries of viruses that cause AIDS and cervical cancer, breakthroughs that helped doctors fight the deadly diseases.

French researchers Francoise Barre-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier were cited for their discovery of human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, in 1983.

They shared the award with Germany's Harald zur Hausen, who was honored for finding human papilloma viruses that cause cervical cancer, the second most common cancer among women.

U.S. researcher Dr. Robert Gallo was locked in a dispute with Montagnier in the 1980s over the relative importance of their roles in groundbreaking research into HIV and its role in AIDS. Gallo told The Associated Press that he was disappointed at not being included in the prize.

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More News On The Nobel Prizes

AIDS pioneers and cancer scientist win Nobel prize -- Yahoo News/Reuters
Research on AIDS virus and cancer wins Nobel Medicine Prize -- Yahoo News/AFP
3 Europeans share Nobel prize in medicine -- International Herald Tribune
3 Europeans Take Nobel Prize In Medicine -- CBS News
Nobel Prize awarded for AIDS, cervical cancer research -- L.A. Times
Nobel prize for medicine split between cervical cancer and HIV research -- The Guardian
Nobel Prize In Medicine For Major Virus Discoveries -- NPR
Nobels awarded for AIDS, cancer virus research -- Wired News
Nobel prize for viral discoveries -- BBC
Nobel Medicine prize goes to Germany and France -- Deutsche Welle
'There could be an Aids vaccine in four years,' says Nobel Prize winner -- Daily Mail
Nobel Medicine Prize row as HIV scientist is excluded -- Times Online
Nobel medicine prize reopens old AIDS wounds -- Yahoo news/Reuters
Human Papilloma Virus And Cancer, HIV Discoveries Recognized In 2008 Nobel Prize In Physiology Or Medicine -- Science Daily
FACTBOX - Nobel medicine prize - Who are the winners? -- Yahoo News/Reuters

U.S. To Rely On Russia For Manned Spaceflight

An image of Peggy A. Whitson, an American astronaut at the International Space Station, in April at mission control in Korolev, outside Moscow. A plan to suspend NASA's capacity to fly astronauts into space has set off a geopolitical controversy. (James Hill for The New York Times)

From The International Herald Tribune:

STAR CITY, Russia: This place was once no place, a secret military base northeast of Moscow that did not show up on maps. The Soviet Union trained its astronauts here to fight on the highest battlefield of the Cold War: space.

Yet these days, Star City is the place for America's hard-won orbital partnership with Russia, where astronauts train to fly aboard Soyuz spacecraft. And in two years, according to the Bush administration's plans, Star City will be the only place for sending astronauts from any nation to the International Space Station.

The gap is coming: Between 2010, when the National Aeronautics and Space Administration shuts down the space shuttle program, and 2015, when the next generation of U.S. spacecraft is scheduled to arrive, NASA expects to have no human flight capacity and will depend on Russia to get to the $100 billion station, buying seats on Soyuz craft as space tourists do.

As NASA celebrates its 50th anniversary this month, the administration's plan to retire the shuttle and work on a return to the Moon has thrust the U.S. space program squarely into national politics and geopolitical controversy.

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The True Costs of Renewable Energy

Beyond the Money: Mark Vargas put solar panels on his home in Santa Clara, Calif., but they get blocked by his neighbor's redwood trees. Earlier this year, Vargas asked prosecutors to press charges against his neighbors for shading the sun. But the couple next door insisted they should not have to chop down the trees to accommodate Vargas' energy demands because they planted the redwoods before he installed the solar panels in 2001. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu from Live Science)

From Live Science:

As utility costs mount ever higher, Americans now have real options to take home energy matters into their own hands with "green" systems that can pay for themselves in as little as a few years.

Among the choices: wind, solar, geothermal and a "microhydro" option that is potentially cheaper than a year's tuition at many state colleges.

Choosing the do-it-yourself route can offer the freedom of going partially or totally off the grid. And, if the energy generated exceeds your actual usage, you can even sell the excess juice to your utility company. But none of this is free. Here's how much change you should expect to kick in:

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Are Mammals Heading For Extinction

Two Tasmanian Devil females are seen in captivity at the Tasmanian Devil Conservation Park in Taranna. Half the world's mammals are declining in population and more than a third probably face extinction, according to an update of the "Red List," the most respected inventory of biodiversity. (Photo: Breitbart)

Half Of Mammals 'In Decline', Says Extinction 'Red List'
-- Breitbart/AFP

Half the world's mammals are declining in population and more than a third probably face extinction, said an update Monday of the "Red List," the most respected inventory of biodiversity.

A comprehensive survey of mammals included in the annual report by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which covers more than 44,000 animal and plant species, shows that a quarter of the planet's 5,487 known mammals are clearly at risk of disappearing forever.

But the actual situation may be even grimmer because researchers have been unable to classify the threat level for another 836 mammals due to lack of data.

"In reality, the number of threatened mammals could be as high as 36 percent," said IUCN scientist Jan Schipper, lead author of the mammal survey, in remarks published separately in the US-based journal Science.

The most vulnerable groups are primates, our nearest relatives on the evolutionary ladder, and marine mammals, including several species of whales, dolphins and porpoises.

"Our results paint a bleak picture of the global status of mammals worldwide," said Schipper.

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Ancient Peru Pyramid Spotted By Satellite

In this satellite image, the white arrows show the buried pyramid and the black arrows other structures which have yet to be investigated. (Photo: National Research Council Italy)

From MSNBC:

Infrared and multispectral images reveal 9,000-square-mile structure.

A new remote sensing technology has peeled away layers of mud and rock near Peru's Cahuachi desert to reveal an ancient adobe pyramid, Italian researchers announced on Friday at a satellite imagery conference in Rome.

Nicola Masini and Rosa Lasaponara of Italy's National Research Council (CNR) discovered the pyramid by analyzing images from the satellite Quickbird, which they used to penetrate the Peruvian soil.

The researchers investigated a test area along the river Nazca. Covered by plants and grass, it was about a mile away from Cahuachi's archaeological site, which contains the remains of what is believed to be the world's biggest mud city.

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AI Being Put The Test

Hal, the supercomputer in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey.
(Photograph: RGA/The Guardian)

'Intelligent' Computers Put To The Test' -- The Guardian

Programmers try to fool human interrogators

Can machines think? That was the question posed by the great mathematician Alan Turing. Half a century later six computers are about to converse with human interrogators in an experiment that will attempt to prove that the answer is yes.

In the 'Turing test' a machine seeks to fool judges into believing that it could be human. The test is performed by conducting a text-based conversation on any subject. If the computer's responses are indistinguishable from those of a human, it has passed the Turing test and can be said to be 'thinking'.

No machine has yet passed the test devised by Turing, who helped to crack German military codes during the Second World War. But at 9am next Sunday, six computer programs - 'artificial conversational entities' - will answer questions posed by human volunteers at the University of Reading in a bid to become the first recognised 'thinking' machine. If any program succeeds, it is likely to be hailed as the most significant breakthrough in artificial intelligence since the IBM supercomputer Deep Blue beat world chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997. It could also raise profound questions about whether a computer has the potential to be 'conscious' - and if humans should have the 'right' to switch it off.

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World’s Biggest Computing Grid Launched

Cern computer grid (Photo from Wikimedia)

From The Science Blog:

The world’s largest computing grid is ready to tackle mankind’s biggest data challenge from the earth’s most powerful accelerator. Today, three weeks after the first particle beams were injected into the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid combines the power of more than 140 computer centers from 33 countries to analyze and manage more than 15 million gigabytes of LHC data every year.

The United States is a vital partner in the development and operation of the WLCG. Fifteen universities and three U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) national laboratories from 11 states contribute their power to the project.

“The U.S. has been an essential partner in the development of the vast distributed computing system that will allow 7,000 scientists around the world to analyze LHC data, complementing its crucial contributions to the construction of the LHC,” said Glen Crawford of the High Energy Physics program in DOE’s Office of Science. DOE and the National Science Foundation support contributions to the LHC and to the computing and networking infrastructures that are an integral part of the project.

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China Sets Sights On First Space Station

From Space Daily:

The success of China's first spacewalk on the Shenzhou 7 mission paves the way for greater things. For China, the next great task will be its first space station. Much reportage has been circulated on this, but ironically, the more we read, the more confused space analysts become. What is China really planning?

It all seemed so simple just a month ago. China would launch a space laboratory on the Shenzhou 8 mission. Despite its name, this would not be a Shenzhou capsule spacecraft, but a new type of vehicle.

This would be followed by the unmanned Shenzhou mission, a conventional Shenzhou, which would dock with it. Finally Shenzhou 10 would carry a crew of three astronauts to the Shenzhou 8-9 complex.

This report seemed reliable for a long time, but this is apparently not the real plan. China has since revealed plans for a small space laboratory module called "Tiangong 1". The name is apparently a reference to a castle or fortress in the sky.

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Winds Are Dominant Cause Of Greenland And West Antarctic Ice Sheet Losses

Above image is not part of original papers, but included to demonstrate the issue. Animation of Arctic sea-ice being pushed by wind patterns. Note that the animation is large, about 7 MB and may take awhile to load on your computer. Source: National Snow and Ice Data Center (Photo from Watts Up With That)

From Watts Up With That:

From Climate Research News.

Two new studies summarized in a news article in Science magazine point to wind-induced circulation changes in the ocean as the dominant cause of the recent ice losses through the glaciers draining both the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets, not ‘global warming.’

The two studies referred to are:

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A Future Timeline for Economics

The Futurist:

The accelerating rate of change in many fields of technology all manifest themselves in terms of human development, some of which can be accurately tracked within economic data. Contrary to what the media may peddle and despite periodic setbacks, average human prosperity is rising at a rate faster than any other time in human history. I have described this in great detail in prior articles, and I continue to be amazed at how little attention is devoted to the important subject of accelerating economic growth, even by other futurists.

The time has thus come for making specific predictions about the details of future economic advancement. I hereby present a speculative future timeline of economic events and milestones, which is a sibling article to Economic Growth is Exponential and Accelerating, v2.0.

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Arctic Sea Ice Annual Freeze-up Underway

Parry Channel in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, as seen by Envisat's ASAR on 25 August 2008, when the direct Northwest Passage was open (right image), and on 22 September 2008 when sea ice is closing the direct Northwest Passage. (Credit: ESA)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Oct. 4, 2008) — After reaching the second-lowest extent ever recorded last month, sea ice in the Arctic has begun to refreeze in the face of autumn temperatures, closing both the Northern Sea Route and the direct route through the Northwest Passage.

This year marked the first time since satellite measurements began in the 1970s that the Northern Sea Route, also known as the Northeast Passage, and the Northwest Passage were both open at the same time for a few weeks.

"NIC analysis of ESA’s Envisat and other satellite datasets indicated that the Northern Sea Route opened when a path through the Vilkitski Strait finally cleared by 5 September," NIC Chief Scientist Dr Pablo Clemente-Colón said via email from aboard the US Coast Guard icebreaker Healy in the Arctic, where he is conducting joint mapping operations with the Canadian Coast Guard.

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Big Bang or Big Bounce?: New Theory on the Universe's Birth

(Photo from Windsor Humanist Society)

From American Scientist:

Atoms are now such a commonplace idea that it is hard to remember how radical they used to seem. When scientists first hypothesized atoms centuries ago, they despaired of ever observing anything so small, and many questioned whether the concept of atoms could even be called scientific. Gradually, however, evidence for atoms accumulated and reached a tipping point with Albert Einstein’s 1905 analysis of Brownian motion, the random jittering of dust grains in a fluid.

... Physicists’ understanding of the composition of space and time is following a similar path, but several steps behind. Just as the behavior of materials indicates that they consist of atoms, the behavior of space and time suggests that they, too, have some fine-scale structure—either a mosaic of spacetime “atoms” or some other filigree work.

Material atoms are the smallest indivisible units of chemical compounds; similarly, the putative space atoms are the smallest indivisible units of distance. They are generally thought to be about 10–35 meter in size, far too tiny to be seen by today’s most powerful instruments, which probe distances as short as 10–18 meter. Consequently, many scientists question whether the concept of atomic spacetime can even be called scientific.

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The Growth Of Geothermal Power

Wairakei Geothermal Power Plant New Zealand (Photo: Wikimedia)

Filipinos Draw Power From Buried Heat -- Washington Post

ORMOC, Philippines -- Ferdinand Marcos, the despot who ruled here for 21 years, is remembered mainly for the staggering quantity of his wife's shoes. But there is another Marcos legacy, and it is drawing new attention at a time of high oil prices, global warming and urgent questions about the role of government in alternative energy development.

Reacting to the early 1970s oil shock, Marcos created a major government program to find, develop and generate electricity from hot rocks deep in the ground. Since then, the Philippine government has championed this form of energy.

Geothermal power now accounts for about 28 percent of the electricity generated in the Philippines. With 90 million people, about 40 percent of whom live on less than $2 a day, this country has become the world's largest consumer of electricity from geothermal sources. Billions of dollars have been saved here because of reduced need for imported oil and coal.

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See A Pattern On Wall Street?

From The New York Times:

Take a look at the two blurry images below. Can you see an object hidden in each one?

Before I give the answers, here’s another question: Do you feel a certain lack of control over events right now?

These questions are not unrelated, according to a report in the new issue of Science by Jennifer Whitson and Adam Galinsky. The researchers found that when people were primed to feel out of control, they were more likely to see patterns where none exist. They would spot an object in each of the images above, even though only the image on the right contains one (the outline of Saturn and its rings). If you thought you saw something in the image on the left, don’t be too hard on yourself — your feeling may be perfectly understandable given the chaos on Wall Street.

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Windfarms Of the Future

An illustration of what wind turbines would look like at different distances from the shore.
P.S.E.G (Photo: New York Times)

New Jersey Grants Rights to Build a Wind Farm About 20 Miles Offshore -- New York Times

Regulators in New Jersey awarded the rights on Friday for construction of a $1 billion offshore wind farm in the southern part of the state to Garden State Offshore Energy. The rights, which include access to as much as $19 million in state grants, is part of New Jersey’s Energy Master Plan, which calls for 20 percent of the state’s energy to come from renewable sources by 2020. The decision comes on the heels of decisions by Delaware and Rhode Island to allow the installation of offshore wind farms.

Energy experts say that these approvals could prompt regulators in New York to support projects off the south shore of Long Island and New York City.

Garden State Offshore Energy is a joint venture that includes P.S.E.G. Renewable Generation, a subsidiary of P.S.E.G. Global, which is a sister company of the state’s largest utility, Public Service Electric and Gas Company.

The proposal by Garden State Offshore Energy includes the installation of 96 turbines to produce as much as 346 megawatts of electricity, enough to power tens of thousands of houses, starting in 2013. The turbines would be arranged in a rectangle about a half-mile long by one-third of a mile wide and would be placed 16 to 20 miles off the coast of New Jersey’s Atlantic and Ocean Counties, much farther out and in much deeper water than other proposed wind farms. Deepwater Wind, which will work with P.S.E.G. to build the wind farm, said it could affordably build turbines in 100 feet of water with the same technology used to build oil and gas rigs in the Gulf of Mexico and other places.

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China And Smoking Go Hand In Hand

China Lung Disease 'To Kill 83m' -- BBC News

A US study has suggested that more than 80 million people in China will die in the next 25 years as a result of lung disease.

The research says the vast majority of those premature deaths are preventable.

The study focused on the devastating impact of smoking and the widespread practice of burning wood or coal at home for cooking and heating.

The Harvard School of Public Health research looked at a 30-year period, spanning the last five and the next 25.

Respiratory disease is already a leading cause of deathChi in China, but this latest study suggests a startling rise.

In the 30-year period, it calculates, about 83 million Chinese people will die prematurely of lung disease.

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Musicians Use Both Sides Of Their Brains More Frequently Than Average People

Supporting what many of us who are not musically talented have often felt, new research reveals that trained musicians really do think differently than the rest of us. (Credit: iStockphoto/Emre Ogan)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Oct. 3, 2008) — Supporting what many of us who are not musically talented have often felt, new research reveals that trained musicians really do think differently than the rest of us. Vanderbilt University psychologists have found that professionally trained musicians more effectively use a creative technique called divergent thinking, and also use both the left and the right sides of their frontal cortex more heavily than the average person.

The research by Crystal Gibson, Bradley Folley and Sohee Park is currently in press at the journal Brain and Cognition.

"We were interested in how individuals who are naturally creative look at problems that are best solved by thinking 'out of the box'," Folley said. "We studied musicians because creative thinking is part of their daily experience, and we found that there were qualitative differences in the types of answers they gave to problems and in their associated brain activity."

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Grief: The Price of Love

Old Man Crying (Photo from Trekearth)

From Live Science:

Years ago while observing a troop of Barbary macaques for behavioral research, I was surprised to see a new mother holding on to her obviously stillborn baby. She clutched the corpse to her chest and made soft cooing sounds, obviously in distress.

More remarkable, she held on to that dead baby for more than a week as it began to decompose.

Eventually, the mother showed up alone, but then it got even sadder. She began to haunt other mothers, those with live babies. She would sit close to them and try to grab those babies and hug them, as if to make up for her loss.

I was clearly witnessing a mother in deep grief, and I felt great empathy.

After all, she had been stuck in an evolutionarily dilemma that all of us, at one time or another, experience. Monkey, apes, humans and all other social animals are born to attach to others because those connections help keep us alive and up the chances of passing on genes. But at the same time, we pay dearly for that advantage when our loved ones leave.

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Earliest Known Human Had Neanderthal Qualities

This map shows the Kibish Formation site, where the fossils of the earliest modern human were found. The site is located in southwest Ethiopia. (Photo from Discover)

From Discover:

Aug. 22, 2008 -- The world's first known modern human was a tall, thin individual -- probably male -- who lived around 200,000 years ago and resembled present-day Ethiopians, save for one important difference: He retained a few primitive characteristics associated with Neanderthals, according to a series of forthcoming studies conducted by multiple international research teams.

The extraordinary findings, which will soon be outlined in a special issue of the Journal of Human Evolution devoted to the first known Homo sapiens, also reveal information about the material culture of the first known people, their surroundings, possible lifestyle and, perhaps most startling, their probable neighbors -- Homo erectus.

"Omo I," as the researchers refer to the find, would probably have been considered healthy-looking and handsome by today's standards, despite the touch of Neanderthal.

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