Our Eyes Constantly Flicker To Stop Us Going Blind, Experts Discover

Scientists believe flickering eye movements 'refresh' images on the retina

From The Daily Mail:

Unconscious flickering eye movements once thought to be random 'motor noise' may in fact be necessary to stop us going blind, a study has shown.

The imperceptible jumps and jiggles known as 'microsaccades' mean that a really steady stare is impossible.

Even when trying to fix a gaze on a stationary target, the eyes are always moving.

Experts have long dismissed these movements as the accidental result of spurious nerve signals. But new research shows they are actively controlled by the same brain region used to scan newspaper columns or track a moving object.

Scientists now think microsaccades provide a vital function by 'refreshing' images on the retina which would otherwise fade away.

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World's Greatest Hacker Says Obama's BlackBerry Can Be Breached

Jan. 29: President Obama checks his BlackBerry as he walks along the West Wing Colonnade towards the Oval Office at the White House in Washington. Photo AP

From FOX News:

There's a new "holy grail" for hackers — President Obama's super-secure BlackBerry.

Despite warnings from his advisers, the president insisted on keeping his beloved PDA, which now has specially designed superencrypting security software.

But that just makes cracking into it more challenging — and, yes, it can be done, says the world's most famous hacker.

"It's a long shot, but it's possible," Kevin Mitnick told FOXNews.com. "You'd probably need to be pretty sophisticated, but there's people out there who are."

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Biotechnology's Potential Barely Exploited: Scientists

This picture released by the Seoul research institute Maria BioTech shows human embryonic stem cells. New research tools will bring a boom in biotechnology that will unlock the enormous potential of using synthetic life to cure disease and develop environmentally friendly fuels, scientists say. (AFP/HO/File)

From Yahoo News/AFP:

CHICAGO (AFP) – New research tools will bring a boom in biotechnology that will unlock the enormous potential of using synthetic life to cure disease and develop environmentally friendly fuels, scientists say.

"If you look at all the things biology can do with technology, we have not yet scratched the surface," said Drew Endy, assistant professor of bioengineering at Stanford University.

The past 35 years of biotech development have introduced a number of "tremendous applications," particularly in the area of bioengineered drugs, Endy said at the annual conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science here.

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Doomed: Why Wikipedia Will Fail

From Ars Technica:

A cyberlaw professor argues that Wikipedia is doomed. The online encyclopedia will need to choose between being "high quality" and "open," but both choices are fraught with risk.

Law professor Eric Goldman loves Wikipedia, but he's also convinced that the site contains the "seeds of its own destruction." In other words, not to put too fine a point upon it, Wikipedia will fail.

Goldman made his provocative point at the Silicon Flatirons conference this weekend in Boulder, Colorado, standing at a heavy wooden podium in a multiuse room that had been donated to the University of Colorado by a graduating class back in the 1960s. Those students could not have foreseen Wikipedia at the time, but by 2008, everyone gathered in that room—from corporate vice presidents to think tank bosses to academics—had made use of the collaborative online encyclopedia.

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The Secret of Successful Kissing

Droolly Smooches! : RebeccaJBuckley (CC Licensed)

From PopSci:

It's in the drool, fool.

Can drooling make you a better kisser? Scientific evidence suggests that wet, sloppy smooches pack a bigger biochemical punch than dry kisses and thus may be more likely to lead to sex and reproduction, says Rutgers University researcher Helen Fischer, who spoke today at the AAAS conference in Chicago.

Men are particularly prone to sloppy kissing, she notes, possibly because males tend to have a poor sense of smell and taste and aggressive face sucking may be an unconscious effort to gauge a partner's estrogen levels and fertility cycle. It may also be an unwitting effort to transmit testosterone, which can be found in saliva and can increase sexual attraction. Alternatively, it may also be just plain gross. (That would be my unscientific conclusion.)

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Galaxy Has 'Billions Of Earths'

From The BBC:

There could be one hundred billion Earth-like planets in our galaxy, a US conference has heard.

Dr Alan Boss of the Carnegie Institution of Science said many of these worlds could be inhabited by simple lifeforms.

He was speaking at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Chicago.

So far, telescopes have been able to detect just over 300 planets outside our Solar System.

Very few of these would be capable of supporting life, however. Most are gas giants like our Jupiter; and many orbit so close to their parent stars that any microbes would have to survive roasting temperatures.

But, based on the limited numbers of planets found so far, Dr Boss has estimated that each Sun-like star has on average one "Earth-like" planet.

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Scientists Map the 10 Billion Neurons of Human Cerebral Cortex & Find A Central Switchboard

Image from The Daily Galaxy

From The Daily Galaxy:

The study of the human brain is one of the most fascinating, and incredibly meta, subjects in existence. The almost Escherian experiments of one brain studying another brain (which is thinking about being studied by the first) have up to now been held back by one thing: the brain's owner is kind of using it so you can't poke too hard. Now a new scanning technique has allowed scientists to probe deeper than ever into the secrets of the mind.

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Study Takes Step Toward Erasing Bad Memories

Image from The Daily Galaxy:

From Zimbio:

LONDON, Feb 15 (Reuters) - A widely available blood pressure pill could one day help people erase bad memories, perhaps treating some anxiety disorders and phobias, according to a Dutch study published on Sunday.

The generic beta-blocker propranolol significantly weakened people's fearful memories of spiders among a group of healthy volunteers who took it, said Merel Kindt, a psychologist at the University of Amsterdam, who led the study.

"We could show that the fear response went away, which suggests the memory was weakened," Kindt said in a telephone interview.

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Tailplane Icing (Video)

NASA figured it all out 11 years ago. The link is HERE.

Do We Need A New Internet?

Image by Guy Hoffman

From The New York Times:

Two decades ago a 23-year-old Cornell University graduate student brought the Internet to its knees with a simple software program that skipped from computer to computer at blinding speed, thoroughly clogging the then-tiny network in the space of a few hours.

The program was intended to be a digital “Kilroy Was Here.” Just a bit of cybernetic fungus that would unobtrusively wander the net. However, a programming error turned it into a harbinger heralding the arrival of a darker cyberspace, more of a mirror for all of the chaos and conflict of the physical world than a utopian refuge from it.

Since then things have gotten much, much worse.

Bad enough that there is a growing belief among engineers and security experts that Internet security and privacy have become so maddeningly elusive that the only way to fix the problem is to start over.

What a new Internet might look like is still widely debated, but one alternative would, in effect, create a “gated community” where users would give up their anonymity and certain freedoms in return for safety. Today that is already the case for many corporate and government Internet users. As a new and more secure network becomes widely adopted, the current Internet might end up as the bad neighborhood of cyberspace. You would enter at your own risk and keep an eye over your shoulder while you were there.

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Mini Nuclear Plants In Alaska

The Toshiba 4S (Super-Safe, Small and Simple) nuclear power plant is designed to be delivered, installed, and carried away 30 years later. It may meet the needs of remote sites around the world. Adapted by Morgan Ryan and Stephanie Freese from image provided by Toshiba Corporation.

A Nuke on the Yukon?

Mini-nukes arrive at the regulatory gate. Will they get through?

Morgan Ryan

Galena, Alaska, could be the type specimen for remoteness. A tiny town of about 700 on a bend of the Yukon River, it has no roads in and depends on the river for food, fuel and supplies. The river is frozen eight to nine months of the year. Galena residents pay three times the national average per kilowatt hour for diesel-generated electricity. Alternative energy would have special appeal for Galena, but with an evening that stretches 20 hours in the winter, solar is out. With the help of Toshiba and its American holding, Westinghouse, Galena is thinking nuclear.

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Camouflaging Of Viral DNA Could Be Crucial Step In Progression Of Cancers

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Feb. 14, 2009) — An estimated 15% of cancer cases can be linked to a viral infection, however the biological changes that cause some asymptomatic carriers of a virus to develop full-blown tumors are not well understood. In a study published online in Genome Research, scientists have mapped a chemical modification of DNA in three oncogenic viruses (Epstein-Barr, human papilloma virus, and hepatitis B virus) and found that the viral genome undergoes critical changes during the progression of disease, with implications for the development of new methods of prevention, diagnosis, and treatment.

Worldwide, most people are already infected with the Epstein-Barr virus, and millions are infected with the human papilloma virus and the hepatitis B virus. Many of these individuals will develop disease, and some will eventually develop a viral-related cancer such as lymphoma, liver cancer, or cervical cancer. Understanding how infections of viruses such as these can progress to cancer in some individuals is essential to the development of new methods to attack the virus and prevent malignancies.

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Scientists Warn Of First Ever Case Of Human Mad Cow Disease From Blood Plasma

From The Telegraph:

The first case of a person being infected with the human form of mad cow disease after receiving contaminated blood plasma has been identified by scientists.

The man was one of thousands of haemophiliacs who received blood plasma transfusions in the years before strict controls were brought in to eliminate the spread of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD).

Until now, scientists had maintained that the 4,000 people who may have received plasma from infected donors were at very low risk of developing the fatal brain disease. Warnings were issued to them as a "highly precautionary measure".

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New Artificial DNA Points to Alien Life

From Live Science:

CHICAGO — A strange, new genetic code a lot like that found in all terrestrial life is sitting in a beaker full of oily water in a laboratory in Florida, a scientist said today, calling it the first example of an artificial chemical system that is capable of Darwinian evolution.

The system is made of the four molecules that are the basic building blocks of our DNA along with eight synthetic modifications of them, said biochemist Steven A. Benner of the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution in Gainesville.

The main difference between the synthetic molecules and those that make up conventional DNA is that Benner's molecules cannot make copies of themselves, although that is just "a couple of years" away, he said.

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Wildlife Salute Valentines Day Of Their Own

Grizzly family. (Credit: Image courtesy of National Wildlife Federation)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Feb. 14, 2009) — While they might not be giving roses and writing love poems, wildlife have some pretty fascinating – and sometimes downright bizarre – courtship and mating rituals of their own. You won’t find singles bars or online dating sites for grizzly bears but our furry and feathered friends have some pretty interesting habits.

Here are some intriguing examples provided by the National Wildlife Federation:

* Female moths release a chemical called a pheromone into the air that male moths find irresistible. The males detect the females’ intoxicating perfume with their fuzzy, sensitive antennae. A single female moth can lure dozens of males. The bolas spider has figured out a way to mimic the pheromones of certain moths, thus luring unsuspecting male moths to an untimely death in her clutches. Talk about deadly perfume!

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Obama's BlackBerry Brings Personal Safety Risks

President Obama and his BlackBerry at the White House in late January.
(Credit: UPI Photo/Ron Sachs/Pool)

From CNET News:

When the mainstream media first announced Barack Obama's "victory" in keeping his BlackBerry, the focus was on the security of the device, and keeping the U.S. president's e-mail communications private from spies and hackers.

The news coverage and analysis by armchair security experts thus far has failed to focus on the real threat: attacks against President Obama's location privacy, and the potential physical security risks that come with someone knowing the president's real-time physical location.

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The Sweet Truth: Chocolate Can Be Healthy

From Live Science:

A bar of chocolate for your Valentine isn’t just a sweet treat, it can also be a boon to the body.

The ways in which the compounds in chocolate interact with our bodies' systems, from the stomach to the heart, have been an active area of research in recent years. Several studies have found that in small amounts, dark chocolate in particular can help prevent the blood from clumping up, keep the heart healthy and even provide some anti-cancer benefits.

Scientists caution that chocolate is far from being a cure-all, of course. But what could be better than knowing such an indulgence might be good for you?

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Scientists Discover Material Harder Than Diamond

Photo: A diamond ring. Scientists have calculated that wurtzite boron nitride and lonsdaleite (hexagonal diamond) both have greater indentation strengths than diamond. Source: English Wikipedia.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Currently, diamond is regarded to be the hardest known material in the world. But by considering large compressive pressures under indenters, scientists have calculated that a material called wurtzite boron nitride (w-BN) has a greater indentation strength than diamond. The scientists also calculated that another material, lonsdaleite (also called hexagonal diamond, since it’s made of carbon and is similar to diamond), is even stronger than w-BN and 58 percent stronger than diamond, setting a new record.

This analysis marks the first case where a material exceeds diamond in strength under the same loading conditions, explain the study’s authors, who are from Shanghai Jiao Tong University and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. The study is published in a recent issue of Physical Review Letters.

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Astronomers Unveiling Life's Cosmic Origins

The Cosmic Chemistry Cycle. (Credit: Bill Saxton, NRAO/AUI/NSF)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Feb. 13, 2009) — Processes that laid the foundation for life on Earth -- star and planet formation and the production of complex organic molecules in interstellar space -- are yielding their secrets to astronomers armed with powerful new research tools, and even better tools soon will be available.

Astronomers described three important developments at a symposium on the "Cosmic Cradle of Life" at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Chicago, IL.

In one development, a team of astrochemists released a major new resource for seeking complex interstellar molecules that are the precursors to life. The chemical data released by Anthony Remijan of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) and his university colleagues is part of the Prebiotic Interstellar Molecule Survey, or PRIMOS, a project studying a star-forming region near the center of our Milky Way Galaxy.

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The Romantic Evolution of True Love

From Live Science:

True love is all about finding that one certain someone, and anthropologists have led us to believe that the quest for the perfect mate is evolutionarily based. Humans are, the researchers contend, a naturally pair-boded species.

The standard scenario goes like this: Human babies are born about three months too soon because upright walking changed the female pelvis and babies have to get out before their heads grow too big. As a result, human babies are born neurologically unfinished; they can’t sit up or grasp or do much of anything. By necessity, adult humans are designed to respond to the cries and babbles of infants; we rush to feed them and pick them up. The burden of this kind of child care is so intense, they say, that it takes two parents to bring up even one baby.

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