The Browser Wars -- A Graphical Depiction

(Click The Above Image To Enlarge)

From Cool Infographics:

Great timeline infographic depicting the rise and fall of different browsers portrayed as knights marching across a field. The data set used is available here.

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Anti-Freeze Chemicals 'Could Indicate Life On Mars'

Mars: Perchlorates are rare on earth but they make up one per cent of Mars's soil Photo: GETTY

From The Telegraph:

Life could exist on Mars thanks to chemicals found on the red planet which can prevent water turning into ice, experts have claimed.

The low temperatures on the red planet mean any water would usually be frozen rather than running.

But salts called perchlorates are abundant in the soil of the planet, where temperatures often fall below zero, and can act as a natural anti-freeze.

This suggests there could be liquid water below the surface - increasing the chances of life being able to exist there.

Perchlorates are rare on earth but they make up one per cent of Mars's soil.

They were discovered last year by the robotic arm of NASA's Phoenix lander.

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Alaska Is a Frontier for Green Power

The turbine manufacturer Northern Power Systems has units in eight Alaska villages, including Toksook Bay, above, and is pursing projects in 45 others. Stefan Milkowski for The New York Times

From The New York Times:

TOKSOOK BAY, Alaska — Beyond the fishing boats, the snug homes and the tanks of diesel fuel marking this Eskimo village on the Bering Sea, three huge wind turbines tower over the tundra. Their blades spin slowly in a breeze cold enough to freeze skin.

One of the nation’s harshest landscapes, it turns out, is becoming fertile ground for green power.

As interest in cleaning up power generation grows around the country, Alaska is fast becoming a testing ground for new technologies and an unlikely experiment in oil-state support for renewable energy. Alaskans once cast a wary eye on anything smacking of environmentalism, but today they are investing heavily in green power, not so much to reduce emissions as to save cash.

In remote villages like this one, where diesel to power generators is shipped by barge and can cost more than $5 a gallon in bulk, electricity from renewable sources like wind is already competitive with power made from fossil fuels. In urban areas along the state’s limited road system, large wind and hydroelectric projects are also becoming attractive.

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Engineers Create Intelligent Molecules That Seek And Destroy Diseased Cells

White Blood Cells (Photo from Franklin Institute)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Feb. 18, 2009) — Current treatments for diseases like cancer typically destroy nasty malignant cells, while also hammering the healthy ones. Using new advances in synthetic biology, researchers are designing molecules intelligent enough to recognize diseased cells, leaving the healthy cells alone.

"We basically design molecules that actually go into the cell and do an analysis of the cellular state before delivering the therapeutic punch," said Christina Smolke, assistant professor of bioengineering who joined Stanford University in January.

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Idea Of Infinity Stretched Back To Third Century B.C.

From Live Science:

CHICAGO - The first mathematical use of the concept of actual infinity has been pushed back some 2,000 years via a new analysis of a tattered page of parchment on which a medieval monk in Constantinople copied the third century B.C. work of the Greek mathematician Archimedes.

Infinity is one of the most fundamental questions in mathematics and still remains an unsolved riddle. For instance, if you add or subtract a number from infinity, the remaining value is still infinity, some Indian philosophers said. Mathematicians today refer to actual infinity as an uncountable set of numbers such as the number of points existing on a line at the same time, while a potential infinity is an endless sequence that unfolds consecutively over time.

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AIDS Top Killer Disease In China Last Year: Govt

From Reuters:

BEIJING (Reuters) - The AIDS virus became the top deadly infectious disease in China last year for the first time, killing 6,897 people in the first nine months of 2008, the official news agency Xinhua said on Tuesday.

The number of people infected with the HIV/AIDS virus doubled during that period, Xinhua said, citing a report posted on the Ministry of Health website.

Xinhua said there were a total of 264,302 HIV/AIDS cases by the end of September last year and 34,864 people have died of the disease so far.

United Nations figures estimate that 700,000 people in China were HIV positive by the end of 2007.

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Dolphin Stays For Three Days With Mate Wounded In Shark Attack - Before Escorting It To Humans For Help

Chunks of Nari's neck were literally bitten off as his flesh was torn right down to the muscle by the shark in these horrific injuries

From The Daily Mail:

A dolphin badly injured in a shark attack has been escorted by a mate into the care of human hands.

Nari sustained a hideous wound across his head and back, and when he went missing, wildlife experts feared he had died.

The 12-year-old dolphin failed to turn up for his ritual feeding off the coast of Queensland - but so did his older companion Echo.

But after three days the pair turned up with the rest of the group.

Mr Trevor Long, a dolphin expert from Sea World on the Gold Coast, said: 'We didn't see Nari again until the third day, when he turned up with Echo at his side.

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Strange Green Comet Passing by Earth Next Week

Feb. 1: Comet Lulin as photographed by amateur astronomer Jack Newton in Arizona.
Jack Newton/NASA

From FOX News:

WASHINGTON — An odd, greenish backward-flying comet is zipping by Earth this month, as it takes its only trip toward the sun from the farthest edges of the solar system.

The comet is called Lulin, and there's a chance it can be seen with the naked eye — far from city lights, astronomers say. But you'll most likely need a telescope, or at least binoculars, to spot it.

The best opportunity is just before dawn one-third of the way up the southern sky. It should be near Saturn and two bright stars, Spica and Regula.

On Monday at 10:43 p.m. EST, it will be 38 million miles from Earth, the closest it will ever get, according to Donald Yeomans, manager of NASA's Near Earth Object program.

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Deadly Bacteria Defy Drugs, Alarming Doctors

A new category of bugs becomes more resistant to treatment, and their toll -- which already includes a Brazilian beauty queen -- is expected to rise.

From the L.A. Times:

When Ruth Burns had surgery to relieve a pinched nerve in her back, the operation was supposed to be an "in-and-out thing," recalled her daughter, Kacia Warren.

But Burns developed pneumonia and was put on a ventilator. Five days later, she was discharged -- only to be rushed by her daughter to the hospital hours later, disoriented and in alarming pain.

Seventeen days after the surgery, the 67-year-old nurse was dead.

Burns had developed meningitis -- an infection of the fluid that surrounds the spinal cord and brain. The culprit wasAcinetobacter baumannii, a bug that preys on the weak in hospitals. Worse, it was a multi-drug-resistant strain.

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Prosecution Drops Some Charges Against the Pirate Bay

From The Danger Room:

STOCKHOLM — Prosecutors dropped half of the charges in the landmark trial of The Pirate Bay file sharing site Tuesday, leaving observers stunned and prompting questions about the government's preparedness in the long-awaited criminal proceeding.

"I will drop all charges that relate to producing infringing copies and will hence restrict the prosecution to the act of making works available to the public," prosecutor Hakan Roswall announced at the opening of the second day of the trial. "When I talk about making something available to the public I mean making available torrent files."

At an intermission, Roswall refused to clarify the change of heart to reporters. "As you can see I have a lot of other things to think about," he said. "There will be new adjusted charges distributed on paper tomorrow, Wednesday."

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Race For 'God Particle' Heats Up

Lyn Evans says the magnet incident was a real setback for Cern

From The BBC:

Europe's particle physics lab, Cern, is losing ground rapidly in the race to discover the elusive Higgs boson, or "God particle", its US rival claims.

The particle, whose existence has been predicted by theoreticians, would help to explain why matter has mass.

Finding the Higgs is a major goal of Cern's Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

But the US Fermilab says the odds of its Tevatron accelerator detecting the famed particle first are now 50-50 at worst, and up to 96% at best.

Both machines hope to see evidence of the Higgs by colliding sub-atomic matter at very high speeds. If it exists, the Higgs should emerge from the debris.

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Hansen On “Death Trains” And Coal And CO2

From Watts Up With That?

NASA’s Dr. James Hansen once again goes over the top. See his most recent article in the UK Guardian. Some excerpts:

“The trains carrying coal to power plants are death trains. Coal-fired power plants are factories of death.”

And this:

Clearly, if we burn all fossil fuels, we will destroy the planet we know. Carbon dioxide would increase to 500 ppm or more.

Only one problem there Jimbo, CO2 has been a lot higher in the past. Like 10 times higher.

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IBM Files Patent for Bullet Dodging Bionic Body Armor

From Tech Fragments:

IBM has filed a patent (US 7484451) for Bionic Body Armor, that could essentially allow us to dodge bullets like Neo in The Matrix. The armor would scan areas for incoming projectiles and when one is detected the system would deliver a shock to the muscles causing a swift reflexive action away from the projectile. Here's what the patent describes the body armor as:

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My Comment: Body armor of the future .... now.

How Astronomers Search for Ice Age Aliens

Some astrobiologists think plants on other worlds could have
purple, not green, chlorophyll. FNC/NASA

From FOX News/Space:

Could an alien astronomer have detected life on Earth during an ice age?

Recent work has calculated how past climate extremes affected the light reflected from vegetation out into space. The results could give hope to our own search for life on distant worlds.

From far away, our planet is a single faint speck of light in the sky. Although we have sent radio messages out to potential extraterrestrial listeners, none of these signals have traveled more than a few tens of light years.

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Stem Cells In Hair Follicles Point To General Model Of Organ Regeneration

Deep roots. For a hair follicle to begin a new phase of growth, an elusive group of cells called the hair germ (bright red) must be activated. This progression of images shows that the hair germ begins proliferating (green) before other cells do, suggesting a two-step mechanism. (Credit: Image courtesy of Rockefeller University)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Feb. 16, 2009) — Most people consider hair as a purely cosmetic part of their lives. To others, it may help uncover one of nature’s best-kept secrets: the body’s ability to regenerate organs. Now, new research from Rockefeller University gets to the root of the problem, revealing that a structure at the base of each strand of hair, the hair follicle, uses a two-step mechanism to activate its stem cells and order them to divide.

The mechanism provides insights into how repositories of stem cells may be organized in other body tissues for the purpose of supporting organ regeneration.

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Blacksmithing 101: How To Make A Forge And Start Hammering Metal

PM editors Roy Berendsohn (left) and Mike Allen (right) have framed houses and built race cars—but forge steel in the garage? That was something new.

From Popular Mechanics:

PM's home and auto editors took a weekend out to teach themselves how to heat and hammer metal the old-fashioned way. They started by ordering an anvil and making their own blacksmith forge. The sparks flew from there. Click here to download an updated version of the forge plans published in Popular Mechanics in 1941.

If you want to work with metal, there’s one thing you have to confront: You need heat. With it, you can make the toughest metal submit to your will. Without it, you’ll never gain full mastery over this stubborn material.

Over the years, I have been frustrated by my inability to work hot steel. I’ve bolted metal together, welded it and soldered it. But I couldn’t shape it, and so large swaths of the mechanical realm were off-limits to me.

But blacksmithing never felt alien. My father is a metallurgist, descended from generations of 19th-century blacksmiths and born in Germany to shipbuilders whose forges scattered sparks over the shores of the Elbe River and the North Sea. I grew up in rural Connecticut among Yankee mechanics who could forge anything, machine anything, build anything, fix anything—and I’ve been trying to live up to those old-timers’ standards all my life. It wasn’t hard to finally decide to take another step, and teach myself some blacksmithing skills.

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Women Less Tolerant Of Each Other Than Men Are, Study Finds

From Telegraph:

Women are less tolerant of each other than men are, according to a new study which may explain why some women prefer to have a male boss.

The research, published in the US journal Psychological Science, found that women formed a negative view of their peers much quicker than men did.

The team from Emmanuel College in Boston asked male and female college students to rate their room-mates under different scenarios.

When asked to judge how they would rate their room-mates if they carried out a single fictional act of negative behaviour, after they had been otherwise completely trustworthy, women were far more likely to be critical of them.

Men, on the other hand, were much more tolerant.

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Empathy Partly Based On Genes, Mouse Study Shows

New research demonstrates that a highly social strain of mice can learn to associate a sound played in a specific cage with something negative simply by hearing a mouse in that cage respond with squeaks of distress. (Credit: iStockphoto/Brandon Laufenberg)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Feb. 16, 2009) — The ability to empathize with others is partially determined by genes, according to new research on mice from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU).

In the study, a highly social strain of mice learned to associate a sound played in a specific cage with something negative simply by hearing a mouse in that cage respond with squeaks of distress. A genetically different mouse strain with fewer social tendencies did not learn any connection between the cues and the other mouse's distress, showing that the ability to identify and act on another's emotions may have a genetic basis.

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Infectious Superbug Invades Beaches

From Live Science:

CHICAGO — Add the MRSA "superbug" to the list of concerns you bring to the beach nowadays, a research doctor said today.

It's still safe to go in the water, especially if you shower thoroughly before and after swimming, but antibiotic-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, a strain of bacteria that can cause staph infections that are difficult to treat with traditional anti-infection drugs such as methicillin, can be caught when you take a dip in ocean water, said Dr. Lisa Plano of the University of Miami's Miller School of Medicine.

MRSA stands for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or multiple-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. It has become a deadly and growing problem in hospitals in recent years.

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Last Week's Satellite Collision Is Now Called A "Catastrophic Event"

Image: This image provided by the European Space Agency shows and artist impression of catalogued objects in low-Earth orbit viewed over the Equator. Scientists are keeping a close eye on orbital debris created when two communications satellites _ one American, the other Russian _ smashed into each other hundreds of miles above Siberia Feb. 10, 2009. (AP Photo/ESA)

"Catastrophic" Space Crash Spews Debris -- CBS News

Space Junk Generated From Satellite Collision Could Threaten Other Satellites For 10,000 Years, Experts Say

(CBS/AP) The crash of two satellites has generated an estimated tens of thousands of pieces of space junk that could circle Earth and threaten other satellites for the next 10,000 years, space experts said Friday.

One called the collision "a catastrophic event" that he hoped would force the new U.S. administration to address the issue of debris in space.

Russian Mission Control chief Vladimir Solovyov said Tuesday's smashup of a derelict Russian military satellite and a working U.S. Iridium commercial satellite occurred in the busiest part of near-Earth space - some 500 miles (800 kilometers) above Earth.

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