Scientists Make Advances On 'Nano' Electronics

Axial quadrupole nanostructures in an illustration courtesy of the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Two U.S. teams have developed new materials that may pave the way for ever smaller, faster and more powerful electronics as current semiconductor technology begins to reach the limits of miniaturization. Photo: REUTERS/Handout

From Wired Science/Reuters:

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Two U.S. teams have developed new materials that may pave the way for ever smaller, faster and more powerful electronics as current semiconductor technology begins to reach the limits of miniaturization.

One team has made tiny transistors -- the building block of computer processors -- a fraction of the size of those used on advanced silicon chips.

Another has made a film material capable of storing data from 250 DVDs onto a surface the size of a coin.

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As The World's Languages Disappear, Basque Revives

From McClatchy:

ST. JEAN DE LUZ, France — The world is losing languages at an alarming rate, a United Nations agency reported Thursday, with thousands of tongues expected to disappear by the end of this century.

Yet amid the losses, one community — the Basque people, who live in the mountainous region of southern France and northern Spain — is reviving a language that many once feared would die out.

In St. Jean de Luz, a seaside town near the Spanish border at the western edge of the Pyrenees, efforts are under way to revitalize the Basque language, which 30 years ago was rarely heard outside mountain villages. Among a population of about 3 million in the Basque region, which comprises seven provinces in Spain and France, an estimated 700,000 people speak Basque today.

Bilingual signs dot the roads and mark storefronts, and an annual festival celebrates the Basque language, music and culture. Public and private schools full of children and adults learn Basque.

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It's All Systems Go For Europa

Europa, dwarfed by Jupiter, is in the center of this image taken by the Cassini spacecraft on Dec. 7, 2000. "Europa is tremendously exciting," a NASA official said. NASA

From The L.A. Times:

NASA unveils plans for a 20-year project to send a spacecraft to Jupiter's ice-covered moon in a search for life.

NASA announced plans Wednesday to embark on a mammoth 20-year project to send a spacecraft to Jupiter's ice-covered moon Europa as its next flagship mission to search for life elsewhere in the solar system.

The mission, which could cost as much as $3 billion, will be managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge. It will focus on the possibility that in the gigantic ocean thought to be hidden under the moon's thick cover of ice is a habitable zone where rudimentary forms of life could exist.

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Arctic Sea Ice Underestimated For Weeks Due To Faulty Sensor

From Bloomberg:

A glitch in satellite sensors caused scientists to underestimate the extent of Arctic sea ice by 500,000 square kilometers (193,000 square miles), a California- size area, the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center said.

The error, due to a problem called “sensor drift,” began in early January and caused a slowly growing underestimation of sea ice extent until mid-February. That’s when “puzzled readers” alerted the NSIDC about data showing ice-covered areas as stretches of open ocean, the Boulder, Colorado-based group said on its Web site.

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Update: Sea Ice Sensor Degradation Hits Cryosphere Today -- Watts Up With That?

Cosmic Stage Set for Comet Lulin's Fly-By

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

From FOX News/Space.com:

A recently discovered comet is making its closest approach to Earth in the next few days and offers anyone with binoculars or a small telescope a chance to see some frozen leftovers of our solar system's making.

Comet Lulin has, as expected, crossed the threshold to naked-eye visibility for people with dark, rural skies. It hovers just inside that envelope of visibility, however, and is not likely visible from cities, where the glare of urban lights can drown out all but the brightest night-sky objects.

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Atlantis Revealed At Last... Or Just A Load Of Old Googles?

False hopes: Google said the grid-like markings, thought to reveal the location of mythical underwater city Atlantis, are an artifact of its map making process

From The Daily Mail:

For centuries the story of Atlantis has captured the imagination - a fabled city of great beauty, culture and wealth that was suddenly swallowed up by the ocean.

Its location - or at least the source of the legend - remained a tantalising mystery. Was it really in the Mediterranean and not in the Atlantic at all?

Some claim its ruins lie beneath the waves off the coast of Cornwall. Others say they've been found in the Black Sea.

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NASA's Kepler Mission To Seek Other Earths

Artist's concept of Kepler in space. (Credit: NASA/JPL)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Feb. 20, 2009) — NASA's Kepler spacecraft is ready to be moved to the launch pad today and will soon begin a journey to search for worlds that could potentially host life.

Kepler is scheduled to blast into space from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla., aboard a Delta II rocket on March 5 at 7:48 p.m. Pacific Time (10:48 p.m. Eastern Time). It is the first mission with the ability to find planets like Earth -- rocky planets that orbit sun-like stars in a warm zone where liquid water could be maintained on the surface. Liquid water is believed to be essential for the formation of life.

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Most Wars Occur in Biodiversity Hotspots

Photo from My Daily Clarity

From Live Science:

More than 80 percent of the world's major armed conflicts from 1950-2000 occurred in regions identified as the most biologically diverse and threatened places on Earth.

Scientists compared major conflict zones with the Earth's 34 biodiversity hotspots identified by Conservation International (CI). The hotspots are considered top conservation priorities because they contain the entire populations of more than half of all plant species and at least 42 percent of all vertebrates, and are highly threatened.

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Pentagon Official: U.S. Is Not Developing Space Weapons

The USS Lake Erie launches a Standard Missile-3 at a non-functioning National Reconnaissance Office satellite as it traveled in space at more than 17,000 mph over the Pacific Ocean on Feb. 20, 2008. Credit: Defense Dept. photo by U.S. Navy

From Live Science:

STRASBOURG, France - The United States is not developing space weapons and could not afford to do so even if it wanted to, an official with the Pentagon's National Security Space Office said Thursday.

Pete Hays, a senior policy analyst at the space office who is also associate director of the Eisenhower Center for Space and Defense Studies, said U.S. policy on space weaponry has remained pretty much the same over the last 30 years despite the occasionally heated debate on the subject during the administration of former U.S. President George W. Bush.

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Lessons In Survival

Illustration by Josh Cochran for Newsweek

From Newsweek:

The science that explains why elite military forces bounce back faster than the rest of us.

In a laboratory, it's extremely difficult to study why some people are better at bouncing back than others because it's so hard to simulate the real stresses and strains of life. Scientists can show people scary pictures or movies to trigger their reactions and measure how they recover, but it's hardly the same as a mugger in an alley or a grizzly bear on a hiking trail. Dr. Andy Morgan of Yale Medical School set out to find a real-world laboratory where he could watch people under incredible stress in reasonably controlled conditions.

He ended up in southeastern North Carolina at Fort Bragg, home of the Army's elite Airborne and Special Forces. This is where the Army's renowned survival school is located. It's also where they believe in something called stress inoculation. Like vaccines, a small challenge or dose of a virus in your system prepares and defends you against a bigger challenge. In other words, they expose you to pressure and suffering in training so you'll build up your immunity. It's a kind of classic psychological conditioning: the more shocks to your system, the more you're able to withstand.

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Why Would A Chimpanzee Attack A Human?

A DANGEROUS COUSIN: This chimp from the Knoxville Zoo bears its teeth to visitors, who observe from behind glass. Chimpanzees have been known to bite off fingers from behind bars. FLICKR/THE GUT

From Scientific American:

After a chimp mutilated a Connecticut woman's face, some are questioning the wisdom of keeping wild animals as pets

Earlier this week, a 14-year-old, 200-pound (90-kilogram) pet chimpanzee in Stamford, Conn., left a woman in critical condition after attacking her—mutilating her face and hands. The owner, Sandra Herold, who tried to stop the attack, was also injured and briefly hospitalized. The victim remains in critical condition.

The chimp, Travis, who was shot and killed by police officers at the scene, was apparently a friendly fixture around the neighborhood. He appeared in television commercials and had a sapiens-level CV that included using a computer, bathing and sipping wine from a stemmed glass, according to The New York Times. Reports, however, are starting to surface that Travis might have bitten another woman in 1996 and that Herold had been warned by animal control that her pet could be dangerous.

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Telescope Spies Cataclysmic Blast

Photo: Main facts of the Fermi Mission:
Spacecraft was launched in June 2008 on a five-year mission
It is looking at the Universe in the highest-energy form of light
Fermi is 2.8m (9.2ft) high and 2.4m (8.2ft) in diameter
The spacecraft orbits at an altitude of 565km (350 miles)
It could pick up about 200 cosmic explosions each year

From The BBC:

Astronomers have recorded the most powerful radiation blast from deep space yet detected.

The event was observed by Nasa's recently launched Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope and reported in the online edition of the journal Science.

The source of the blast is assumed to be the catastrophic implosion of a star, to create a black hole.

Scientists say the spectacle's energy release was equivalent to thousands of ordinary exploding stars.

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Lost In Space: 8 Weird Pieces Of Space Junk

From Wired:

Humans have ventured into space over the last 50 years, and all manner of junk has been left behind. From tiny bolts to whole space stations, people have discarded lots of stuff up there. Much of it eventually dies a fiery death as it falls through Earth's atmosphere, but some larger debris poses risks for astronauts and spacecraft that could collide with it. Here are some of the quirkier items left in space:

1. Spatula
While spreading some goo as a test of heat-shield repair materials, spacewalking astronaut Piers Sellers accidentally lost a spatula he had been using. The mishap took place during the space shuttle Discovery's 2006 STS-121 flight to the International Space Station, on a mission to test new safety techniques after the 2003 Columbia disaster. "That was my favorite spatch," Sellers reportedly said. "Don’t tell the other spatulas."

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New Atlas Shows Dying Languages Around The World

Click On The Image To Enlarge (Image from Thinking Shift)

From Yahoo News/AP:

PARIS – Only one native speaker of Livonian remains on Earth, in Latvia. The Alaskan language Eyak went extinct last year when its last surviving speaker passed away.

Those are just two of the nearly 2,500 languages that UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, says are in danger of becoming extinct or have recently disappeared. That's out of a total of 6,000 world languages.

In a presentation Thursday of a new world atlas of endangered languages, linguists stressed the list is not restricted to small or far-flung countries. They also sought to encourage immigrants to treasure their native languages.

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How Steroids Work

From Live Science:

A $252 million contract to play baseball causes "an enormous amount of pressure ... to perform at a high level every day," according to Alex Rodriguez. The New York Yankees' third baseman provided details this week about the anabolic steroids he used from 2001 to 2003 after he had signed a record-setting deal with his former team, the Texas Rangers.

Here is what most of us know about anabolic steroids: they make muscles grow faster, there are harmful side effects to our health, most sports leagues have banned them, and they are illegal without a prescription.

But how do they actually work? Does an athlete just pop a few pills and then wait for the Popeye-spinach effect? Let's dig a little deeper into the science of steroids.

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Easter Island’s Controversial Collapse: More To The Story Than Deforestation?

The famous stone sculptures on Easter Island where Dr. Stevenson and Rapanui scientist Sonia Haoa have worked with Earthwatch volunteers for the last 20 years to uncover new twists in the story of Easter Island. (Credit: Charles H. Whitfield)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Feb. 18, 2009) — Easter Island (Rapa Nui) has gained recognition in recent years due in part to a book that used it as a model for societal collapse from bad environmental practices—ringing alarm bells for those concerned about the health of the planet today. But that’s not the whole story, says Dr. Chris Stevenson, an archaeologist who has studied the island—famous for its massive stone statues—with a Rapa Nui scientist, Sonia Haoa, and Earthwatch volunteers for nearly 20 years.

The ancient Rapanui people did abuse their environment, but they were also developing sustainable practices—innovating, experimenting, trying to adapt to a risky environment—and they would still be here in traditional form if it weren’t for the diseases introduced by European settlers in the 1800s.

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Inside FIRST Robotics 2009: Robots Are Now Ready To Rumble

From Popular Mechanics:

On Tuesday, high school robotics teams from around the country concluded the six-week build period ahead of next month’s regional FIRST Robotics Competitions. Popular Mechanics dropped in on the Pirates of George Westinghouse High, in Brooklyn, as they made their final pre-shipment adjustments.

The tension brimmed outside Room 254, the home base of George Westinghouse High School’s FIRST robotics team, the Pirates. Six weeks of late-night work sessions, capped by a sleepless holiday weekend of final tweaks and modifications, had put the Brooklyn students at wits’ end. It was less than 24 hours before the construction deadline, when Fed-Ex would arrive to ship the robot to the scene of New York City’s regional competition—and an overweight robot threatened to send them over the edge.

“Welcome to 2009,” Nadav Zeimer, the team’s coach, declared as two Pirates argued over how best to position the robot on the scale. “Yet another year of too much weight.”

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Britain’s Lessons From The Winter of 2008-2009

Stonehenge saw it’s heaviest snow in many years (Photo from Watts Up With That)

From Watts Up With That:

The UK has been experiencing the coldest winter in several decades, and hopefully policymakers have learned a few basic lessons from this. Here is my wish list, which seem painfully obvious.

1. Britain can’t rely on global warming to stay warm in the winter.
2. Britain can’t rely on solar power to stay warm in the winter. There just isn’t enough sun (which is why it is cold in the winter.)
3. Britain can’t rely on wind power to stay warm in the winter. During the coldest weather the winds were calm (which is one reason why the air temperatures were so low.)
4. Britain can’t rely on Russian natural gas to stay warm. The gas supply was cut off for weeks due to politics.

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Was Einstein Wrong?: A Quantum Threat To Special Relativity

From Scientific American:

Entanglement, like many quantum effects, violates some of our deepest intuitions about the world. It may also undermine Einstein's special theory of relativity

Key Concepts

* In the universe as we experience it, we can directly affect only objects we can touch; thus, the world seems local.
* Quantum mechanics, however, embraces action at a distance with a property called entanglement, in which two particles behave synchronously with no intermediary; it is nonlocal.
* This nonlocal effect is not merely counterintuitive: it presents a serious problem to Einstein's special theory of relativity, thus shaking the foundations of physics.

Our intuition, going back forever, is that to move, say, a rock, one has to touch that rock, or touch a stick that touches the rock, or give an order that travels via vibrations through the air to the ear of a man with a stick that can then push the rock—or some such sequence. This intuition, more generally, is that things can only directly affect other things that are right next to them. If A affects B without being right next to it, then the effect in question must be indirect—the effect in question must be something that gets transmitted by means of a chain of events in which each event brings about the next one directly, in a manner that smoothly spans the distance from A to B. Every time we think we can come up with an exception to this intuition—say, flipping a switch that turns on city street lights (but then we realize that this happens through wires) or listening to a BBC radio broadcast (but then we realize that radio waves propagate through the air)—it turns out that we have not, in fact, thought of an exception. Not, that is, in our everyday experience of the world.

We term this intuition "locality."

Quantum mechanics has upended many an intuition, but none deeper than this one. And this particular upending carries with it a threat, as yet unresolved, to special relativity—a foundation stone of our 21st-century physics.

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Earth-Like Planet Could Be Discovered Within Three Years

Artist's impression of a newly discovered planet orbiting a red star.
Photo: Reuters/Sydney Morning Herald

From The Guardian:

Galaxy has billions of planets that support life forms, says leading astronomer.

A planet similar to Earth could be discovered in a distant solar system within three years, according to a leading astronomer.

Planets that support life forms could be common in the universe, and about 100bn of them may exist in our own galaxy, said Dr Alan Boss, a researcher at the Carnegie Institute for Science in Washington.

He told a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Chicago yesterday that, according to his calculations, there is roughly one Earth-like planet for every star that is similar to our own sun.

The US space agency, Nasa, is due to launch a space telescope, called Kepler, dedicated to searching for planets that are similar to, or smaller than Earth. It will join the European Space Agency's Corot telescope, which spotted a large "super Earth" earlier this month.

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