Sex Goes Way Back, Fossil Find Shows

The armored fish, Materpiscis attenboroughi, may have given birth to its young tail-first, similar to some sharks and rays. Credit: Museum Victoria.

From Live Science:

Remains of embryos entombed in their fish mothers' wombs for 380 million years have been found in fossils from an ancient rock outcrop in Western Australia. The finding is a big deal because it suggests that sex goes way back.

The prehistoric fish, called placoderms, are found at the base of the vertebrate evolutionary tree (in a large group we humans also belong to), so it now looks like sexual intercourse, and the mating behaviors that go along with it, were more widespread in these ancient animals than previously thought, said the scientists who made the discovery.

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The Weirdest New Source of Alternative Energy: Underwater Vibrations

A prototype underwater generator shows the fluid dynamics that will produce power from slow-moving currents using metal rods suspending near the ocean or river floor. Image courtesy of NOAA

From Discover Magazine:

Researchers say this longtime bane of offshore drilling is more cost-efficient than wind and solar.

The latest frontier for renewable energy is the ocean floor. A novel method of generating power uses a network of metal rods to tap into the currents that flow along the bottom of the ocean (and along riverbeds as well). Water swirls as it flows past the rods, making them vibrate. This phenomenon is painfully familiar to oil companies, which spend large sums of money minimizing such vibrations in order to stabilize offshore drilling equipment. “Everyone was obsessed with suppressing this motion,” says Michael Bernitsas, the University of Michigan engineer who developed the technology. “At some point it dawned on me that maybe we can do the opposite: Enhance it and harness the energy.”

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Ice Ages and Sea Level

Figure 1: Orbital Parameters: Eccentricity, Precession and Obliquity- click for larger image
(Image from Watts Up With That)

From Watts Up With That?

The Earth is currently in an interglacial period of an ice age that started about two and a half million years ago. The Earth’s current ice age is primarily caused by Antarctica drifting over the South Pole 30 million years ago. This meant that a large area of the Earth’s surface changed from being very low-albedo ocean to highly reflective ice and snow. The first small glaciers were formed in Antarctica perhaps as long ago as 40 million years. They expanded gradually until, about 20 million years ago, a permanent ice sheet covered the whole Antarctic continent. About 10 million years later, glaciers appeared on the high mountains of Alaska, and about 3 million years ago, ice sheets developed on lower ground in high northerly latitudes.

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Galaxy May Be Full Of 'Earths,' Alien Life

Photo: An artist's impression shows a planet passing in front of its parent star. Such events are called transits.

From CNN:

(CNN) -- As NASA prepares to hunt for Earth-like planets in our corner of the Milky Way galaxy, there's new buzz that "Star Trek's" vision of a universe full of life may not be that far-fetched.

Pointy-eared aliens traveling at light speed are staying firmly in science fiction, but scientists are offering fresh insights into the possible existence of inhabited worlds and intelligent civilizations in space.

There may be 100 billion Earth-like planets in the Milky Way, or one for every sun-type star in the galaxy, said Alan Boss, an astronomer with the Carnegie Institution and author of the new book "The Crowded Universe: The Search for Living Planets."

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How To Make Your Computer Boot Faster

(Photograph by Kyoko Hamada)

From Popular Mechanics:

Why can’t a computers start up like a television? In short, it is all about the operating system. And contrary to common sense, the newer the operating system the longer it can take. But you can do something about it. Here are tips to get your tortoise-like boot time to hop like a bunny.

Why can’t a computer be more like a television? When you push the power button on a TV, it just turns on. Computers, on the other hand, boot—as in, they take so long to get started that you want to stick your boot into them.

You would think that the march of technological progress would have reduced boot times over the years, but newer operating systems can take longer—Microsoft Vista actually tends to boot more slowly than its predecessor, Windows XP. (Microsoft claims its next-generation operating system, Windows 7, should provide drastic improvements in boot time.)

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The Evolution of Human Aggression

From Live Science:

Everyone has experienced anger at one point in their lives and some of us — males mostly, going by statistics — have channeled that anger into violence, perhaps by throwing a punch during a hockey game or after too many beers at the bar.

Then there's aggression on a much more sinister scale, in the form of murder, wars and genocide. Trying to understand what fuels the different levels of human aggression, from fisticuffs to nation-on-nation battle, has long preoccupied human biologists.

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Genetic Discovery Could Lead To Advances In Dental Treatment

A normal mouse tooth on the left, where ameloblast cells that produce enamel are glowing in red. On the right is a tooth with the Ctip2 gene deleted, and little enamel has been able to form. (Credit: Image courtesy of Oregon State University)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Feb. 24, 2009) — Researchers have identified the gene that ultimately controls the production of tooth enamel, a significant advance that could some day lead to the repair of damaged enamel, a new concept in cavity prevention, and restoration or even the production of replacement teeth.

The gene, called Ctip2, is a "transcription factor" that was already known to have several functions - in immune response, and the development of skin and the nervous system. Scientists can now add tooth development to that list.

The findings were just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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Prosecution Alters Pirate Bay Charges in Bid to Win Conviction

From Wired News:

STOCKHOLM – The Pirate Bay prosecutor altered the copyright-infringement charges Tuesday to make it easier to convict the four defendants who co-founded the world's most notorious BitTorrent tracker.

Moments later, Hollywood investigators testified about the ease with which they obtained copyright works using the 5-year-old site.

But at the outset of Tuesday's proceedings, the prosecutor, Håkan Roswall, announced a alteration of the charges, which legal scholars suggested would make it more likely to win a conviction.

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Top 10 Ig Nobels: The Best of Science's Strangest Prize

From Popular Mechanics:

A large portion of scientific research remains forever off the public radar. A select few studies deliver results that reverberate in the scientific community and make their way to textbooks. Then there are those research efforts that, as one group puts it, represent "achievements that cannot or should not be reproduced." Every year the Annals of Improbable Research highlights this last group with the Ig Nobel, an award for the top engineering solutions, science products and peer-reviewed papers that, according to the editors, "make you laugh, then make you think." We looked back at 18 years of the prizes to bring you our 10 favorite Ig Nobels of all time.

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On the Trail of Osama bin Laden: Scientists Use Biological Tracking Models to Pursue America's Most Wanted

Regional analysis of city islands within a 20-km radius
of bin Laden’s last known location (red dot).

From Popular Mechanics:

The United States military's attempts to track down Osama bin Laden in the seven-plus years since the World Trade Center attacks have been notoriously fruitless. But a new study suggests the way to find America's most wanted criminal is to treat him like an endangered species. In the study, released in MIT International Review, University of California-Los Angeles geographers Thomas Gillespie and John Agnew modeled the terrorist leader's possible whereabouts by using the same techniques conservationists use to track the dispersal of animals and likely migration patterns. Using a variety of criteria specific to Osama bin Laden's needs—electricity, room for his entourage, health problems—the study isolates three buildings in the remote Pakistani town of Parachinar in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas as the most likely hideout. (The paper was submitted to the FBI before it went to the MIT journal and, according the FBI, it was forwarded to the appropriate personnel and is part of an active investigation.)

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Just How Fat Are We?

Big Little Kids: Obesity rates in Americans ages 12 to 19 have more than tripled since 1980.

From Popsci.com:

Headlines fret about the growing obesity epidemic, but what does it mean? How did it happen? And what are the costs?

Obesity, defined as a body-mass index (BMI) of 30 or higher, is not equally distributed across the U.S. Check out this map to find out which state is the fattest (hint: it's the namesake of mud pie), which is the thinnest (think Coors Light), and which spends the most money on obesity-related health care (its governor pumps iron).

Read on, after the break, for more of America's (and the world's) fat facts.

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Why Women Cannot Read Maps

Are we lost? Women tend to describe directions as 'right of' and 'left of' landmarks, while men are better at reading maps, a study found

Are We Lost? Why Women Are Worse At Reading Maps But Can Find Those Misplaced Keys -- Daily Mail

Women are worse at reading maps but better at finding lost items, research into how the sexes perceive beauty has revealed.

U.S Scientists asked 10 men and 10 women to view a series of unfamiliar pictures. The participants were told to give their impressions of the images and whether or not they found them beautiful.

The scientists also used a technique called magnetoencephalography (MEG) to measure changes in the magnetic fields generated by active neurons in the brain.

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Black Hole Destroying A Star (Video)

Hat Tip: Geek Press.

When Dreaming Is Believing: Dreams Affect People's Judgment, Behavior

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Feb. 22, 2009) — While science tries to understand the stuff dreams are made of, humans, from cultures all over the world, continue to believe that dreams contain important hidden truths, according to newly published research.

In six different studies, researchers surveyed nearly 1,100 people about their dreams. "Psychologists' interpretations of the meaning of dreams vary widely," said Carey Morewedge, an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University and the study's lead author. "But our research shows that people believe their dreams provide meaningful insight into themselves and their world."

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Is The Internet Warping Our Brains?

Image from Esther's Space

From Live Science:

The Internet is no doubt changing modern society. It has profoundly altered how we gather information, consume news, carry out war, and create and foster social bonds. But is it altering our brains? A growing number of scientists think so, and studies are providing data to show it.

What remains to be seen is whether the changes are good or bad, and whether the brain is, as one neuroscientist believes, undergoing unprecedented evolution.

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My Comment: I do not know about my brain .... but my hands suffer from carpel syndrome.

Stargazers Hope For Glimpse Of Green Comet

The comet contains the gases cyanogen and diatomic carbon, which give it its green colour. (Paolo Candy/Cimini Astronomical Observatory)

From The Independent:

It's green, about 300,000 miles wide and some 38 million miles away, and tonight a comet called Lulin could be visible to the naked eye.

At around midnight, UK space scientists and amateur stargazers will be looking due south for a glimpse of the unusual celestial body as it reaches its nearest point to Earth.

Discovered only a year ago, the comet gets its green colour from a poisonous, cyanide-like gas in its atmosphere.

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More News On Lulin

Comet Lulin making nearest approach toward earth, one-time only -- China View
Best chance to view Comet Lulin is here! -- Scientific American
Green light for a close encounter: 'Jupiter-sized' comet to streak past Earth tonight -- Daily Mail Online
How To See Comet Lulin As It Passes Earth -- Space Daily

Google’s Gmail Service Crashes Across World

Google?s Gmail service has suffered a worldwide crash
preventing millions of users from accessing their mail

From The Telegraph:

Google’s web-based email service, Gmail, has crashed this morning, leaving millions of users from Britain to Australia unable to send and receive messages.

The email service went offline at around 10.25am GMT, and the outage appears to have affected users throughout the UK as well as across Europe, and even as far afield as Australia and India.

It appears that only web-based Gmail access is affected, and users can continue to send and receive messages using other devices, such as mobile phones and third-party mail clients.

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More News On Today's Gmail Interruption

Google apologizes for Gmail outage -- CNET
Gmail Struck With Service Outage -- PC World
Google mail users hit by global outage -- Times Online
Gmail breakdown affects users worldwide -- AFP
Four Hours Without Gmail -- New York Times
Gmail Experiences Worldwide Crash -- FOX News

NASA Says Climate Satellite Fails To Launch

From Yahoo News/Reuters:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A mission carrying a climate satellite into orbit failed on Tuesday when the satellite was not able to separate from the rocket, NASA said.

"The vehicle ... landed just sort of Antarctica in the ocean," John Brunschwyler of Virginia-based Orbital Sciences Corp, which made the rocket told a news conference.

The $278 million Orbiting Carbon Observatory was going to measure carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and to determine what happens to the climate-changing pollutant.

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Update: Nasa's first CO2 satellite crashes into ocean after launch failure -- Times Online

Most Detailed Lunar Map Suggests Little Water Inside Moon

An international team of researchers has created the most detailed map of the Moon yet, using the laser altimeter (LALT) instrument on board the Japanese Selenological and Engineering Explorer satellite. C.K. Shum, professor of earth sciences at Ohio State University, is a member of the LALT science team and a co-author of a paper appearing in the February 13 issue of the journal Science. (Credit: Image copyright Science/AAAS)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Feb. 23, 2009) — The most detailed map of the Moon ever created has revealed never-before-seen craters at the lunar poles.

The map is also revealing secrets about the Moon's interior -- and hinting about Mars's interior as well.

C.K. Shum, professor of earth sciences at Ohio State University, is part of the international research team that published the map in the February 13 issue of the journal Science.

"The surface can tell us a lot about what's happening inside the Moon, but until now mapping has been very limited," Shum said. "For instance, with this new high-resolution map, we can confirm that there is very little water on the Moon today, even deep in the interior. And we can use that information to think about water on other planets, including Mars."

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Unlike Diamonds, Most Minerals Not Forever

From Live Science:

Diamonds may be forever, but that's not true of most minerals. In fact, about two-thirds of the 4,300 known minerals on Earth today owe their existence to biological processes, and thus evolved fairly recently in geological terms. So says Robert M. Hazen of the Carnegie Institution in Washington, D.C., who with seven colleagues identified three phases of mineral evolution.

The first phase began more than 4.55 billion years ago, as the solar system started developing. Chemical elements came together, forming about 250 simple minerals that in turn coalesced into planets. On Earth, the second phase stretched from 4.55 billion to 2.5 billion years ago, starting with the violent collision that formed the Moon. Earth's temperature and pressure varied wildly; plate tectonics began churning the planet's surface; and volatiles appeared, such as water and carbon dioxide, helping to redistribute the elements. Those changes enabled the evolution of some 1,250 new minerals.

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