The Big Melt

From Popular Science:

A two-year polar survey finds ice sheets melting faster than expected, and more grim news.

Less than two weeks before scientists from around the world gather in Copenhagen to issue recommendations for a new global climate-change treaty, the results from the two-year International Polar Year survey have arrived. They are not pleasant.

Here's a quick summary: The Antarctic and Greenland ice shelves are melting more quickly than we realized. Year-round Arctic sea-ice levels reached their lowest levels in 30 years, which is how long we've been keeping records. The seawater beneath Antarctica is freshening, which indicates ice melt. Global ocean currents are beginning to shift. "We're beginning to get hints of change in ocean circulation; that'll have a dramatic impact on the global climate system," IPY director David Carlson told reporters in Geneva.

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Do These Mysterious Stones Mark The Site Of The Garden Of Eden?

The site has been described as 'extraordinary' and 'the most important' site in the world

From The Daily Mail:

For the old Kurdish shepherd, it was just another burning hot day in the rolling plains of eastern Turkey. Following his flock over the arid hillsides, he passed the single mulberry tree, which the locals regarded as 'sacred'. The bells on his sheep tinkled in the stillness. Then he spotted something. Crouching down, he brushed away the dust, and exposed a strange, large, oblong stone.

The man looked left and right: there were similar stone rectangles, peeping from the sands. Calling his dog to heel, the shepherd resolved to inform someone of his finds when he got back to the village. Maybe the stones were important.

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Mega-Laser To Probe Secrets Of Exoplanets

Artist's impression of a gas giant planet circling the star Gliese 436. The new laser will investigate the internal chemistry of these vast planets (Image: NASA)

From New Scientist:

AN AWESOME laser facility, built to provide fusion data for nuclear weapons simulations, will soon be used to probe the secrets of extrasolar planets.

The National Ignition Facility (NIF) at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California was declared ready for action earlier this month. Its vital statistics reveal it to be a powerful beast: its ultraviolet lasers can deliver 500 trillion watts in a 20-nanosecond burst. That power opens up new scientific possibilities.
It can deliver 500 trillion watts in a 20-nanosecond burst - opening up new scientific possibilities

For instance, Raymond Jeanloz, an astronomer at the University of California, Berkeley, will use the device to recreate the conditions inside Jupiter and other larger planets, where pressures can be 1000 times as great as those at the centre of the Earth.

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HIV Is Evolving To Evade Human Immune Responses

Rendering of HIV infecting a cell. (Credit: iStockphoto/Sebastian Kaulitzki)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Feb. 28, 2009) — HIV is evolving rapidly to escape the human immune system, an international study led by Oxford University has shown. The findings, published in Nature, demonstrate the challenge involved in developing a vaccine for HIV that keeps pace with the changing nature of the virus.

‘The extent of the global HIV epidemic gives us a unique opportunity to examine in detail the evolutionary struggle being played out in front of us between an important virus and humans,’ says lead researcher Professor Philip Goulder of the Peter Medawar Building for Pathogen Research at Oxford University.

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Writing Math On The Web

From American Scientist:

The Web would make a dandy blackboard if only we could scribble an equation.

The world wide web was invented at a physics laboratory, and the first users were scientists and engineers. You might think, therefore, that this new channel of communication would be especially well adapted to scientific discourse—that it would facilitate the expression of ideas like


or

If only it were so! The truth is, the basic protocols of the Web offer almost no support for rendering mathematics or other specialized notations such as chemical formulas. Presenting such material on a Web page often requires software add-ons or plug-ins to be installed by the author or the reader or both. Fine-tuning the display of mathematics can be a fussy and finicky process, not much easier than formatting equations with a typewriter. The results sometimes render differently—or not at all—in various Web browsers. This is a sad situation: As the Web has evolved into a thriving marketplace and playground, the scholarly and scientific community that created the technology has not been well served.

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The Shoe Fits! 1.5 Million-Year-Old Human Footprints Found

A photograph of the footprint's upper footprint surface showing good definition of the toe pads; the second toe is partially obscured by the third toe. Credit: Matthew Bennett/Bournemouth University

From Live Science:

Early humans had feet like ours and left lasting impressions in the form of 1.5 million-year-old footprints, some of which were made by feet that could wear a size 9 men's shoe.

The findings at a Northern Kenya site represent the oldest evidence of modern-human foot anatomy. They also help tell an ancestral story of humans who had fully transitioned from tree-dwellers to land walkers.

"In a sense, it's like putting flesh on the bones," said John Harris, an anthropologist with the Koobi Fora Field School of Rutgers University. "The prints are so well preserved ."

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Are You Out There, ET? Searches For Habitable Planets Are About To Get A Boost

UP, UP AND AWAY: The Kepler satellite, scheduled to take flight March 6, is lifted for attachment to its launch rocket at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Kepler will look for Earth-like planets that may be hospitable to life. NASA

From Scientific American:

Next week brings a milestone in the search for extraterrestrial life with the scheduled launch Friday of NASA's Kepler satellite. The mission, named for 16th- and 17th-century German astronomer Johannes Kepler, will study a group of stars for three-plus years in search of subtle, periodic dips in stellar brightness—the telltale signs of planetary orbits. Although more than 300 planets outside the solar system have already been found using this method, among other techniques, Kepler's strength will lie in its instruments' sensitivity to smaller, cooler planets more hospitable to life and more like our own.

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'Eye of God': The nebula that watches our tiny world from 700 light years away

The 'eye of god' - also known as the Helix nebula - is so huge, it would take a
beam of light two-and-a-half years to cross it

From The Daily Mail:

It stares down at us from the depths of space, watching our tiny world from 700 light years away.

Scientists have nicknamed the image - captured by a giant telescope on the Chilean mountains - the eye of God.

In fact, it shows the death throes of a star similar to our sun, before it retires as a 'white dwarf' believed to be the final evolutionary state of a medium-sized star.

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Humans Facing Huge Population Cull If Global Temperatures Rise 4C In Next 100 Years

Survival ... Experts say that humans won't be able to handle
the heat if temperatures rise a predicted 4C / AFP

From News.com:

ALLIGATORS bask off the English coast, the Sahara desert stretches into Europe and 10 per cent of humans are left.

Science fiction?

No, this is the doomsday prediction if global temperatures make a predicted rise of 4C in the next 100 years. Some fear it could happen by 2050.

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My Comment: I am skeptical.

Happy Birthday, Doomsday Seed Vault!

The Entrance to the Vault: Mari Tefre/Global Crop Diversity Trust

From Popsci.com:

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, designed to preserve the world's crops, turns one year old today

What do you get a seed bank for its birthday? More seeds, of course.

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault celebrates its first birthday today with the addition of 90,000 seed samples. The vault serves as a heavy-duty backup for gene banks around the world, which strive to save humanity (and our food supply) from the scourges of monoculture and environmental catastrophes.

The Norwegian government meant business when it built the vault. They tunneled 400 feet into an Arctic mountain to protect the pips, which are guarded behind two security doors and two airlocks. The underground vault is designed to weather just about every doomsday scenario, including terrorists, nuclear war, and floods of biblical proportions. It was featured in an award-winning low-budget science fiction film last year: "Frozen Seed."

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Planet Hidden In Hubble Archives

A new image processing technique reveals something not before seen in this Hubble Space Telescope image taken 11 years ago: A faint planet (arrows), the outermost of three discovered with ground-based telescopes last year around the young star HR 8799. Credit: D. Lafrenière et al., ApJ Letters

From Science News:

A new way to process images reveals an extrasolar planet that had been hiding in an 11-year-old Hubble picture

Like tiny jewels not yet uncovered, a trove of previously unknown extrasolar planets — perhaps as many as 100 — await discovery in a vast archive of images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, the results of a new search technique suggest.

Using the new method, astronomers can more precisely model the amount and distribution of scattered light produced by young nearby stars suspected of spawning planets, and then subtract the light from images of those stars. Once the glare of the light from the parent stars is removed, young Jupiter-mass planets that emit faint but detectable amounts of heat may show up in images already taken by Hubble’s near-infrared camera.

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Lifestyle Changes Could Prevent A Third Of Cancers: Report

From The CBC News:

An ounce of prevention is worth more than a pound of cure when it comes to cancer, according to an exhaustive international report.

The report by the American Institute for Cancer Research and the World Cancer Research Fund was released Thursday in London, England.

It calls on governments to legislate healthy living, such as:

* Mandate walking and cycling paths that encourage physical activity.
* Support policies for better-priced, healthier food choices for consumers, such as reformulating processed foods to have less sugar, salt and fat.
* Ban ads for sugary drinks and unhealthy foods aimed at children.
* Require schools to provide built-in exercise opportunities for children.

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Fungus Threatens Prehistoric Cave Drawings

Photo: Part of Lascaux famed cave drawings in southwest France, shown last summer. (AP Photo/Pierre Andrieu, Pool)

From CBS News:

Scientists Meet To Try And Save Lascaux’s Murals In France At Risk Due To Global Warming.

(AP) Geologists, biologists and other scientists convened Thursday in Paris to discuss how to stop the spread of fungus stains - aggravated by global warming - that threaten France's prehistoric Lascaux cave drawings.

Black stains have spread across the cave's prehistoric murals of bulls, felines and other images, and scientists have been hard-pressed to halt the fungal creep.

Marc Gaulthier, who heads the Lascaux Caves International Scientific Committee, said the challenges facing the group are vast and global warming now poses an added problem.

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Carbon Dioxide Drop And Global Cooling Caused Antarctic Glacier To Form

Projection of the what the first Antarctic ice sheet might have looked like as the global climate cooled about 33.5 million years ago. Antarctica is in gray, with the ice sheet shown in meters of ice thickness. The ice sheet is continental in scale, but somewhat smaller than today. The estimate is based on prior modeling work of DeConto and Pollard and is supported by this new data study. (Credit: DeConto & Pollard / Nature)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Feb. 27, 2009) — Global climate rapidly shifted from a relatively ice-free world to one with massive ice sheets on Antarctica about 34 million years ago. What happened? What changed? A team of scientists led by Yale geologists offers a new perspective on the nature of changing climatic conditions across this greenhouse-to-icehouse transition — one that refutes earlier theories and has important implications for predicting future climate changes.

Detailed in the February 27 issue of Science, their data disproves a long-held idea that massive ice growth in the Antarctic was accompanied by little to no global temperature change.

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Introducing The Gel-Filled Army Helmet That Will Crush Bullets As They Penetrate It

Richard Palmer, CEO of Blue Divine Ltd, with 'D3O' shock-absorbing material which will be used to line new British Army helmets

From The Daily Mail:

On the face of it a layer of orange jelly may not sound the best way to protect a soldier's head from high velocity bullets and shrapnel.

But the British Army's standard-issue combat helmet is set to be upgraded with a liner made from gooey miracle gel, which responds to a sudden impact by locking instantly into a solid form - absorbing huge amounts of energy harmlessly.

A UK-based technology company was today celebrating a £100,000 contract from the Ministry of Defence to develop its D3O shock-absorbing gel to help save the lives of British troops fighting on the frontline in Afghanistan.

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My Comment: The use of nanotechnology at a basic level.

Moon and Venus Converge Friday Night

The scene about two hours after sunset from near Phoenix, Arizona on Friday, Feb. 27, 2009. Simulated sky map made using Starry Night Software.

From Live Science:

It has been a superb winter for viewing the queen of the planets, Venus. February marks the pinnacle of its evening visibility as it stands like a sequined showgirl nearly halfway up in the western sky at sunset.

You can't miss it. Just look west after sunset. In fact, you can see it during the day if you know where to look. Find it just after sunset one evening, then scan around the same spot just before sunset the next day.

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Europe Names Crew For Mars 'Mission'

Red Mars from Spirit (Image from NASA)

From Breitart/AFP:

The European Space Agency (ESA) on Friday named a Frenchman and a German who will join four Russians in an innovative 105-day isolation experiment to test whether humans can one day fly to Mars.

From March 31, the six "crew" will be locked inside a special facility in Moscow that replicates conditions of a space trip to Mars.

The simulation will be followed by a 520-day experiment, starting later this year, that would last as long as a real mission to Mars.

The two Europeans are Oliver Knickel, 28, a mechanical engineer in the German army, and Cyrille Fournier, 40, a captain with Air France who flies A320 airliners, ESA said in a press release.

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Warnings Issued On Nanotechnology

Photo: One example of nanotechnology is this Kevlar-treated fabric developed for the military in Cambridge, Mass. The coating is extremely thin. ELISE AMENDOLA AP

From The Houston Chronicle:

Some say time's right to assess its environmental impact.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency may soon act to impose the first regulations specific to nanotechnology, a move that could have a significant impact in Houston.

Already, Canada has signaled its intent to require companies working with nanomaterials — designed at the molecular level to have special properties, such as enhanced strength — to report what materials they are working with and in what quantity.

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Jurassic Web

Screenshot of a web page in 1996 (Image from Tulane)

From Slate:

The Internet of 1996 is almost unrecognizable compared with what we have today.

It's 1996, and you're bored. What do you do? If you're one of the lucky people with an AOL account, you probably do the same thing you'd do in 2009: Go online. Crank up your modem, wait 20 seconds as you log in, and there you are—"Welcome." You check your mail, then spend a few minutes chatting with your AOL buddies about which of you has the funniest screen name (you win, pimpodayear94).

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Additional Evidence That Potato Chips Should Be Eaten Only In Moderation

Acrylamide, found in foods such as potato chips and french fries, may increase the risk of heart disease. Acrylamide has been linked previously to nervous system disorders and possibly to cancer. (Credit: iStockphoto/Alexander Zhiltsov)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Feb. 26, 2009) — A new study published in the March 2009 American Journal of Clinical Nutrition by Marek Naruszewicz and colleagues from Poland suggests that acrylamide from foods may increase the risk of heart disease. Acrylamide has been linked previously to nervous system disorders and possibly to cancer.

After ingesting large amounts of potato chips providing about 157 micrograms of acrylamide daily for four weeks, the participants had adverse changes in oxidized LDL, inflammatory markers and antioxidants that help the body eliminate acrylamide—all of which may increase the risk of heart disease.

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