Hunting For Earths

Hundreds of solar systems have been picked out of the sky; all harbor exoplanets the size of Jupiter or larger, but so far other Earths have eluded astronomers. NASA's Kepler space telescope, however, is expected to give the first reliable count of any habitable planets. Credit: NASA/NRC Canada/C. Marois et al.

From Discovery:

A new NASA mission in search of exoplanets has experts weighing in on whether we'll find life off Earth.

Earth seems so alone, drifting through space -- but are there other Earth-like worlds out there capable of supporting life, and if so how many are there nearby?

To answer that question once and for all, NASA is sending the Kepler telescope into space. Once there, it will stare down thousands of stars to seek out the slightest glimpse of a small, rocky world like our own.

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Physical Fitness Improves Spatial Memory, Increases Size Of Brain Structure

Active senior couple running in the woods. (Credit: iStockphoto/Marcel Mooij)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Mar. 3, 2009) — When it comes to the hippocampus, a brain structure vital to certain types of memory, size matters. Numerous studies have shown that bigger is usually better. Now researchers have found that elderly adults who are more physically fit tend to have bigger hippocampi and better spatial memory than those who are less fit.

The study, in the journal Hippocampus, shows that hippocampus size in physically fit adults accounts for about 40 percent of their advantage in spatial memory.

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The Challenge of Pizza Box Recycling

Pizza boxes are recyclable, but grease and cheese make them less so and can cause a whole batch of recyclable material to be diverted to the trash. Image credit: Dreamstime

From Live Science:

Many people assume that pizza boxes are recyclable. In fact, most boxes have recycling symbols on them and are traditionally made from corrugated cardboard. They are, in and of themselves, recyclable.

However, what makes parts of them non-recyclable is the hot, tasty treat that comes inside them, specifically, the grease and cheese from pizza that soil the cardboard.

So there you have it, pizza boxes that are tarnished with food, or any paper product that is stained with grease or food, are not recyclable — unless you remove the tainted portions.

But why is this? And what are the implications for the general, pizza-loving public? Mmm, pizza.

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Spotting Future Gamblers In Kindergarten

From Time Magazine:

It's disturbing to picture your kindergartner in a casino, but maybe you ought to try. American kids are born into a culture that loves its gambling, and the passion is only growing, as financial hardships sweeten the ever alluring prospect of a lucky break. The danger, of course, is that gambling can lead to compulsive gambling — and compulsive gambling can be a life wrecker. Now, a new study in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine suggests that it may be possible to spot the people most at risk when they're as young as 5 years old.

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Resistance To Flu Drug Widespread In U.S.: Study

A flu shot is prepared in Chicago, Illinois. US President Barack Obama has vowed to fight for his budget proposals that include investments in clean energy and healthcare as he faces a tough battle moving the measures through Congress. (AFP/Getty Images/File/Tim Boyle)

From Yahoo News/Reuters:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Virtually all cases of the most common strain of flu circulating in the United States now resist the main drug used to treat it, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on Monday.

CDC researchers said 98 percent of all flu samples from the H1N1 strain were resistant to Roche AG's Tamiflu, a pill that can both treat flu and prevent infection. Four patients infected with the resistant strain have died, including two children.

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Curtains And Pyjamas To Become Weapons Against Superbugs

Intensive cleaning takes place on a hospital ward Photo: Rii Schroer

From The Telegraph:

Hospital curtains, bedding, and even patients' pyjamas could become weapons in the war against hospital superbugs.

A study has found that an antimicrobial treatment, which could be incorporated into dozens of surfaces on the ward, can kill MRSA on contact, reducing the risk of infection between patients.

Scientists hailed the discovery by researchers from Imperial College London as a "very significant" step in the war on hospital superbugs which kill 10,000 people a year.

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Scientists See Merit In Sharks' Many Teeth

Scientists have looked into the fearsome jaws of sharks and seen a possible benefit to humans: many rows of teeth. Kat Wade/the Chronicle

From San Francisco Chronicle:

Ever wonder why sharks get several rows of teeth and people only get one? Some geneticists did, and their discovery could spur work to help adults one day grow new teeth when their own wear out.

A single gene appears to be in charge, preventing additional tooth formation in species destined for a limited set.

When the scientists bred mice that lacked that gene, the rodents developed extra teeth next to their first molars - backups like sharks and other non-mammals grow, University of Rochester scientists reported Thursday.

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Lunacy And The Full Moon

Courtesy of Ninomy at Wikimedia

From Scientific American:

Does a full moon really trigger strange behavior?

Across the centuries, many a person has uttered the phrase “There must be a full moon out there” in an attempt to explain weird happenings at night. Indeed, the Roman goddess of the moon bore a name that remains familiar to us today: Luna, prefix of the word “lunatic.” Greek philosopher Aristotle and Roman historian Pliny the Elder suggested that the brain was the “moistest” organ in the body and thereby most susceptible to the pernicious influences of the moon, which triggers the tides. Belief in the “lunar lunacy effect,” or “Transylvania effect,” as it is sometimes called, persisted in Europe through the Middle Ages, when humans were widely reputed to transmogrify into werewolves or vampires during a full moon.

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From Stem Cells To New Organs: Scientists Cross Threshold In Regenerative Medicine

Computer-rendered image of human organs. New research suggests that bioengineered replacement organs may be closer thanks to a newly developed matrix on which stem cells can form a three-dimensional organ. (Credit: iStockphoto/Sebastian Kaulitzki)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Mar. 2, 2009) — By now, most people have read stories about how to "grow your own organs" using stem cells is just a breakthrough away. Despite the hype, this breakthrough has been elusive.

A new report brings bioengineered organs a step closer, as scientists from Stanford and New York University Langone Medical Center describe how they were able to use a "scaffolding" material extracted from the groin area of mice on which stem cells from blood, fat, and bone marrow grew. This advance clears two major hurdles to bioengineered replacement organs, namely a matrix on which stem cells can form a three-dimensional organ and transplant rejection.

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Microsoft Vista Voted Tech World's Top "Fiasco"

From Scientific American:

It's official, Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system gets the prize for being the most overhyped, underperforming information and communication technology (ICT) project. Windows Vista garnered 5,222 of 6,043 votes (86 percent) entered via the Web to snag top honors in the first-ever Fiasco Awards announced in Barcelona, Spain, today, beating out other contenders, including Google's Lively virtual world, the One Laptop per Child computer (developed by the Nicholas Negroponte-chaired One Laptop Per Child Association, Inc.) and Second Life. Second prize went to SAGA, the oft-malfunctioning administration and academic management system developed by Spain's Catalan Education Department for public school teachers in Catalonia.

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Microsoft's Glimpse Of The Future

From CNET:

REDMOND, Wash.--At Microsoft's TechFest, it takes a little imagination to see how the research technologies might eventually come to market.

A new video from Microsoft shows in an elegant, if utopian way, what it might look like if all of those gadgets came together several years hence. Earlier on Friday, Microsoft Business Division President Stephen Elop showed the video in a speech at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business.

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Intelligent Use Of The Earth's Heat

From E! Science News:

Geothermal energy is increasingly contributing to the power supply world wide. Iceland is world-leader in expanding development of geothermal utilization: in recent years the annual power supply here doubled to more than 500 MW alone in the supply of electricity. And also in Germany, a dynamic development is to be seen: over 100 MW of heat are currently being provided through geothermal energy. Alone in the region of Travale, in the pioneering country Italy, a team of european scientists have localizied geothermal reservoirs, holding a potential comparable to the effectiveness of 1.000 wind power plants. This is one of the results presented at the international final conference of the project „I-GET" (Integrated Geophysical Exploration Technologies for deep fractured geothermal systems) in Potsdam. The aim of this European Union project, in which seven european nations participated, was the development of cutting-edge geophysical methods with which potential geothermal reservoirs can be safely explored and directly tapped.

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reCaptcha: How To Turn Blather Into Books

Von Ahn: The professor invented reCaptcha in 2007. Since then, its users have translated 5 billion words. (Gene J. Puskar/AP)

From The Christian Science Monitor:

Ten seconds of work has digitized libraries, whether the amateur translators know it or not.

When you buy a concert ticket on Ticketmaster, post something for sale on Craigslist, or poke an old friend on Facebook, you may not know it, but you’re helping to put millions of books online in a vast free library.

To access these websites, you must decipher two squiggly words to prove that you’re not a computer program designed to spam the site. Once it knows you’re human, the website lets you continue.

Those two decoded words don’t disappear, however. In fact, your brain has deciphered words that had baffled the scanning software used for an enormous project to digitize every public domain book in the world.

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Study Finds Sunny Side of Eggs

From Live Science:

When it comes to public consumption of nutrition studies, an old adage applies: Everything in moderation.

The latest study looking at what you should eat involves eggs. Despite decades of advice that the cholesterol in eggs is bad for you, researchers in Canada now report evidence that eggs might reduce another heart disease risk factor — high blood pressure.

The scientists found egg proteins that, in laboratory simulations of the human digestive process, seem to act like a popular group of prescription medications in lowering blood pressure. The findings are detailed in the Feb. 11 issue of the American Chemical Society's Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

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Is the Press Misreporting the Environment Story?

Melted water runs over the Greenlandic Icecap. Uriel Sinai / Getty

From Time Magazine:

When I tell other journalists that I cover the environment, I usually get the same reaction: you're really lucky. (I'm assuming they don't just mean because I still have a job.) After years on the back pages and the back burner, the environment has emerged as one of the major issues facing the globe today, with the attendant media attention to match. But what keeps it perpetually fresh as a subject is its scope — climate change touches on science, Washington, business, society, geopolitics, even religion, and the reporting does as well. The sheer complexity means there's always something to write, blog or podcast about — as my editor likes to remind me. Frequently.

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Fragments of Ancient Egyptian Papyrus Found

3,000-Year-Old Document. For 100 years, archaeologists have been trying to piece together fragments to this 3,000-year-old document, written on a papyrus stem. The Egyptian document enumerates all the Egyptian kings and when they ruled. Newly found fragments to the document should help in piecing together the puzzle. Museo Egizio, Torino

From Discovery News:

Feb. 27, 2009 -- Some newly recovered papyrus fragments may finally help solve a century-old puzzle, shedding new light on ancient Egyptian history.

Found stored between two sheets of glass in the basement of the Museo Egizio in Turin, the fragments belong to a 3,000-year-old unique document, known as the Turin Kinglist.

Like many ancient Egyptian documents, the Turin Kinglist is written on the stem of a papyrus plant.

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Bye, Tech: Dealing With Data Rot

Image: Audio recordings of 40-year-old interviews with rock stars were transferred to new tape to preserve them, but the newer tapes are disintegrating. (CBS)

From CBS News:

As Storage Media And Software Applications Advance Or Die Out, Years Of Precious Memories Are Threatened

(CBS) Sooner or later, it affects every audio recording, video recording and computer file. Contributor David Pogue looks at what happens when technological progress leaves your most precious memories and recordings behind.
Lydia Robertson is a filmmaker. But you've probably never seen her first movie, the one she made in high school.

"It's called 'The Chicken Lady,' a horror-comedy," she said. "It's the most ridiculous film ever made. It might be one of the worst films ever made! But we learned a lot, and that was the point."

Trouble is, she hasn't seen it, either.

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Lower Increases In Global Temperatures Could Lead To Greater Impacts Than Previously Thought, Study Finds

The "burning embers diagram": Risks from climate change by reason for concern, 2001 (left) compared with 2007. (Credit: Smith et al., PNAS)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Mar. 1, 2009) — A new study by scientists updating some of the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2001 Third Assessment Report finds that even a lower level of increase in average global temperatures due to greenhouse gas emissions could cause significant problems in five key areas of global concern.

The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is titled "Assessing Dangerous Climate Change Through an Update of the IPCC 'Reasons for Concern."

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Complexity of Spit Revealed

From Live Science:

Saliva tells a lot about a person these days, ranging from ancestry to criminal connections. But drool still holds many mysteries, including what the heck lives in it and why each of us has our own salivary signature.

A new study tries to clean this up a bit, revealing that there is a lot of bacterial diversity living in the moisture in our mouths, both within and among individuals.

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Spacecraft Sees Spectacular Solar Eclipse on Moon

A still of the Kaguya/Selene probe's high-definition video of the solar eclipse seen from the moon. Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency

From FOX News:

There was a solar eclipse earlier this month — but it wasn't visible anywhere on Earth.

Rather, a Japanese space probe in orbit around the moon got spectacular high-definition video of the sun being blocked — by the Earth, producing an otherworldly "diamond-ring" eclipse.

It may be only the third time such an eclipse has been viewed by terrestrials, human or otherwise.

An American lunar lander got a blurry snapshot of a solar eclipse in 1967, and two years later Apollo 12 astronauts got treated to the same thing on their way back from the moon.

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