Space Storm Alert: 90 Seconds From Catastrophe

From New Scientist:

IT IS midnight on 22 September 2012 and the skies above Manhattan are filled with a flickering curtain of colourful light. Few New Yorkers have seen the aurora this far south but their fascination is short-lived. Within a few seconds, electric bulbs dim and flicker, then become unusually bright for a fleeting moment. Then all the lights in the state go out. Within 90 seconds, the entire eastern half of the US is without power.

A year later and millions of Americans are dead and the nation's infrastructure lies in tatters. The World Bank declares America a developing nation. Europe, Scandinavia, China and Japan are also struggling to recover from the same fateful event - a violent storm, 150 million kilometres away on the surface of the sun.

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Super-sized Supernova: Scientists Observe Largest Exploding Star Yet Seen

Scientists have managed to observe a super-sized supernova explosion from start to finish, including the black hole ending. (Credit: Image courtesy of Weizmann Institute of Science)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Mar. 25, 2009) — In the first observation if its kind, scientists at the Weizmann Institute of Science and San Diego State University were able to watch what happens when a star the size of 50 suns explodes. As they continued to track the spectacular event, they found that most of the star’s mass collapsed in on itself, resulting in a large black hole.

While exploding stars – supernovae – have been viewed with everything from the naked eye to high-tech research satellites, no one had directly observed what happens when a really huge star blows up. Dr. Avishay Gal-Yam of the Weizmann Institute’s Faculty of Physics and Prof. Douglas Leonard of San Diego State University recently located and calculated the mass of a gigantic star on the verge of exploding, following through with observations of the blast and its aftermath. Their findings, reported in the journal Nature, have lent support to the reigning theory that stars ranging from tens to hundreds of times the mass of our sun all end up as black holes.

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Space 'Rosetta Stone' Unlike Anything Seen Before

Asteroids - Visions of the Universe, p.34 by Kazuaki Iwasaki

From The Live Science:

Meteorite fragments of the first asteroid ever spotted in space before it slammed into Earth's atmosphere last year were recovered by scientists from the deserts of Sudan.

These precious pieces of space rock, described in a study detailed in the March 26 issue of the journal Nature, could be an important key to classifying meteorites and asteroids and determining exactly how they formed.

The asteroid was detected by the automated Catalina Sky Survey telescope at Mount Lemmon , Ariz., on Oct. 6, 2008. Just 19 hours after it was spotted, it collided with Earth's atmosphere and exploded 23 miles (37 kilometers) above the Nubian Desert of northern Sudan.

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DARPA At Phase 2 On Human 'Regeneration' Tech

Image from It's Just Cool

From The Register:

Famed US military mad-professor bureau DARPA has inked a second deal with Massachusetts researchers to develop ways of "regenerating" human body tissues cut, shot or blown off in combat. The new biotech therapies would employ the same methods used by newts in growing replacement limbs.

News of the award comes courtesy of the Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), which announced the $570,000 agreement between DARPA and WPI-spawned company CellThera yesterday. CellThera is expected to work with the university's bioengineering department in delivering Phase II of DARPA's "restorative injury repair" programme.

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Study: Brain Switches Off Rationality When Given 'Expert Advice'

From Times Online:

Financial advice can make us take leave of our senses, according to research that shows how the brain sets aside rationality when it gets the benefit of supposedly expert opinion.

When a bank manager or investment adviser recommends a financial decision, the brain tends to abdicate responsibility and defer to their authority with little independent thought, a study has suggested.

Such expert advice suppresses activity in a neural circuit that is critical to sound decision-making and value judgments, scientists in the US have found.

Their results may explain why people are so apt to follow experts’ recommendations blindly, when a little reflection might be sufficient to suggest an alternative course of action.

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Quantum Leap For Quantum Dots

Photo: Silicon nanoparticles are engineered to glow red under ultraviolet light with quantum dots or organic chemicals. (Photo courtesy of UCSD)

From North County Times:

Nanoparticles may wind up in your medicine chest, on your money.

Specks of semiconductors called quantum dots, could soon spread around the world, around us, and perhaps, even inside of us.

A few billionths of a meter in diameter, or 5,000 to the width of a human hair, quantum dots glow fluorescently in a variety of colors. Once strictly a lab curiosity, they can reveal molecular processes inside cells, detect dangerous chemicals and improve the efficiency of solar power systems.

Pioneering work on quantum dots is being performed at Carlsbad-based Life Technologies, at UC San Diego and other local biotech companies and non-profit research institutes.

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Pentagon Plan to Regrow Limbs: Phase One, Complete

(Click the Image to Enlarge)

From Danger Room:

The first phase of the Pentagon's plan to regrow soldiers' limbs is complete; scientists managed to turn human skin into the equivalent of a blastema — a mass of undifferentiated cells that can develop into new body parts. Now, researchers are on to phase two: turning that cellular glop into a square inch of honest-to-goodness muscle tissue.

The Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) just got a one-year, $570,000 grant from Darpa, the Pentagon's blue-sky research arm, to grow the new tissues. "The goal is to genuinely replace a muscle that's lost," biotechnology professor Raymond Page tells Danger Room. "I appreciate that's a very aggressive goal." And it's only one part in a larger, even more ambitious Darpa program, Restorative Injury Repair, that aims to "fully restore the function of complex tissue (muscle, nerves, skin, etc.) after traumatic injury on the battlefield."

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Why Toddlers Don't Do What They're Told

From Live Science:

Are you listening to me? Didn't I just tell you to get your coat? Helloooo! It's cold out there...

So goes many a conversation between parent and toddler. It seems everything you tell them either falls on deaf ears or goes in one ear and out the other. But that's not how it works.

Toddlers listen, they just store the information for later use, a new study finds.

"I went into this study expecting a completely different set of findings," said psychology professor Yuko Munakata at the University of Colorado at Boulder. "There is a lot of work in the field of cognitive development that focuses on how kids are basically little versions of adults trying to do the same things adults do, but they're just not as good at it yet. What we show here is they are doing something completely different."

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'Ice That Burns' May Yield Clean, Sustainable Bridge To Global Energy Future

Gas hydrates, known as "ice that burns," may provide a clean, sustainable fuel source in the future. (Credit: J. Pinkston and L. Stern/US Geological Survey)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Mar. 24, 2009) — In the future, natural gas derived from chunks of ice that workers collect from beneath the ocean floor and beneath the arctic permafrost may fuel cars, heat homes, and power factories. Government researchers are reporting that these so-called "gas hydrates," a frozen form of natural gas that bursts into flames at the touch of a match, show increasing promise as an abundant, untapped source of clean, sustainable energy.

The icy chunks could supplement traditional energy sources that are in short supply and which produce large amounts of carbon dioxide linked to global warming, the scientists say.*

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Inside The Hottest Place On Earth

Erta Ale, the most active volcano in Ethiopia, is located in the Afar Region

From The BBC:

Earth scientist Dr Dougal Jerram, from Durham University, joined a BBC team to investigate the geology of the Danakil desert in northern Ethiopia - officially the hottest place on Earth. Here is his account of mapping an active volcano from inside the crater.

Like a true journey to the centre of the Earth, volcanoes provide a unique window into our planet's interior.

They provide a direct means by which our Earth cools itself, form a vital link with the developing atmosphere and can be an awesome yet terrible hazard to the people and animals that live around them.

But just how do we get into the guts of a volcano?

This is exactly what I set out to do as part of a scientific expedition into the Danakil desert.

As part of a team headed by Kate Humble, with vet Steve Leonard, medic Mukal Agarwal and biologist Richard Wiese, and a full expedition crew, we explored the region's legendary Afar tribes people, saw how the animals and man live in the extreme environment and came face to face with one of the Earth's most geologically active areas.

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Physicist Counters Climate-Change Models

Atmospheric physicist Ed Berry poses for a portrait Friday outside his home near Somers. "We are talking about something as complicated as the human body," Berry said in reference to climate change and global warming. Berry has been studying climate physics since the late 1960s. Allison Money/Daily Inter Lake

From Daily Inter Lake:

The global warming hypothesis is dead, scientifically'.

Ed Berry is making some noise about climate change, and he's singing a different tune than former Vice President Al Gore and his "Inconvenient Truth."

Berry, 73, an accomplished atmospheric physicist who recently moved to the Flathead Valley from Sacramento, Calif., was among about 700 scientists who attended the International Conference on Climate Change in New York City March 7-10.

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Rise Of The Robots--The Future Of Artificial Intelligence

Photo: PYTAK

From Scientific American:

By 2050 robot "brains" based on computers that execute 100 trillion instructions per second will start rivaling human intelligence

Editor's Note: This article was originally printed in the 2008 Scientific American Special Report on Robots. It is being published on the Web as part of ScientificAmerican.com's In-Depth Report on Robots.

In recent years the mushrooming power, functionality and ubiquity of computers and the Internet have outstripped early forecasts about technology’s rate of advancement and usefulness in everyday life. Alert pundits now foresee a world saturated with powerful computer chips, which will increasingly insinuate themselves into our gadgets, dwellings, apparel and even our bodies.

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British Scientists To Create 'Synthetic' Blood

From The Independent:

Human embryos will be used to make an unlimited supply for infection-free transfusions.

Scientists in Britain plan to become the first in the world to produce unlimited amounts of synthetic human blood from embryonic stem cells for emergency infection-free transfusions.

A major research project is to be announced this week that will culminate in three years with the first transfusions into human volunteers of "synthetic" blood made from the stem cells of spare IVF embryos. It could help to save the lives of anyone from victims of traffic accidents to soldiers on a battlefield by revolutionising the vital blood transfusion services, which have to rely on a network of human donors to provide a constant supply of fresh blood.

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Mt. Redoubt In Alaska Erupts

Video of the sixth eruption, from the Alaska Volcano observatory webcam system. (h/t to Ron De Haan)

From The Volcanism Blog:

Redoubt-watchers will be aware that the Alaska Volcano Observatory’s Hut webcam went offline during the eruption yesterday, but came back again towards the end of the afternoon. As a result images were captured of the eruptive activity - the sixth explosive event - that took place from 19:41 local time onwards yesterday.

From these webcam images Akira Shirakawa has compiled a video, with synchronized sound, that shows activity between 19:19 and 20:43, available at YouTube. Large-scale ash emission makes everything very dark around 19:50 (at video time 0:24), and a big ash eruption can be clearly seen at 20:01 (video time 0:34).

There is also a page of Hut webcam images and a time-lapse movie here (h/t Chris Rowan, via comment at Eruptions).

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Cancer Breakthrough: Tales Of 'Trojan Horse Drug' And 'Miracle Dogs'

Oscar, who scientists dubbed the "miracle dog," survived an aggressive form of cancer thanks a drug known as NO-Cbl. The drug may lead to a powerful new cancer treatment for humans. (Credit: Crandall B. Huckins)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Mar. 24, 2009) — Diagnosed with an extremely aggressive form of cancer called anal sac adenocarcinoma, Oscar's future seemed bleak. Bedridden and unresponsive to chemotherapy or radiation, he would be lucky to survive three months. But thanks to an innovative new drug treatment, Oscar's cancer receded and he was walking again within two weeks.

Oscar's recovery was extraordinary enough, but his case was unusual for another reason. Oscar is a Bichon Frise, who scientists reporting in Salt Lake City, Utah at the 237th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society on March 23 call "the Miracle Dog." Joseph A. Bauer, Ph.D., and colleagues described promising results with a drug called nitrosylcobalamin (NO-Cbl) in battling cancer in Oscar and three other canines without any negative side effects. While it gives profound hope to dog owners, NO-Cbl also points to a powerful new cancer treatment for humans — one that infiltrates cancer cells like a biological Trojan horse.

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Oldest Sea Creatures Have Been Alive 4,000 Years

Radiocarbon dating results show deep-sea "corals" with proteinaceous skeletons such as the pictured Gerardia sp. on basalt outcrop, Hawai'ian Islands, are feeding on recently exported young and fresh particulate organic matter and that individual colony longevities are on the order of thousands of years. Credit: NOAA's Hawaii Undersea Research Laboratory (HURL)

From Live Science:

Deep-sea corals are the oldest living animals with a skeleton in the seas, claims new research that found a 4,265-year-old coral species off the coast of Hawaii.

Deep-sea corals, which are threatened by climate change and pollution like shallow water corals are, grow on seamounts (mountains rising from the seafloor that don't reach the ocean's surface) and continental margins at depths of about 1,000 to 10,000 feet (300 to 3,000 meters).

These corals play host to many other marine organisms, and are hotspots of ocean biodiversity. The largest coral reef system in the world is the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Queensland, Australia. Big reefs are also found in the Red Sea, along the coast of Mexico and Belize, the Bahamas and the Maldives.

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Laser Weapon Design Hits 100-Kilowatt Target

A Northrop Grumman Space Technology engineer in Redondo Beach, Calif., monitors a solid-state laser, in a photo from January 2007. (Credit: Northrop Grumman)

From CNET:

From the week gone by on the directed-energy weapons front: defense contractor Northrop Grumman reported that it got a solid-state laser to fire a beam with a potency of 105.5 kilowatts.

For the ray-gun wing of the military-industrial complex, the 100-kilowatt threshold is a major milestone, marking the entry point to weapons-grade laser weapons. Adding to the appeal is that solid-state lasers are much more compact, and less noxious, than chemical laser systems such as the one in the works for the 747-centric Airborne Laser.

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Dogs Show A Fetching Communication Savvy

GO FETCHFETCHING. In a re-enactment of an experiment on dogs' ability to understand human communication, a border collie watches its owner present a miniature replica of a rope toy (1), searches among the toys in an adjoining room (2) and brings the actual rope toy back to the owner (3).J. Kaminski

From Science News:

Border collies know to retrieve toys when owners present replicas or, in some cases, photos of those toys.

Dogs are lousy conversationalists and can’t write worth a lick. But don’t sell the family pooch short when it comes to grasping subtle references in human communication, a new study suggests.

Border collies quickly realize that their owners want them to fetch a toy from another room when shown a full-size or miniature replica of the desired item and given a command to “bring it here,” say biological psychologist Juliane Kaminski of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and her colleagues. Even a photograph of a toy works with some dogs as a signal to fetch that toy from an unseen location, the researchers report in an upcoming issue of Developmental Science.

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How (And Why) Athletes Go Broke

From Sports Illustrated:

Recession or no recession, many NFL, NBA and Major League Baseball players have a penchant for losing most or all of their money. It doesn't matter how much they make. And the ways they blow it are strikingly similar.

What the hell happened here? Seven floors above the iced-over Dallas North Tollway, Raghib (Rocket) Ismail is revisiting the question. It's December, and Ismail is sitting in the boardroom of Chapwood Investments, a wealth management firm, his white Notre Dame snow hat pulled down to his furrowed brow.

In 1991 Ismail, a junior wide receiver for the Fighting Irish, was the presumptive No. 1 pick in the NFL draft. Instead he signed with the CFL's Toronto Argonauts for a guaranteed $18.2 million over four years, then the richest contract in football history. But today, at a private session on financial planning attended by eight other current or onetime pro athletes, Ismail, 39, indulges in a luxury he didn't enjoy as a young VIP: hindsight.

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New Hope For Controversial 'Cold Fusion' Power Source

An experimental "cold fusion" device produced this pattern of "triple tracks" (shown at right), which scientists say is caused by high-energy nuclear particles resulting from a nuclear reaction. Credit: Pamela Mosier-Boss, Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center (SPAWAR)

From Live Science:

If cold fusion can be made to work, it could power the world cheaply on a virtually limitless supply of seawater. But scientists don't even know if it's possible.

Now a new study has produced evidence for the existence of low-energy nuclear reactions (LENR), the new name for the controversial process labeled "cold fusion" two decades ago.

Fusion is the energy source of the sun and other stars. It occurs when atomic nuclei are combined. Today's nuclear plants employ fission, the splitting of nuclei. Scientists have been striving for decades to tap fusion to produce electricity from an abundant fuel called deuterium that can be extracted from seawater. Fusion would not come with the radioactive byproducts of fission.

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