New Cosmic Map Reveals Colossal Structures

The new survey mapped the positions of more than 100,000 galaxies. The black strips are areas the survey did not cover because matter in our own galaxy blocked the view (Illustration: Chris Fluke/Swinburne University of Technology)

From The New Scientist:

Enormous cosmic voids and giant concentrations of matter have been observed in a new galaxy survey, one of the biggest completed so far. One of the voids is so large that it is difficult to explain where it came from.

Called the Six Degree Field Galaxy Survey (6dFGS), the project scanned 41% of the sky, measuring positions and distances for 110,000 galaxies within 2 billion light years of Earth.

No previous survey has covered as much of the sky at such a distance. The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), which is based in the northern hemisphere, has probed about twice as far but covers only 23% of the sky.

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Virus-Built Battery Could Power Cars, Electronic Devices

Angela Belcher holds a display of the virus-built battery she helped engineer. The battery -- the silver-colored disc -- is being used to power an LED. (Credit: Photo by Donna Coveney)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Apr. 3, 2009) — For the first time, MIT researchers have shown they can genetically engineer viruses to build both the positively and negatively charged ends of a lithium-ion battery.

The new virus-produced batteries have the same energy capacity and power performance as state-of-the-art rechargeable batteries being considered to power plug-in hybrid cars, and they could also be used to power a range of personal electronic devices, said Angela Belcher, the MIT materials scientist who led the research team.

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Beverage Consumption A Bigger Factor In Weight, Study Shows

When it comes to weight loss, what you drink may be more important
than what you eat. (Credit: iStockphoto)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Apr. 2, 2009) — When it comes to weight loss, what you drink may be more important than what you eat, according to researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Researchers examined the relationship between beverage consumption among adults and weight change and found that weight loss was positively associated with a reduction in liquid calorie consumption and liquid calorie intake had a stronger impact on weight than solid calorie intake.

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Dogs Do Look Like Owners

From Live Science:

People can guess pretty successfully what breed of dog a person might own just by looking at the owner, a new study finds.

A group of 70 people who do not own dogs were asked to match photos of 41 dog owners to three possible breeds — Labrador, poodle or Staffordshire bull terrier. They matched the owners to the dogs more than half the time. Yet given three choices, they should have been right only about a third of the time.

"This suggests that certain breeds of dogs are associated with particular kinds of people," said study leader Lance Workman, a psychologist at Bath Spa University in the UK.

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Building A Brain On A Silicon Chip

Image: A smart chip: Scientists in Europe are using conventional chip production techniques to create circuits that mimic the structure and function of the human brain. This early prototype has just 384 neurons and 100,000 synapses, but the latest version contains 200,000 neurons and 50 million synapses. Credit: Karlheinz Meier

From Technology Review:

A chip developed by European scientists simulates the learning capabilities of the human brain.

An international team of scientists in Europe has created a silicon chip designed to function like a human brain. With 200,000 neurons linked up by 50 million synaptic connections, the chip is able to mimic the brain's ability to learn more closely than any other machine.

Although the chip has a fraction of the number of neurons or connections found in a brain, its design allows it to be scaled up, says Karlheinz Meier, a physicist at Heidelberg University, in Germany, who has coordinated the Fast Analog Computing with Emergent Transient States project, or FACETS.

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Plan B For Energy: 8 Revolutionary Energy Sources

From Scientific American:

If efficiency improvements and incremental advances in today's technologies fail to halt global warming, could revolutionary new carbon-free energy sources save the day? Don't count on it—but don't count it out, either

To keep this world tolerable for life as we like it, humanity must complete a marathon of technological change whose finish line lies far over the horizon. Robert H. Socolow and Stephen W. Pacala of Princeton University have compared the feat to a multigenerational relay race. They outline a strategy to win the first 50-year leg by reining back carbon dioxide emissions from a century of unbridled acceleration. Existing technologies, applied both wisely and promptly, should carry us to this first milestone without trampling the global economy. That is a sound plan A.

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Robot Achieves Scientific First

A robot called ADAM can hypothesize, conduct experiments, and plan next steps without human input, researcher Ross King (left) and colleagues announced in April 2009. ADAM is the first—but maybe not the last—robot to make a new scientific discovery. Photograph courtesy Arthur Dafis, Aberystwyth University

From Financial Post:

A laboratory robot called Adam has been hailed as the first machine in history to have discovered new scientific knowledge independently of its human creators.

Adam formed a hypothesis on the genetics of bakers’ yeast and carried out experiments to test its predictions, without intervention from its makers at Aberystwyth University.

The result was a series of “simple but useful” discoveries, confirmed by human scientists, about the gene coding for yeast enzymes. The research is published in the journal Science.

Professor Ross King, the chief creator of Adam, said robots would not supplant human researchers but make their work more productive and interesting.

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More News On This Robot First

Robot scientist 'Adam' solves genetic problems -- Times Online
First Robot Scientist Makes Gene Discovery -- National Geographic
Self-directed robot scientist makes discovery -- MSNBC
Robot Scientist Becomes First Machine To Discover New Scientific Knowledge -- Science Daily
Robot Makes Scientific Discovery All by Itself -- Wired Science
Robot scientist makes discoveries with no human help -- New Scientist
Job Swap: This Robot Is the Scientist -- Live Science

UFO Hoax Was A Social Experiment

Joe Rudy releases a burning flare along side the smoke trail left by a vanished balloon while Chris Russo kneels down to get the next flare ready. Credit: Chris Russo & Joe Rudy via Skeptic.com.

From Live Science:

Strange lights appeared over Morris County, New Jersey, on Jan. 5 this year. The bright red lights were first noticed in the night sky by an eleven-year-old girl, who pointed out three lights grouped together, and another pair some distance away.

The lights moved silently and slowly, then disappeared one by one.

The girl's father, a pilot, said he was baffled: "I've been in aviation for 20 years and never seen anything like it." Police fielded calls from alarmed residents, and the supposed UFO made national news.

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Source Of Major Health Benefits In Olive Oil Revealed

Scientists have pinned down the constituent of olive oil that gives greatest protection from heart attack and stroke. (Credit: iStockphoto/Leslie Banks)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Apr. 2, 2009) — Scientists have pinned down the constituent of olive oil that gives greatest protection from heart attack and stroke. In a study of the major antioxidants in olive oil, Portuguese researchers showed that one, DHPEA-EDA, protects red blood cells from damage more than any other part of olive oil.

"These findings provide the scientific basis for the clear health benefits that have been seen in people who have olive oil in their diet," says lead researcher Fatima Paiva-Martins, who works at the University of Porto.

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Who Gets The Girl? Funny Men Have The Last Laugh...

Photo: Who gets the girl? Funny men like David Walliams, seen with model Lauren Budd, are luckier in love

From The Daily Mail:

It has long been noted that women love a man who can make them laugh - just look at 'sex thimble' Dudley Moore or serial dater David Walliams.

And now scientists believe they know why.

Being funny apparently makes men seem more intelligent, trustworthy - and a better bet for a relationship.

Psychologist Kristofor McCarty said: 'A quick browse of lonely hearts ads will confirm that women look for a good sense of humour in a potential partner - our research may explain why this is the case.'

Mr McCarty drew his conclusions after a study where he asked 45 women to rate the personalities behind a selection of 'lonely hearts' adverts.

Some of these were funny, others were entirely factual.

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Fruit Flies Earn No Respect, Except Among Scientists

These humble fruit flies, clinging to a matchstick, may be kitchenpests, but they contribute enormously to biological and medical science. New South Wales Department of Primary Industries/MCT

From McClatchy:

WASHINGTON — That annoying kitchen pest, the fruit fly, occupies an honored place in science and medicine, despite slurs from politicians such as Sen. John McCain and his 2008 sidekick, Sarah Palin.

Scientists have been studying these dinky insects for more than a century, but they say that they're still turning up valuable new information in more than 1,000 laboratories all over the world.

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Astronomers Find Hidden Exoplanet in Hubble's Dustbin

From Wired Science:

An exoplanet hidden in the Hubble Space Telescope's archival images has been revealed by data miners using a new technique for spotting the satellites of distant stars.

In search of more information about a known exoplanet orbiting the star HR8799 about 130 light-years from Earth, astronomers turned to the catalog of images Hubble has been amassing for more than 15 years. Using an algorithm that can block the bright light of observed stars allowing the much fainter exoplanets circling them to be seen, the team spotted the planet in an image from 1998.

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The Five Ages Of The Brain:

From The New Scientist:

Throughout life our brains undergo more changes than any other part of the body. These can be broadly divided into five stages, each profoundly affecting our abilities and behaviour.

But we are not just passengers in this process, so how can we get the best out of our brains at every stage and pass the best possible organ on to the next? New Scientist investigates

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Early Galaxies Surprise With Size

NASA/JPL-Caltech

From Nature News:

Astronomers revise galaxy-formation models with the discovery that early galaxies could have grown fat — fast.

Slurping up cold streams of star fuel, some of the Universe's first galaxies got fat quickly, new observations suggest. The findings could overturn existing models for the formation and evolution of galaxies that predict their slow and steady growth through mergers.

Researchers using the Subaru telescope in Hawaii have identified five distant galaxy clusters that formed five billion years after the Big Bang. They calculated the mass of the biggest galaxy in each of the clusters and found, to their surprise, that the ancient galaxies were roughly as big as the biggest galaxies in equivalent clusters in today's Universe.

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Cracking The Crusts Of Neutron Stars

NSCL professor Bill Lynch inspects the mini-ball, a detector at the MSU laboratory used to analyze fragments produced when nuclei collide at high velocities. (Credit: Harley Seeley, MSU)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Mar. 31, 2009) — Research by Michigan State University scientists is helping shed light on neutron stars, city-sized globs of ultra-dense matter that occasionally collapse into black holes.

A team led by Betty Tsang, a professor at MSU’s National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory, has had some success in measuring a key nuclear quality that may make it easier to describe the outer crusts of such stars.

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Humans Losing Touch With Nature

From Live Science:

With so much of life based on electronic representations of reality, humans risk losing touch with nature, says University of Washington psychologist Peter Kahn.

From web cams that offer views of wildlife to virtual tours of the Grand Canyon to robotic pets, modern technology increasingly is encroaching into human connections with the natural world. Kahn and his colleagues believe this intrusion may emerge as one of the central psychological problems of our times.

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Sounds Good: The Flat Loudspeaker That Is As Thin As A Sheet Of Foil

The speaker is so thin it resembles a sheet of tin foil

From The Daily Mail:

A groundbreaking new loudspeaker that can be printed on and used as a wall poster has been developed by British engineers.

The lightweight and flexible speakers are less than 0.25mm thick and could also be concealed in car interiors or ceiling tiles.

They were developed by the University of Warwick spin-out company, Warwick Audio Technologies, who plan to start selling them later this year.

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Giza Pyramids Align Toward City of Sun God

The Giza Pyramids of ancient Egypt, pictured here, were built along an invisible diagonal in orientation toward Heliopolis, the center of worship for the sun god in ancient Egypt, suggests new research.

From Discovery:

March 24, 2009 -- Some of Egypt's most magnificent pyramids were deliberately designed to follow a pattern of invisible diagonal lines, an Italian study has concluded.

According to Giulio Magli, professor of archaeoastronomy at Milan's Polytechnic University, these invisible lines would connect most of the funerary complexes raised by the kings of the Old Kingdom between 2630 and 2323 B.C.

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Airport Body Scans Reveal All

Millimeter wave technology produces whole body images (woman at left, man at right) that reveal what's under your clothes, including Metallic or non-metallic devices and objects are displayed, including weapons, explosives and other items that a passenger is carrying on his/her person. The images are viewed by a Transportation Security Officer in a remote location. According to the TSA: To ensure privacy, the setup "has zero storage capability and images will not be printed stored or transmitted. Once the transportation security officer has viewed the image and resolved anomalies, the image is erased from the screen permanently. The officer is unable to print, export, store or transmit the image." Credit: TSA

From Live Science:

New airport security scanners could become a popular alternative to body searches, but have also prompted some privacy concerns.

Whole-body imaging technologies can see through clothing to reveal metallic and non-metallic objects, including weapons or plastic explosives. They also reveal a person's silhouette and the outlines of underwear.

That hasn't stopped security officials from implementing them. The U.S. Transportation Security Agency (TSA) started using whole-body imaging at six airports this year, and plans are in the works to expand it to airports in several more U.S. cities later this year.

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NASA Headline: Deep Solar Minimum

Above: The sunspot cycle from 1995 to the present. The jagged curve traces actual sunspot counts. Smooth curves are fits to the data and one forecaster’s predictions of future activity. Credit: David Hathaway, NASA/MSFC. [more]

From Watts Up With That?

The sunspot cycle is behaving a little like the stock market. Just when you think it has hit bottom, it goes even lower.

2008 was a bear. There were no sunspots observed on 266 of the year’s 366 days (73%). To find a year with more blank suns, you have to go all the way back to 1913, which had 311 spotless days: plot. Prompted by these numbers, some observers suggested that the solar cycle had hit bottom in 2008.

Maybe not. Sunspot counts for 2009 have dropped even lower. As of March 31st, there were no sunspots on 78 of the year’s 90 days (87%).

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