Why Reliance On Sniffer Dog Evidence May Throw Us Off The Scent In Trials

From The Guardian:

The role of sniffer dogs in the treatment of Kate and Gerry McCann as suspects in their daughter's disappearance drew sharp criticism. Research casts doubt on sniffer dogs' reliability and how much weight should be attributed to their evidence

Almost a decade ago, a man was convicted and imprisoned solely on the basis of sniffer dog evidence, but could it have been a miscarriage of justice?

On the night on 11 January 1999, the occupier of a house in Stoney Barton, Westleigh, Devon, discovered an intruder in his house and telephoned the police.

A police dog handler who attended the scene later gave evidence in court stating that the animal had gone straight from the house and stopped beside a car parked half a mile away.

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Massive Asteroid Bombardment May Have Helped Life To THRIVE On Earth

Asteroids bombarded Earth 3.9billion years ago but may not have wiped out all life. In fact some bacteria may have thrived

From The Daily Mail:

A heavy bombardment by asteroids the size of Ireland actually helped life to THRIVE on Earth 3.9billion years ago, scientists have suggested.

Many experts had thought the violent pelting by massive asteroids during the period known as the Late Heavy Bombardment would have melted the Earth's crust and vaporized any life on the planet.

But new three-dimensional computer models developed by a team at the University of Colorado at Boulder shows much of Earth's crust, and the microbes living on it, could have survived and may have even flourished in the harsh conditions.

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A Look Inside NASA's Custom Hubble Repair Toolkit

Hubble Drill: A high-speed, low-torque drill for removing Hubble's many screws during spacewalks. Michael Soluri/NPR

From Popsci.com:

Fixing the most advanced telescope in space requires more than a trip to Home Depot

Earlier today, astronauts aboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis released the Hubble Space Telescope back into orbit after a successful mission to repair and upgrade NASA's famous orbiting observatory.

The mission was intensive, especially considering almost all of the repairs that were performed during a series of TK spacewalks were on parts that were never intended to be serviced by astronauts in space. Equally intense (and beautiful) are the 180 tools NASA employed for the job--with 116 of them created specifically for this mission.

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Europe's HIV Followed Holiday Routes

This map depicts the spread of HIV in Europe
(Image: Dimitrios Paraskevis et al., Retrovirology, 2009)

From New Scientist:

HIV's European tour may have begun in the Mediterranean. A new genetic map plotted from viruses in hundreds of people suggests that many European strains of HIV trace their ancestry to Greece, Portugal, Serbia and Spain.

Sun-seeking tourists from northern and central Europe might account for the pattern, the study's authors say.

The vast majority of the study's participants said they acquired their infections in their home country, so the patterns could be a vestige of HIV's emergence and early spread through Europe in the early 1980s, probably after arriving from the US.

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New Way Of Treating The Flu

Dr. Robert Linhardt's new compound (green spheres) blocks both the N (pink spikes) and H (blue spikes) portion of the flu virus. The compound prevents the infection of the cell and the spread of the flu to other cell like no other compound before. (Credit: Melissa Kemp/Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (May 20, 2009) — What happens if the next big influenza mutation proves resistant to the available anti-viral drugs? This question is presenting itself right now to scientists and health officials this week at the World Health Assembly in Geneva, Switzerland, as they continue to do battle with H1N1, the so-called swine flu, and prepare for the next iteration of the ever-changing flu virus.

Promising new research announced by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute could provide an entirely new tool to combat the flu. The discovery is a one-two punch against the illness that targets the illness on two fronts, going one critical step further than any currently available flu drug.

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Why 'Terminator' Is So Creepy

The movie "Terminator Salvation" tells of the human resistance struggling to defeat Skynet and its robot army. Credit: Warner Bros.

From Live Science:

Hollywood and robotics researchers have long struggled with the "uncanny valley," where a movie character or robot falls into the unsettling gap between human and not-quite-human. One psychologist likes to demonstrate this by holding up a plastic baby doll and asking audiences if they think it's alive. They say no.

Then she takes out a saw and starts cutting the doll's head off, but quickly stops upon seeing the uncomfortable audience reactions.

"I think that part of their brain is thinking the doll is alive, and you can't shut that off," said Thalia Wheatley, a psychologist at Dartmouth College.

Similar sensations abound in the movie "Terminator Salvation," which tells the story of the artificial intelligence Skynet and its army of robots threatening to wipe out humanity in 2018. The uncanny twist comes when Skynet begins disturbing experiments that combine human flesh with robotic strength.

Scientists have begun to understand what happens in the human brain when it encounters the uncanny valley. And like the post-apocalyptic future of "Terminator," it's not pretty — a murky landscape where conflict rages upon confronting a challenge to our human identity.

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Hubble's Troubles Surprised Shuttle Crew

This NASA image shows the Hubble Space Telescope following grapple of the giant observatory by the shuttle's Canadian-built remote manipulator system on May 13. US astronauts aboard the shuttle Atlantis bid the Hubble telescope a wistful farewell Tuesday, ending a grueling revamp to equip the aging stargazer to explore the cosmos for years to come. (AFP/NASA/File)

From Yahoo News/Reuters:

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) – Years of training didn't prepare the shuttle Atlantis astronauts for the problems encountered during NASA's final servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope, the crew said on Wednesday.

With the refurbished telescope back in orbit, the seven shuttle astronauts took some time off and began preparing for Friday's homecoming at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

"It's amazing looking back at how hard things looked a couple of times -- more difficult than I ever expected -- and then to overcome and wind up with everything done in the way that it was. We were very successful," Atlantis commander Scott Altman told reporters during an in-flight news conference on Wednesday.

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Unlikely Suns Reveal Improbable Planets

Brown Dwarf is a star so small—some are hardly more massive than a large planet—that it never lit up. Astronomers scarcely even bothered to look for planets around such runts. Yet they have now seen hints of mini solar systems forming around brown dwarfs and similarly unlikely objects. Ron Miller

From Scientific American:

Among the most poignant sights in the heavens are white dwarfs. Although they have a mass comparable to our sun’s, they are among the dimmest of all stars and becoming ever dimmer; they do not follow the usual pattern relating stellar mass to brightness. Astronomers think white dwarfs must not be stars so much as the corpses of stars. Each white dwarf was once much like our sun and shone with the same brilliance. But then it began to run out of fuel and entered its stormy death throes, swelling to 100 times its previous size and brightening 10,000-fold, before shedding its outer layers and shriveling to a glowing cinder the size of Earth. For the rest of eternity, it will sit inertly, slowly fading to blackness.

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This Is A WOMAN'S World: Men Face Mass Extinction Because Male Genes Are Dying Out

The future? How an all female society may look like if scientists
predictions that men will die out are correct

From The Daily Mail:

Men are on the road to extinction as their genes shrink and slowly fade away, a genetic expert warned today.

The researcher in human sex chromosomes said the male Y chromosome was dying and could one day run out.

However readers shouldn't worry just yet - the change is not due to take place for another five million years.

Professor Jennifer Graves revealed the bleak future to medical students at a public lecture at the Royal College of Surgeons (RCSI) in Ireland.

But all is not lost. She said men may follow the path of a type of rodent which still manages to reproduce despite not having the vital genes that make up the Y chromosome.

'You need a Y chromosome to be male,' said Prof Graves.

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Stone Age Superglue Found -- Hints at Unknown Smarts?

Ancient people in what is now South Africa whipped up a glue of powdered red ochre and acacia-tree gum to keep their tools (above, a replicated tool with adhesive made by scientists) intact, a May 2009 study says. The ancient people's understanding of chemistry may have required more smarts than we give our ancestors credit for, researchers added. Photograph courtesy Lyn Wadley

From The National Geographic:

Stone Age humans were adept chemists who whipped up a sophisticated kind of natural glue, a new study says.

They knowingly tweaked the chemical and physical properties of an iron-containing pigment known as red ochre with the gum of acacia trees to create adhesives for their shafted tools.

Archaeologists had believed the blood-red pigment—used by people in what is now South Africa about 70,000 years ago—served a decorative or symbolic purpose.

But the scientists had also suspected that the pigment may have been purposely added to improve glue that held the peoples' tools together.

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Preparing To Peer Into A Black Hole

The Sagittarius A* supermassive black hole, as seen by the Chandra X-ray Observatory. Nobody has yet seen the black hole directly (Image: NASA)

From New Scientist:

LIKE a giant pale blue eye, the Earth stares at the centre of our galaxy. Through the glare and the fog it is trying to catch a glimpse of an indistinct something 30,000 light years away. Over there, within the sparkling starscape of the galaxy's core... no, not those giant suns or those colliding gas clouds; not the gamma-ray glow of annihilating antimatter. No, right there in the very centre, inside that swirling nebula of doomed matter, could that be just a hint of a shadow?

The shadow we're straining to see is that of a monstrous black hole, a place where gravity rules supreme, swallowing light and stretching the fabric of space to breaking point. Black holes are perhaps the most outrageous prediction of science, and even though we can paint fine theoretical pictures of them and point to evidence for many objects that seem to be black hole-ish, nobody has ever actually seen one.

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EarthTalk: The Risks of Nanotech

Are There Nanoparticles on Your Lips?: Getty Images

From Popsci.com:

The tiniest tech is growing fast, and largely unregulated.

Nanotechnology makes use of minuscule objects -- 10,000 times narrower than a human hair -- known as nanoparticles. Upwards of 600 products on store shelves today contain them, including transparent sunscreen, lipsticks, anti-aging creams, and even food products.

Global nanotechnology sales have grown substantially in recent years, according to Lux Research, author of the annual Nanotech Report. The final tally isn't in yet, but analysts have predicted 2008 sales to be $150 billion. The National Science Foundation says the industry could be worth $1 trillion by 2015, and directly employ two million workers.

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Insight Into Evolution Of First Flowers

This flower from an avocado tree (Persea americana) shows the characteristics of ancient flowering-plant lineages. Its petals (colorful in most flowers) and sepals (usually a green outer layer) are combined into one organ. A new study led by University of Florida researchers provides insight into how the first flowering plants emerged from non-flowering plants and began evolving about 130 million years ago. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of Florida)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (May 19, 2009) — Charles Darwin described the sudden origin of flowering plants about 130 million years ago as an abominable mystery, one that scientists have yet to solve.

But a new University of Florida study, set to appear in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is helping shed light on the mystery with information about what the first flowers looked like and how they evolved from nonflowering plants.

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From Live Science:

Real robot names such as Roomba and Asimo don't evoke as much fear as the fictional "Terminator." But consider that Roomba, the automated vacuum cleaner, is manufactured by iRobot, creator also of armed robot warriors for the U.S. military. And Asimo represents just the first wave of an incoming tsunami of robots that strive to look and act eerily human.

It goes beyond automated vacuums and mildly entertaining dance-bots. Japan and Korea plan to deploy humanoid robots to care for the elderly, while the United States already fields thousands of robot warriors on the modern battlefield. Meanwhile, plenty of people have enhanced their bodies technologically in ways that bring them closer to their robotic brethren.

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GPS System 'Close To Breakdown'

From The Guardian:

Network of satellites could begin to fail as early as 2010

It has become one of the staples of modern, hi-tech life: using satellite navigation tools built into your car or mobile phone to find your way from A to B. But experts have warned that the system may be close to breakdown.

US government officials are concerned that the quality of the Global Positioning System (GPS) could begin to deteriorate as early as next year, resulting in regular blackouts and failures – or even dishing out inaccurate directions to millions of people worldwide.

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Fossil Discovery Is Heralded

Image: A fossil discovery suggests humans may be descended from an animal that resembles present-day lemurs like this one. AP Photo/Karen Tam

From The Wall Street Journal:

In what could prove to be a landmark discovery, a leading paleontologist said scientists have dug up the 47 million-year-old fossil of an ancient primate whose features suggest it could be the common ancestor of all later monkeys, apes and humans.

Anthropologists have long believed that humans evolved from ancient ape-like ancestors. Some 50 million years ago, two ape-like groups walked the Earth. One is known as the tarsidae, a precursor of the tarsier, a tiny, large-eyed creature that lives in Asia. Another group is known as the adapidae, a precursor of today's lemurs in Madagascar.

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Little Search Engines That Could

From Christian Science Monitor:

Four alternatives to Google for finding answers online.

All hail Google, the undisputed king of search. It’s hard to imagine other sites toppling the online giant – and few have the hubris to try.

Jimmy Wales, the mind behind Wikipedia, announced in late March that he was pulling the plug on Wikia Search, his attempt at a user-generated search engine. The project couldn’t attract enough users and money.

But Google isn’t perfect. While some call it simple, quick, and effective, others describe the site as incomplete, dull, and a lowest common denominator.

Here are four search alternatives to cut through the Web and find what you’re looking for.

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Astronauts Finish Repairs On Hubble Space Telescope

In this image from NASA TV astronauts John Grunsfeld, left, and Andrew Feustel work to upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope during a spacewalk, Monday, May 18, 2009. This is the fifth and final repair mission for the 19-year-old telescope. (AP Photo/NASA TV)

From Yahoo News/AP:

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – Spacewalking astronauts completed repairs to the Hubble Space Telescope on Monday, leaving it more powerful than ever and able to peer even deeper into the cosmos — almost to the brink of creation. The last humans to lay hands on Hubble outfitted the observatory with another set of fresh batteries, a new sensor for precise pointing and protective covers.

That equipment, along with other improvements made over the last five days, should allow the telescope to provide dazzling views of the universe for another five to 10 years.

"This is a very important moment in human history," Hubble senior project scientist David Leckrone said in Houston. "We will rewrite the textbooks at least one more time."

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Nine Games Computers Are Ruining For Humanity

From New Scientist:

If we ever manage to build a working quantum computer, the first killer app might be online poker. Thanks to the counter-intuitive rules of quantum mechanics, players will be able to use mind-boggling strategies like betting and folding simultaneously (see Quantum poker: Are the chips down or not?).

Poker wouldn't be the first game to have been revolutionised by computers. Artificial intelligence researchers have taught computers to play a wide range of strategic games well enough to compete with skilful human players – and in a few cases, they've beaten them convincingly...

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Weird New NASA Rovers Really Get Around

From Wired Science:

At some point on their five-year journey, Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity have both gotten their feet stuck in the soil, and NASA is taking notes for the design of the next generation of rovers.

In 2005, Opportunity spent five weeks spinning her wheels in a dune later dubbed “Purgatory.” Last week, Spirit sank into a sandpit scientists are calling “Troy,” and could stay there for weeks — or forever.

But rovers of the future may have an easier time of it. NASA scientists are building an army of prototypes with new and ever weirder ways to rove.

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