Body Burners: The Forensics Of Fire

From New Scientist:

THE fire started with a match held under a cotton blanket close to the man's waist. Within 2 minutes, the flames had spread across the single bed he was lying on and were consuming his cotton sweatshirt and trousers.

Around a dozen onlookers were at the scene - including police, fire investigators and death investigators - yet all they did was watch. That was, after all, their job. The "victim" had in fact died some time ago, having previously donated his remains to medical research.

His body had reached a unique team led by Elayne Pope, a forensic scientist at the University of West Florida in Pensacola. Her group spends its time setting fire to corpses in a range of different circumstances, to work out exactly how the human body burns. They seem to be the only group carrying out such systematic studies in this area, and are certainly the only ones publishing their work.

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Queuing Up For Dinner: Dolphins Enjoy Sardine Feeding Frenzy

Working as a team common dolphins head towards a bait ball in Port St. Johns, South Africa.

From The Daily Mail:

Like workers in a canteen the dolphins line up patiently as they look forward to a rather large and tasty lunch.

The aquatic mammals head to the South African coastline each year for the Sardine Run - an underwater migration where millions of fish head eastwards from their cool spawning waters near Cape Town in search of zooplankton.

The dolphins, alongside sword fish and sharks ambush them from below, while gannets and gulls hover above the waves waiting for their chance to pick up a morsel from above.

It is one of nature's greatest phenomena which takes place in June each year. Underwater photographer Alexander Safonov is looking forward to experiencing the awesome sight again after he captured it on camera in 2008.

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The Impact of Computing : 78% More per Year, v2.0

(Click to Enlarge)

From The Futurist:

Anyone who follows technology is familar with Moore's Law and its many variations, and has come to expect the price of computing power to halve every 18 months. But many people don't see the true long-term impact of this beyond the need to upgrade their computer every three or four years. To not internalize this more deeply is to miss investment opportunities, grossly mispredict the future, and be utterly unprepared for massive, sweeping changes to human society. Hence, it is time to update the first version of this all-important article that was written on February 21, 2006.

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Blue Whales Returning To Former Waters Off Alaska

This undated photo provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration shows blue whales in the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary in California. Scientists say the whales that use to cruise the Pacific Ocean from California to Alaska until commercial whalers nearly wiped out, could be re-establishing an old migration route from California to Alaska. Photo AP

From USA Today:

ANCHORAGE — Blue whales are returning to Alaska in search of food and could be re-establishing an old migration route several decades after they were nearly wiped out by commercial whalers, scientists say.

The endangered whales, possibly the largest animals ever to live on Earth, have yet to recover from the worldwide slaughter that eliminated 99% of their number, according to the American Cetacean Society. The hunting peaked in 1931 with more than 29,000 animals killed in one season.

The animals used to cruise from Mexico and Southern California to Alaska, but they had mostly vanished from Alaskan waters.

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World's Observatories Watching 'Cool' Star

Photographed by the Hubble Telescope, the bright star inside this nebula (gas cloud) is a very young white dwarf. (Credit: Courtesy of Space Telescope Institute/NASA and the Hubble Heritage Team)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (May 20, 2009) — The Whole Earth Telescope (WET), a worldwide network of observatories coordinated by the University of Delaware, is synchronizing its lenses to provide round-the-clock coverage of a cooling star. As the star dims in the twilight of its life, scientists hope it will shed light on the workings of our own planet and other mysteries of the galaxy.

The dying star, a white dwarf identified as WDJ1524-0030, located in the constellation Ophiuchus in the southern sky, is losing its brightness as it cools, its nuclear fuel spent. It will be monitored continuously from May 15 to June 11 by WET, a global partnership of telescopes which was formed in 1986.

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Innards of H1N1 Virus Resemble 'Flu Sausage'

From Live Science:

On March 28, one month before news of the swine flu outbreak headlined worldwide, a nine-year-old girl in Imperial County, California, ran a fever of 104.3°F. She had not rolled up her sleeve for this year’s flu vaccine, but that day she opened her mouth and stuck out her tongue for a cotton swab that scooped up mucous samples from her throat. Her mucus arrived at the Naval Health Research Center in San Diego where technicians tested it and classified the virus in it as “unsubtypable” influenza A – it was something new.

She recovered.

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Cold And Wet: The Latest Theory About Mars

Rhythmic bedding in sedimentary bedrock within Becquerel crater on Mars is suggested by the patterns in this image from Nasa's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter released last December. Reuters

From The Independent:

Mars may have once been both cold and wet, researchers said today, suggesting a freezing Martian landscape could still have produced water needed to sustain life.

There has been debate over the issue because with some researchers believing water likely formed many features of the planet's landscape and others pointing to evidence indicating that early Mars was cold with temperatures well below the freezing point of water.

Using a computer model, Alberto Fairen of Universidad Autonoma in Madrid and colleagues showed that both could have been possible because fluids containing dissolved minerals would have remained liquid at temperatures well below 273 degrees Kelvin - the freezing point of pure water.

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The New Generation DVD That Can Hold All Of Your Movies On Just One Disc

Different dimensions: Scientists are creating a DVD disc that can hold thousands of hours of film - but it could take up to 10 years before it goes on sale

From The Daily Mail:

A DVD that can store up to 2,000 films could usher in an age of three-dimensional TV and ultra-high definition viewing, scientists say.

The ultra-DVD is the same size and thickness as a conventional disc, but uses nano-technology to store vast amounts of information.

Scientists believe it could be on sale in five years and say it will revolutionise the way we store films, music and data.

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Who Is Responsible For Averting An Asteroid Strike?

This NASA slide depicts the catastrophic collision of a massive comet or asteroid with earth 250 million years ago, which appears to be the reason 90 percent of all marine species and 70 percent of all land vertebrates abruptly died out. (NASA/Newscom/File)

From Christian Science Monitor:

Column: It's time to set aside political quibbles and form an international plan.

Asteroid hunters have good news – and a challenge – for the rest of us.After an extensive search for asteroids a kilometer or more across, engineer Steve Chesley says that “we can now say with confidence that no asteroids large enough to cause such a global calamity [as killing off the dinosaurs] are headed our way.”

But if one of them – or even a smaller, city-destroying rock – were detected on a collision course, would the world community be prepared to handle it? A conference of legal experts that discussed this question at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln last month answered it with a resounding “No.”

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How Old School Effects Brought Schwarzenegger's T-800 Back From 1983

From Popular Mechanics:

How the new Terminator Salvation movie used 25-year old props to recreate the T-800. Warning, spoilers ahead.

When Arnold Schwarzenegger's face appears onscreen in Terminator Salvation, it's precisely as it should be: wide, menacing and trapped in 1983. If the first three Terminator films were a flipbook portrait of an action star entering middle age, the fourth installment resets the iconic actor's cinematic clock with a climactic fight scene that blends the latest digital effects with a prosthetic prop that's been shelved for a quarter-century. The result is the resurrection of the killer robot that launched a franchise—and a feat of time travel that's worth the price of admission.

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New 'Broadband' Cloaking Technology Simple To Manufacture

This image shows the design of a new type of invisibility cloak that is simpler than previous designs and works for all colors of the visible spectrum, making it possible to cloak larger objects than before and possibly leading to practical applications in "transformation optics." (Credit: Purdue University)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (May 21, 2009) — Researchers have created a new type of invisibility cloak that is simpler than previous designs and works for all colors of the visible spectrum, making it possible to cloak larger objects than before and possibly leading to practical applications in "transformation optics."

Whereas previous cloaking designs have used exotic "metamaterials," which require complex nanofabrication, the new design is a far simpler device based on a "tapered optical waveguide," said Vladimir Shalaev, Purdue University's Robert and Anne Burnett Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

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Sports Drinks Trumped By Cereal and Milk

From Live Science:

Wheaties may very well be the breakfast of champions, according to a new study that finds that eating an unassuming bowl of any whole-grain cereal with milk is superior to chugging a designer sports drink after a workout to replenish muscle fuel and protein.

The study, published last week in the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, demonstrates how sports drinks are largely unnecessary for recreational athletes.

Don't expect milk and cereal to replace sports drinks anytime soon, though. Mass marketing of these sweet sweat drinks ensures they will remain the beverage of choice for the Ironman wannabe in all of us.

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NOAA Sees Average 2009 Atlantic Hurricane Season

From Yahoo News/Reuters:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The 2009 Atlantic hurricane season will be fairly average with as many as seven hurricanes expected to form, U.S. government forecasters predicted on Thursday.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration forecast nine to 14 named storms this season, with four to seven developing into hurricanes. One to three could be major ones of Category 3 or higher with winds above 110 miles per hour (177 km per hour), the agency said in its annual forecast.

Last year was one of the most active seasons on record, with 16 tropical storms and eight hurricanes.

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In Chile, The Birds Are Dying, And No One Knows Why

Photo: Millions of dead sardines washed up on a beach in southern Chile. The cause of their death is under investigation. PATRICIO OLIVARES/FOR THE MIAMI HERALD

From The Miami Herald:

A series of environmental disasters in Chile have puzzled scientists. Some are blaming global warming.

SANTIAGO, Chile -- Chilean scientists are investigating three mysterious ecological disasters that have caused the deaths of hundreds of penguins, millions of sardines and about 2,000 baby flamingos in the past few months.

The events started to unfold in March, when the remains of about 1,200 penguins were found on a remote beach in southern Chile. Then came the sardines -- tons of them -- dead and washed up on a nearby stretch of coastline. The stench forced nearby schools to close, and the army was called in to shovel piles of rotting fish off the sand.

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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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