Seven Mysteries Of Gravity

From New Scientist:

It's the force we all know about and think we understand. It keeps our feet firmly on the ground and our world circling the sun.

Yet look a little closer, and the certainties start to float away, revealing gravity as the most puzzling and least understood of the four fundamental forces of nature.

Michael Brooks investigates its mysterious ways

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Famous Star Is Shrinking, Puzzling Astronomers

A Hubble Space Telescope image taken in 1996 shows the red supergiant star Betelgeuse, one of the brightest stars in the familiar constellation Orion.Betelgeuse, one of the largest known stars, is shrinking rapidly and no one knows why, astronomers said at a June 2009 meeting. Image courtesy A. Dupree (CfA), R. Gilliland (STScI), NASA

From The National Geographic:

One of the largest known stars in the universe is shrinking rapidly, and astronomers don't know why.

Betelgeuse (pronounced almost like "beetle juice") is a red supergiant star 600 light-years away in the constellation Orion. From Earth the star is clearly visible with the naked eye as the reddish dot that marks Orion's left shoulder.

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, first measured the star in 1993 with an infrared instrument on top of Southern California's Mount Wilson. They estimated the star to be as big around as Jupiter's orbit around the sun.

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New, Superheavy Element To Enter Periodic Table

The periodic table in an undated image. A new, superheavy chemical element numbered 112 will soon be officially included in the periodic table, German researchers said. REUTERS/NIST/Handout

From Yahoo News/Reuters:

BERLIN (Reuters) – A new, superheavy chemical element numbered 112 will soon be officially included in the periodic table, German researchers said.

A team in the southwest German city of Darmstadt first produced 112 in 1996 by firing charged zinc atoms through a 120-meter-long particle accelerator to hit a lead target.

"The new element is approximately 277 times heavier than hydrogen, making it the heaviest element in the periodic table," the scientists at the GSI Helmholtz Center for Heavy Ion Research said in a statement late on Wednesday.

The zinc and lead nuclei were fused to form the nucleus of the new element, also known as Ununbium, Latin for 112.

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WHO: Swine Flu Pandemic Has Begun, 1st In 41 Years

Swine flu has spread in Australia since a ship with infected passengers there has docked.
(HO/Reuters)

From AP:

GENEVA (AP) — The World Health Organization has told its member nations it is declaring a swine flu pandemic — the first global flu epidemic in 41 years.

The move came Thursday as infections climbed in the United States, Europe, Australia, South America and elsewhere.

In a statement sent to member countries, WHO says it decided to raise the pandemic alert level from phase 5 to 6, meaning that a global outbreak of swine flu has begun. The decision was made after the U.N. health agency held an emergency meeting on swine flu with its experts.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

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More News On WHO Declaring A Pandemic

WHO 'declares swine flu pandemic' -- BBC
WHO declares swine flu pandemic -- AFP
WHO tells some members world is in swine flu pandemic -- CBC
The Pandemic is Now -- NPR
Swine Flu Now Declared A Global Pandemic -- SKY News
WHO declares global swine flu pandemic -- Times Online

7 Shuttle Fliers Plus 6 Station Guys Equal Record

The crew of space shuttle Endeavour, from left, flight engineer Timothy Kopra, mission specialist's Thomas Marshburn, and Christopher Cassidy, Canadian Space Agency astronaut Julie Payette, commander Mark Polansky, pilot Douglas Hurley and mission specialist David Wolf gather for photos after their arrival at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., Tuesday, June 9, 2009. Endeavour is scheduled for a June 13 launch on a mission to the International Space Station. (AP Photo/John Raoux)

From Yahoo News/AP:

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – Mix seven shuttle astronauts and six space station residents and you set a record for the biggest off-the-planet gathering.

NASA is aiming to launch Endeavour on Saturday morning to the international space station for a long, laborious construction job. When the shuttle pulls up, there will be 13 people at the station — the most people ever together in space at one time.

Complicating matters is that the station tenants are still getting used to having twice as many people around. Now they're getting seven house guests who will stay for nearly two weeks.

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Larks and Owls: How Sleep Habits Affect Grades

Image Source / Corbis

From Time:

There are at least a few in every college dorm: students who seem to exist in their own time zone, in bed hours before everyone else and awake again at daybreak, rested and prepared for the morning's first lecture.

Sleep researchers refer to these early risers as larks (midnight-oil-burners are known as owls), and new data presented this week at the annual Associated Professional Sleep Societies suggest that a student's preferred sleeping schedule has a lot to do with his or her grade-point average in school. In one study, psychologists at Hendrix College in Arkansas found that college freshmen who kept night-owl hours had lower GPAs than early birds. Another group at the University of Pittsburgh revealed that poor sleep habits among high-schoolers led to lower grades, particularly in math.

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Side By Side, How The Humble Hummingbird Flies Faster Than A Fighter Jet

(Click Image to Enlarge)

From The Daily Mail:

It may be just four inches long - but the tiny hummingbird flies faster than a space shuttle and a fighter jet.

Scientists have discovered that the animal performs the quickest aerial manoeuvre in the natural world compared to its size.

Researchers from the University of California, Berkeley found that the courtship dive of Anna's hummingbird is 58 mph making it the fastest animal on earth.

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Galactic Black Holes May Be More Massive Than Thought

Illustrated is a new understanding of the relationship between the mass of a galaxy’s central black hole and the mass of its central bulge of stars. A new model suggests revising how this relationship is defined, at least for black holes in the most massive galaxies. Credit: Tim Jones/Univ. of Texas at Austin after K. Cordes and S. Brown/STScI

From Science News:

Predictions and observations could resolve seeming mismatch between close and distant giants

Astronomers report that some of the biggest supermassive black holes in nearby galaxies are at least twice and possibly four times as heavy as previously estimated. The findings come from new simulations by two independent teams of researchers, as well as new observations of stars whipping around a handful of supermassive black holes at the centers of massive galaxies no more than a few hundred million light-years from Earth.

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Long Shot: Planet Could Hit Earth In Distant Future

From Yahoo News/Space.com:

Our solar system has a potentially violent future. New computer simulations reveal a slight chance that a disruption of planetary orbits could lead to a collision of Earth with Mercury, Mars or Venus in the next few billion years.

Despite its diminutive size, Mercury poses the greatest risk to the solar system's order. Results of the computer model show a roughly 1 percent chance that the elongation of Mercury's orbit will increase to the point where the planet's path around the sun crosses that of Venus. That's when planetary pandemonium would ensue, the researchers find, and Mercury could be ejected from the solar system, or collide with the sun or a neighboring planet, such as Earth.

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Supervolcano May Be Brewing Beneath Mount St Helens

Photo: The US volcano may be connected to a semi-molten magma chamber that could fuel a giant eruption (Image: MAI / Rex Features)

From New Scientist:

IS A supervolcano brewing beneath Mount St Helens? Peering under the volcano has revealed what may be an extraordinarily large zone of semi-molten rock, which would be capable of feeding a giant eruption.

Magma can be detected with a technique called magnetotellurics, which builds up a picture of what lies underground by measuring fluctuations in electric and magnetic fields at the surface. The fields fluctuate in response to electric currents travelling below the surface, induced by lightning storms and other phenomena. The currents are stronger when magma is present, since it is a better conductor than solid rock.

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Is This A Pandemic? Define ‘Pandemic’

TERMINOLOGY It is not often clear when the spread of a disease, such as cholera, for which a boy was being treated in Congo, becomes a pandemic. Uriel Sinai/Getty Images

From The New York Times:

After decades of warnings about the inevitability of another pandemic of influenza, it is astonishing that health officials have failed to make clear to the public, even to many colleagues, what they mean by the word pandemic.

Generations of people have used the term to describe widespread epidemics of influenza, cholera and other diseases. But as the new H1N1 swine influenza virus spreads from continent to continent, it is clear that a useful definition is far more complicated and elusive than officials had thought.

And what is at stake is far more than an exercise in semantics. A clear understanding of the term is central to the World Health Organization’s six-level staging system for declaring a pandemic, which in turn informs countries when to set their control efforts in motion.

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Birth Of A Star Predicted

A study carried out by two astronomers from the Calar Alto Observatory, in Almeria, and the observatory at the University of Munich, in Germany, has predicted that the dark nebula Barnard 68 will become a shining star in 200,000 years' time. (Credit: Image courtesy of FECYT - Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (June 10, 2009) — The astrophysicist João Alves, director of the Calar Alto Observatory in Almeria, and his colleague Andreas Bürkert, from the German observatory in the University of Munich, believe that "the inevitable future of the starless cloud Barnard 68" is to collapse and give rise to a new star, according to an article which has been published recently in The Astrophysical Journal.

Barnard 68 (B68) is a dark nebula located in the constellation of Ofiuco, around 400 light years away. Nebulae are interstellar clouds of dust and gas located within the Milky Way, and some of these are the so-called 'dark' nebulae, the silhouettes of which block out the light of the stars and other objects behind them.

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Study Finds 4 Things That Keep Old Minds Sharp

From Live Science:

Some people seem to be able to keep their wits well into old age. But what's their secret?

New research reveals a host of factors that may contribute to a sharper mind late in life, including exercise, education, non-smoking behavior and social activity.

While other research has shown that genetics play a role in whether people get dementia, the study adds to a growing body of research that is uncovering ways you can up the odds of keeping your brain healthy and your memory sharp now and later.

The study tested the cognitive ability of 2,500 people aged 70 to 79 over eight years. More than half of the subjects showed normal age-related decline in mind function and 16 percent had a considerable decline during the course of the study. But 30 percent of participants did not show a change in their cognitive skills, and some even improved on the tests.

The researchers then looked to see what could account for this difference.

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New Evidence Suggests That Using the Internet Might Make You Smarter, Not Rot Your Brain

Chalk It Up to Google: Surfing the web is bench pressing for the brain,
according to findings of a recent study Kevin Hand

From Popsci.com:

Dispelling the myth that surfing the Web is a time-draining waste of neurons.

"The simple headline here is that Google is making us smarter," says Gary Small of the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at the University of California at Los Angeles. Thank you, Dr. Small. And thank you, Internet, for not only helping me dig up this information but also juicing up my brain while I looked for it. Small recently published results showing that searching the Internet does for the brains of older folks what doing bench presses does for chest muscles.

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Off-the-Shelf Genetic Testing On Display

From Technology Review:

The emerging market of direct-to-consumer genetic testing gets down to business.

Want to share your genome online with friends and family? Find out how well you metabolize B vitamins? Determine if you're genetically susceptible to forming blood clots on long flights? All of this is possible with a credit card and an Internet connection, thanks to the growing field of direct-to-consumer genetic testing, which aims to move genetic tests out of the doctor's office and into the hands of individuals.

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Speeding Up Brain Networks Might Boost IQ

From New Scientist:

For decades scientists have tried, mostly in vain, to explain where intelligence resides in our brains. The answer, a new study suggests, is everywhere.

After analysing the brain as an incredibly dense network of interconnected points, a team of Dutch scientists has found that the most efficiently wired brains tend to belong to the most intelligent people.

And improving this efficiency with drugs offers a tantalising – though still unproven – means of boosting intelligence, say researchers.

The concept of a networked brain isn't so different from the transportation grids used by cars and planes, says Martijn van den Heuvel, a neuroscientist at Utrecht University Medical Center who led the new study.

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Scientists: Global Warming Has Already Changed Oceans

From McClatchy News:

WASHINGTON — In Washington state, oysters in some areas haven't reproduced for four years, and preliminary evidence suggests that the increasing acidity of the ocean could be the cause. In the Gulf of Mexico, falling oxygen levels in the water have forced shrimp to migrate elsewhere.

Though two marine-derived drugs, one for treating cancer and the other for pain control, are on the market and 25 others are under development, the fungus growing on seaweed, bacteria in deep sea mud and sea fans that could produce life-saving medicines are under assault from changing the ocean conditions.

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US, Europe Look To Partnership On Mars Exploration

This combination of images provided by NASA, right, and the European Space Agency, left, shows the Space Agency logos. For almost half a century, the United States has dominated the exploration of Mars from the first grainy black-and-white pictures of the craggy surface to the more recent discovery of ice. Now, budget woes are pushing NASA toward a joint exploration venture with Europe. By 2016, the U.S. may unite with the European Space Agency for future Mars trips — a move that would mark a significant shift for NASA. Details of such a union could come by the end of June 2009. (AP Photo/NASA, ESA)

From Yahoo News/AP:

LOS ANGELES – For almost half a century, the United States has dominated the exploration of Mars from the first grainy black-and-white pictures of the craggy surface to the more recent discovery of ice.

Now, budget woes are pushing NASA toward a joint exploration venture with Europe. By 2016, the U.S. may unite with the European Space Agency for future Mars trips — a move that would mark a significant shift for NASA.

Details of such a union could come by the end of this month.

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Let Me Sleep On It: Creative Problem Solving Enhanced By REM Sleep

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (June 9, 2009) — Research led by a leading expert on the positive benefits of napping at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine suggests that Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep enhances creative problem-solving. The findings may have important implications for how sleep, specifically REM sleep, fosters the formation of associative networks in the brain.

The study by Sara Mednick, PhD, assistant professor of psychiatry at UC San Diego and the VA San Diego Healthcare System, and first author Denise Cai, graduate student in the UC San Diego Department of Psychology, shows that REM directly enhances creative processing more than any other sleep or wake state. Their findings will be published in the June 8th online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

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Risk Factors for Heart Attack Pinned Down

From Live Science:

If you smoke, are overweight or have diabetes or high blood pressure, doctors have a fresh warning for you: These four well-known risk factors for heart attack significantly increased the size of the heart's left ventricle, a key precursor of heart failure.

The finding is detailed today in the journal Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.

All four risk factors were strongly correlated with greater size of the heart's left ventricle over the short term (four years) and the long term (16 years) in a study of more than 4,217 people.

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