Early Rocks To Reveal Their Ages

From BBC:

A new technique has been helping scientists piece together how the Earth's continents were arranged 2.5 billion years ago.

The novel method allows scientists to recover rare minerals from rocks.

By analysing the composition of these minerals, researchers can precisely date ancient volcanic rocks for the first time.

By aligning rocks that have a similar age and orientation, the early landmasses can be pieced together.

This will aid the discovery of rocks rich in ore and oil deposits, say the scientists. The approach has already shown that Canada once bordered Zimbabwe, helping the mining industry identify new areas for exploration.

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Leak Halts Shuttle Launching

There would be no countdown to launch after NASA delayed the launch of the space shuttle Endeavour due to a hydrogen gas leak. Stan Honda/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

From The New York Times:

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. — The launching of the space shuttle Endeavour on Saturday was called off because of a hydrogen leak similar to one that delayed another shuttle’s departure three months ago.

During fueling with liquid hydrogen, sensors detected a leak at the valve next to the external tank, creating a potential for fire.

The planned 7:17 a.m. liftoff was called off at 12:26 a.m. and will be delayed at least four days. A similar leak occurred during the countdown for the shuttle Discovery in March.

Mission managers originally said that if the Endeavour could not go by Monday, the launching would be moved to July because a lunar orbiter was scheduled to lift off Wednesday.

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Red Wine Compound Resveratrol Demonstrates Significant Health Benefits

Low to moderate drinking -- especially of red wine -- appears to reduce all causes of mortality. (Credit: iStockphoto)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (June 12, 2009) — The benefits of alcohol are all about moderation. Low to moderate drinking – especially of red wine – appears to reduce all causes of mortality, while too much drinking causes multiple organ damage. A mini-review of recent findings on red wine's polyphenols, particularly one called resveratrol, will be published in the September issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research; the review is also available at Early View.

"Reports on the benefits of red wine are almost two centuries old," said Lindsay Brown, associate professor in the School of Biomedical Sciences at The University of Queensland and corresponding author for the study. "The media developed the more recent story of the French paradox in the early 1990s. However, studies on the actions of resveratrol, one of the active non-alcoholic ingredients, were uncommon until research around 1997 showed prevention of cancers. This led to a dramatic interest in this compound."

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Genetic Difference Found in Wild vs. Tame Animals

From Live Science:

A study of nasty and nice lab rats has scientists on the verge of knowing the genes that separate wild animals like lions and wolves from their tame cousins, cats and dogs.

Unlike their wild ancestors, house pets and other domesticated animals share the trait of tameness, meaning they tolerate or even seek out human presence. New research, which is published in the June issue of the journal Genetics and involved the interbreeding of friendly and aggressive rats, reveals gene regions that influence the opposing behaviors.

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Mind-Reading Tech May Not Be Far Off

Brain Browsing: ChrisDag (CC Licensed)

From Popsci.com:

At the World Science Festival this week, indications that brain scanners may soon uncover your private thoughts

Neuroscientists are already able to read some basic thoughts, like whether an individual test subject is looking at a picture of a cat or an image with a specific left or right orientation. They can even read pictures that you're simply imagining in your mind's eye. Even leaders in the field are shocked by how far we've come in our ability to peer into people's minds. Will brain scans of the future be able to tell if a person is lying or telling the truth? Suggest whether a consumer wants to buy a car? Reveal our secret likes and dislikes, or our hidden prejudices? While we aren't there yet, these possibilities have dramatic social, legal and ethical implications.

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Get Ready! Facebook To Offer Personalised URLs From Tomorrow

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg got his personalised URL ahead of the rush tomorrow

From The Daily Mail:

Facebook users will soon be able to choose a web address for their profile page which is all together more personal.

At present anyone with a Facebook account has a string of random numbers at the end of their web address. However from 5am tomorrow (BST) they will be able to create a memorable URL by adding their name, such as www.facebook.com/joebloggs.

Tags will be assigned on a first come first served basis so those with common names will need to get in quick. The website founder, Mark Zuckerberg, has already claimed his.

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Search For ET Just Got Easier: Effective Way To Search Atmospheres Of Planets For Signs Of Life

An artist's concept of the sunlight glowing through the Earth's thin atmosphere and reaching an observer on the Moon during a lunar eclipse. (Credit: Gabriel Perez Diaz, SMM, Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias (IAC))

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (June 12, 2009) — Astronomers using the Science and Technology Facilities Council's (STFC) William Herschel Telescope (WHT) on La Palma have confirmed an effective way to search the atmospheres of planets for signs of life, vastly improving our chances of finding alien life outside our solar system.

The team from the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias (IAC) used the WHT and the Nordic Optical Telescope (NOT) to gather information about the chemical composition of the Earth's atmosphere from sunlight that has passed through it. The research is published June11 in Nature.

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Global Biosphere Images Reveal Changes in Plant Growth

The 2008 global biosphere. Chlorophyll concentration in blue, vegetation index in green. Credit: NASA/Rob Simmon/Jesse Allen.

From Live Science:

A new series of NASA images illustrates how Earth's plant growth has changed over the past 11 years.

The images are part of the series, "World of Change: Global Biosphere." They show the yearly changes in plant growth between 1999 and 2008 based on data on chlorophyll on the ocean's surface and vegetation density on land. Scientists use the images to study Earth's carbon cycle – the uptake and release of carbon by Earth's biosphere.

The global biosphere, or the sum of all ecosystems that support life on Earth, is in constant flux. The images show changes in chlorophyll, the green pigment in plants allows photosynthesis to occur, averaged over each year. Changes in land growth are shown as a vegetation index, a blend of the variation between the summer flourishes and the slow growth winter.

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The Inside Story Of The Conficker Worm

The Conficker worm has seized control of millions of computers in just
a few months (Image: Carsten Müller / stock.xchng)

From New Science:

A HOTEL bar in Arlington, Virginia, 23 October 2008. A group of computer security experts has spent the day holed up with law enforcement agencies. It is an annual event that attracts the best in the business, but one the participants like to keep low-key - and under the radar of the cybercriminals they are discussing.

That evening, conversation over drinks turned to a security update Microsoft had just released. Its timing was suspicious: updates usually came once a month, and the next was not due for two weeks. "I remember thinking I should take a look at this," recalls Paul Ferguson, a researcher at Trend Micro, a web security company in Cupertino, California.

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Large Hadron Collider To Start Again, But Costs Rise In Race To Discover 'God Particle'

From The Telegraph:

The Large Hadron Collider is to be run flat out throughout the year in order to make up for lost time and to beat an American rival to finding the elusive Higgs Boson – known as the "God Particle".

The £4bn particle accelerator, which broke down last year, was to be turned off in winter to reduce energy demands during peak electricity prices.

But the delays and the news that a smaller less powerful accelerator at Fermilab in Illinois is closing in on the particle has meant it will continue running throughout the year – at an extra cost of £13 million.

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Launching Saturday: Shuttle Endeavour Headed For Space Station

Space Shuttle Endeavour landing

From Yahoo News/Space.com:

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Seven astronauts are set to blast off on the space shuttle Endeavour Saturday morning on an ambitious mission bound for the International Space Station.

The shuttle is scheduled to lift off at 7:17 a.m. EDT (1117 GMT) from the seaside Launch Pad 39A here at NASA's Kennedy Space Center. Endeavour is slated for a grueling 16-day mission to ferry the final element of the space station's Japanese-built Kibo laboratory.

"We all realize that we have a tremendous amount of work to do," said Endeavour commander Mark Polansky. "We do know it's a combination of a sprint and a marathon, because it's a long, long mission."

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Wired Science News for Your Neurons Scientists Create a Form of Pre-Life

From Wired Science:

A self-assembling molecule synthesized in a laboratory may resemble the earliest form of information-carrying biological material, a transitional stage between lifeless chemicals and the complex genetic architectures of life.

Called tPNA, short for thioester peptide nucleic acids, the molecules spontaneously mimic the shape of DNA and RNA when mixed together. Left on their own, they gather in shape-shifting strands that morph into stable configurations.

The molecules haven’t yet achieved self-replication, the ultimate benchmark of life, but they hint at it. Best of all, their activities require no enzymes — molecules that facilitate chemical reactions, but didn’t yet exist in the primordial world modeled by scientists seeking insight into life’s murky origins.

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Fact or Fiction: Dogs Can Talk

From Scientific American:

Are human speech-like vocalizations made by some mammals equivalent to conversation--or just a rough estimation of it?

Maya, a noisy, seven-year-old pooch, looks straight at me. And with just a little prompting from her owner says, "I love you." Actually, she says "Ahh rooo uuu!"

Maya is working hard to produce what sounds like real speech. "She makes these sounds that really, really sound like words to everyone who hears her, but I think you have to believe," says her owner, Judy Brookes.

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My Comment: I do not know if dogs can talk, but I do know that I can always talk to my dog.

Antibody Drugs Customized by Genotype

Image: Group therapy: Genetic differences affect how patients respond to monoclonal-antibody therapies. PIKAMAB believes that it can sort patients into specific groups and tailor treatments accordingly. Credit: Technology Review

From Technology Review:

A company wants to improve monoclonal-antibody therapies by tailoring them to patients' genotypes.

Monoclonal antibodies, which are engineered to hone in on very specific biological targets, have taken off therapeutically in recent years: several are now approved for treating cancers and autoimmune diseases, and nearly 200 are in clinical trials. But one of the challenges of monoclonal-antibody therapy is the fact that some people respond very well to the drugs while others respond only moderately or not at all.

A startup called PIKAMAB, based in Menlo Park, CA, believes that it can make monoclonal antibodies more effective by grouping patients together based on their genotype and offering a customized antibody developed for that genotype. The company hopes that this "stratified" approach to drug development and treatment will help drug companies achieve better results.

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Health Risks Of Nanotechnology: How Nanoparticles Can Cause Lung Damage, And How The Damage Can Be Blocked

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (June 11, 2009) — Scientists have identified for the first time a mechanism by which nanoparticles cause lung damage and have demonstrated that it can be combated by blocking the process involved, taking a step toward addressing the growing concerns over the safety of nanotechnology.

Nanotechnology, the science of the extremely tiny (one nanometre is one-billionth of a metre), is an important emerging industry with a projected annual market of around one trillion US dollars by 2015. It involves the control of atoms and molecules to create new materials with a variety of useful functions, including many that could be exceptionally beneficial in medicine. However, concerns are growing that it may have toxic effects, particularly damage to the lungs. Although nanoparticles have been linked to lung damage, it has not been clear how they cause it.

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The Great Shampoo Sham

You don't need to shampoo daily. And the "no poo" movement suggests you don't do it at all. But if not washing your hair sounds flat-out gross, and yet you want to avoid some iffy chemicals, there are many all-natural shampoos. Image credit: stockxpert

From Live Science:

Shampooing can be complicated. First, there are the convoluted instructions: Lather, rinse, repeat. It doesn't say anything about stopping. And now there's a movement afoot, called the "no poo" movement, advocating no shampooing whatsoever.

Shampoo is indeed a modern invention, as the no-poo'ers attest, developed roughly around the end of the 19th century. And few of us need to be shampooing every day, dermatologists say. That said, the necessity for shampoo varies from person to person, depending on your hair type and what you put in to your hair each day.

Forgoing shampooing completely, if that concept even appeals to you, ultimately could be rough on your hair and rougher on your social interactions.

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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