Sprawl! Is Earth Becoming A Planet of SuperCities?

From The Daily Galaxy:

Imagine a planet dominated by cities like Mega-City One, a megalopolis of over 400 million people across the east coast of the United States, featured in the Judge Dredd comic or "San Angeles," formed from the joining of Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, San Diego, and the surrounding metropolitan regions following a massive earthquake featured in the 1993 movie "Demolition Man."

Don't hold your breath: the 21st century will soon have 19 cities with populations of 20 million or more.

The history of the human species is a history of migration. In 1000 A.D. Cordova, Spain was the largest city. By 1500, Bejing began its rise to power, and 300 years later it was the first city to be over a million people. By 1900 London emerged the world's supercity with over 6 million people. In 1950 New York was proclaimed the first "megacity" with a population of over 10 million people in the greater metropolitan area.

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Amazing Pictures Of The Seal Who Narrowly Escaped Becoming A Snack For A Killer Whale

Evasive action: Seal rolls onto its back as the whale,
water cascading down its back, decides to end pursuit

From The Daily Mail:

These dramatic pictures reveal the stunning hunting skills of a killer whale and show the extremes the mammals will go to in order to catch its prey.

Regarded as one of the deadliest predators of the seas, this killer whale has mastered the art of beaching itself in order to hunt young seal pups in shallow waters.

Captured on the coast of Patagonia in Argentina, this amazing sequence of images show how a lucky young seal evaded the giant mammal as it emerged from the icy waters.

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Firefox Aims to Unplug Scripting Attacks

Photo: Patsy attack: An attacker (shown in red) can use cross-site scripting to force a user's computer (left) to attack another system (middle), just by visiting a seemingly innocent website (top). Credit: Ha.ckers.org

From Technology Review:

How websites can block code from unknown sources.

Sites that rely on user-created content can unwittingly be employed to attack their own users via JavaScript and other common forms of Web code. This security issue, known as cross-site scripting (XSS), can, for example, allow an attacker to access a victim's account and steal personal data.

Now the makers of the Firefox Web browser plan to adopt a strategy to help block the attacks. The technology, called Content Security Policy (CSP), will let a website's owner specify what Internet domains are allowed to host the scripts that run on its pages.

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The Genetic Secrets Of Younger-Looking Skin

Photo: The secrets of youthful skin are being revealed (Image: Laurence Mouton/Photo Alto/Jupiter)

From New Scientist:

GENETIC analyses of human skin are revealing more about what makes us look old. As well as throwing up ways to smooth away wrinkles, the studies may provide a quantifiable way to test claims made for skin products.

In the past, cosmetics companies relied on subjective assessments of skin appearance, and changes in its thickness, colour and protein composition, to evaluate the effectiveness of their products and work out the quantities of ingredients needed to get the best results. "It was totally hit and miss," says Rosemary Osborne of Procter and Gamble in Cincinnati, Ohio.

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Most Complete Earth Map Published

An image of Death Valley - the lowest, driest, and hottest location in North America - composed of a simulated natural color image overlayed with digital topography data from the ASTER Global Digital Elevation Model.

From BBC:

The most complete terrain map of the Earth's surface has been published.

The data, comprising 1.3 million images, come from a collaboration between the US space agency Nasa and the Japanese trade ministry.

The images were taken by Japan's Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (Aster) aboard the Terra satellite.

The resulting Global Digital Elevation Map covers 99% of the Earth's surface, and will be free to download and use.

The Terra satellite, dedicated to Earth monitoring missions, has shed light on issues ranging from algal blooms to volcano eruptions.

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Missing Moon-Landing Videotapes May Have Been Found

From FOX News:

Just in time for the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing, NASA may have found the long-lost original Apollo 11 videotapes.

If true, as Britain's Sunday Express reports, the high-quality tapes may give us a whole new view of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin's lunar strolls.

Back on July 20, 1969, the raw video feed from the moon was beamed to the Parkes Observatory radio telescope in southeastern Australia, and then compressed and sent to Mission Control in Houston.

Because of technical issues, NASA's images couldn't be fed directly to the TV networks.

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Dino Tooth Sheds New Light On Ancient Riddle: Major Group Of Dinosaurs Had Unique Way Of Eating

These are teeth from the lower jaw of a hadrosaur, Edmontosaurus, showing its multiple rows of leaf-shaped teeth. The worn, chewing surface of the teeth is towards the top. (Credit: Vince Williams, University of Leicester)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (June 30, 2009) — Microscopic analysis of scratches on dinosaur teeth has helped scientists unravel an ancient riddle of what a major group of dinosaurs ate -- and exactly how they did it!

Now for the first time, a study led by the University of Leicester, has found evidence that the duck-billed dinosaurs -- the Hadrosaurs -- in fact had a unique way of eating, unlike any living creature today.

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What Supersonic Looks Like

A U.S. Air Force F-22 Raptor aircraft participating in Northern Edge 2009 executes a supersonic flyby over the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis (CVN 74) while the ship is underway in the Gulf of Alaska on June 22, 2009. The visual effect is created by moisture trapped between crests in a sound wave at or near the moment a jet goes supersonic. Credit: DoD/Petty Officer 1st Class Ronald Dejarnett, U.S. Navy

From Live Science:

The breaking of the sound barrier is not just an audible phenomenon. As a new picture from the U.S. military shows, Mach 1 can be quite visual.

This widely circulated new photo shows a Air Force F-22 Raptor aircraft participating in an exercise in the Gulf of Alaska June 22, 2009 as it executes a supersonic flyby over the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis.

The visual phenomenon, which sometimes but not always accompanies the breaking of the sound barrier, has also been seen with nuclear blasts and just after space shuttles launches, too. A vapor cone was photographed as the Apollo 11 moon-landing mission rocketed skyward in 1969.

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Elgin Marble Argument In A New Light

The bronzed original sculptures stand in contrast to the white reproductions of the part of the frieze now displayed in the British Museum. Thanassis Stavrakis/Associated Press

From The New York Times:

ATHENS — Not long before the new Acropolis Museum opened last weekend, the writer Christopher Hitchens hailed in this newspaper what he called the death of an argument.

Britain used to say that Athens had no adequate place to put the Elgin Marbles, the more than half of the Parthenon frieze, metopes and pediments that Lord Elgin spirited off when he was ambassador to the Ottoman Empire two centuries ago. Since 1816 they have been prizes of the British Museum. Meanwhile, Greeks had to make do with the leftovers, housed in a ramshackle museum built in 1874.

So the new museum that Bernard Tschumi, the Swiss-born architect, has devised near the base of the Acropolis is a $200 million, 226,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art rebuttal to Britain’s argument.

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Is Farming The Root Of All Evil

Cereal killer: the introduction of agriculture was followed by malnutrition and disease Photo: GETTY

From The Telegraph:

Academics have claimed that moving away from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle was 'the worst mistake in history'. But are they right?

Last week, Sir Paul McCartney urged us, amid a blaze of publicity, to curb our carnivorous lifestyles and go meat-free on Mondays, in order to reduce the damage that modern agriculture does to the planet. But for all the recent talk about the pros and cons of farming, and how the methods we use are affecting the environment, a more basic point has been missed e_SEnD that growing crops might be damaging not just to the environment but to the development of our own species. Could it be that rather than being a boon to mankind, the invention of agriculture was, in the words of one academic, "the worst mistake in human history"?

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Scots Fought 'In Bright Yellow War Shirts Not Braveheart Kilts'

From The Telegraph:

Medieval Scottish soldiers fought wearing bright yellow war shirts dyed in horse urine rather than the tartan plaid depicted in the film Braveheart, according to new research.

Historian Fergus Cannan states that the Scots armies who fought in battles like Bannockburn, and Flodden Field would have looked very different to the way they have traditionally been depicted.

Instead of kilts, he said they wore saffron-coloured tunics called "leine croich" and used a range of ingredients to get the boldest possible colours.

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Science Must Never Be Politicized Nor "Suppressed"

EPA analyst Alan Carlin raised questions about the impact of global warming on areas like Greenland. Shown here is an iceberg off Ammassalik Island, Greenland. (AP Photo)

Sen. Inhofe Calls for Inquiry Into 'Suppressed' Climate Change Report -- FOX News

Republicans are raising questions about why the EPA apparently dismissed an analyst's report questioning the science behind global warming.

A top Republican senator has ordered an investigation into the Environmental Protection Agency's alleged suppression of a report that questioned the science behind global warming.

The 98-page report, co-authored by EPA analyst Alan Carlin, pushed back on the prospect of regulating gases like carbon dioxide as a way to reduce global warming. Carlin's report argued that the information the EPA was using was out of date, and that even as atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have increased, global temperatures have declined.

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My Comment: News like this only reinforces the perception that climate change is driven more by politics than by science.

First Electronic Quantum Processor Created

The two-qubit processor is the first solid-state quantum processor that resembles a conventional computer chip and is able to run simple algorithms. (Credit: Blake Johnson/Yale University)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (June 29, 2009) — A team led by Yale University researchers has created the first rudimentary solid-state quantum processor, taking another step toward the ultimate dream of building a quantum computer.

They also used the two-qubit superconducting chip to successfully run elementary algorithms, such as a simple search, demonstrating quantum information processing with a solid-state device for the first time. Their findings will appear in Nature's advanced online publication June 28.

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Getting Old Is Better Than Expected

From Live Science:

When do we get old? People age 18 to 29 say "old age" starts at about 60. But those in middle-age figure it starts at 70. And those 65 and older put the threshold at 74.

So it goes with other perceptions about aging in a new survey form the Pew Research Center. The disparities between what younger people expect will happen as they age, and what really happens, are stark.

Good memory, good health, good sex. It's enough to make the grandkids cringe!

Adults age 18 to 64 were asked what they expect will happen when they get old. Those 65 and older were asked what actually has happened to them. The results (18-64 / 65 and older):

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Oldest Known Portrait Of St Paul Revealed By Vatican Archaeologists

The 4th-century portrait was found in the catacombs of St Thecla,
not far from the Basilica of St Paul's Outside the Walls.

From Times Online:

Vatican archaeologists have uncovered what they say is the oldest known portrait of St Paul. The portrait, which was found two weeks ago but has been made public only after restoration, shows St Paul with a high domed forehead, deep-set eyes and a long pointed beard, confirming the image familiar from later depictions.

L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, which devoted two pages to the discovery, said that the oval portrait, dated to the 4th century, had been found in the catacombs of St Thecla, not far from the Basilica of St Paul’s Outside the Walls, where the apostle is buried. The find was “an extraordinary event”, said Monsignor Gianfranco Ravasi, head of the Pontifical Council for Culture.

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Swine Flu 'Shows Drug Resistance'

From The BBC:

Experts have reported the first case of swine flu that is resistant to tamiflu - the main drug being used to fight the pandemic.

Roche Holding AG confirmed a patient with H1N1 influenza in Denmark showed resistance to the antiviral drug.

David Reddy, company executive, said it was not unexpected given that common seasonal flu could do the same.

The news comes as a nine-year-old girl has become the third to die in the UK with swine flu.

It is understood from her doctors at Birmingham Children's Hospital that she had underlying health conditions. It is not yet known whether swine flu contributed to her death.

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Men Agree On What's Hot In The Opposite Sex (But Girls Do Not)

Image: Queen of the seductive pose: Katie Price ticks the boxes for men as she is thin and confident

From The Daily Mail:

Men agree on what is attractive in the opposite sex far more than women do, says a study.

The survey of 4,000 adults found that most men liked women who were thin and posing seductively.

Women, in contrast, were enticed by a far wider range of male characteristics.

The results could explain why women feel pressured to conform to a narrow view of attractiveness, and suffer more eating disorders, the scientists said.

Participants in the study rated photographs of men and women aged 18 to 25 for attractiveness.

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Great Wall of Facebook: The Social Network's Plan to Dominate the Internet — and Keep Google Out

From Wired News:

Larry Page should have been in a good mood. It was the fall of 2007, and Google's cofounder was in the middle of a five-day tour of his company's European operations in Zurich, London, Oxford, and Dublin. The trip had been fun, a chance to get a ground-floor look at Google's ever-expanding empire. But this week had been particularly exciting, for reasons that had nothing to do with Europe; Google was planning a major investment in Facebook, the hottest new company in Silicon Valley.

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High-Tech Telescopes Yield New Galactic Photos: Gallery

From Popular Mechanics:

Some of the most important telescopes ever created are now floating in space. A freshly repaired Hubble Space Telescope is again snapping pictures, NASA's Kepler telescope is orbiting Earth fresh off its first light and Herschel—the largest space telescope ever—has taken its first images since its May 14th launch. While astronomers using ground-based telescopes are finding exoplanets at an impressive rate, thanks to refined techniques and collaborative efforts, space telescopes operating from beyond Earth's atmosphere have a geographic edge: With no interference, they can get a clearer view of the universe. The following images show some of the spectacular sights astronomers have been able to glimpse through the new hardware.

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Innovation: Physics Brings Realism To Virtual Reality

From New Scientist:

Innovation is our regular column that highlights the latest emerging technological ideas and where they may lead.

Computer games have come a long way from the pixelated graphics of the 1980s to the more polished characters of today. But the inexorable creep of Moore's Law has now taken us to the brink of further giant changes.

The latest multi-core processors and some smart software allow techniques used by physicists and engineers to simulate the real world in extreme detail to be used to create virtual worlds governed by real physics, rather than the simplified versions used today.

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