Shake, Rattle And Roll -- Why So Few Japanese Pagodas Have Ever Fallen Down

From The Economist:


YOUR correspondent is indebted to readers for their interesting comments about last week’s column on timber-framed buildings. He is especially grateful to Anjin-san, whose observations about Japanese pagodas reminded him of a day spent a dozen years ago with Shuzo Ishida, a structural engineer at Kyoto Institute of Technology. Mr Ishida, known to his students as “Professor Pagoda”, has a passion for the building’s unique dynamics.

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Galileo's Vision

Image: Galileo was the first to discover the moons of Jupiter. Michael Benson / Kinetikon Pictures / Corbis (Jupiter) / Scala / Art Resource, NY (Galileo)

From The Smithsonium:

Four hundred years ago, the Italian scientist looked into space and changed our view of the universe.

Inside a glass case sits a plain-looking tube, worn and scuffed. Lying in the street, it would look like a length of old pipe. But as I approach it, Derrick Pitts—only half in jest—commands: "Bow down!"

The unremarkable-looking object is in fact one of the most important artifacts in the history of science: it's one of only two surviving telescopes known to have been made by Galileo Galilei, the man who helped revolutionize our conception of the universe. The telescope is the centerpiece of "Galileo, the Medici and the Age of Astronomy," an exhibition at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia (until September 7).

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Integral Disproves Dark Matter Origin For Mystery Radiation

Combining more than 4 years of observations, the inner Galaxy has been mapped in the 511 keV positron annihilation line with unprecedented detail as shown above using the SPI spectrometer. For the first time, positron annihilation is found to be asymmetric in the inner Galactic disk. Consistent with earlier findings, the annihilation emission is brightest around the Galactic centre. In the sky maps, the Galactic centre is at the origin and the Galactic disk runs along the equator. (Credit: ESA/ INTEGRAL/ MPE (G. Weidenspointner et al.))

From Space Daily:

ScienceDaily (Aug. 2, 2009) — A team of researchers working with data from ESA’s Integral gamma-ray observatory has disproved theories that some form of dark matter explains mysterious radiation in the Milky Way.

That this radiation exists has been known since the 1970s, and several theories have been proposed to explain it. Integral’s unprecedented spectral and spatial resolution showed that it strongly peaks towards the centre of the Galaxy, with an asymmetry along the Galactic disc.

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Experts Puzzled By Spot On Venus

From the BBC:

Astronomers are puzzled by a strange bright spot which has appeared in the clouds of Venus.

The spot was first identified by an amateur astronomer on 19 July and was later confirmed by the European Space Agency's Venus Express spacecraft.

Data from the European probe suggests the spot appeared at least four days before it was spotted from Earth.

The bright spot has since started to expand, being spread by winds in Venus's thick atmosphere.

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Hacking Threat 'Exposes Every iPhone In The World' To Takeover By Criminals

'Vulnerable': Hackers could exploit a security flaw in the iPhone within two weeks and then take devices over in minutes, experts warn

From The Daily Mail:

Criminals could take control of every iPhone in the world via text message, owners are being warned.

Hackers could exploit a newly discovered flaw in Apple's handset to control its key functions - stealing data, making calls, surfing the internet and sending texts.

Security experts warn that hackers could soon hijack any of the world's 21million iPhones for identity theft and other crimes.

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Smoothing The Way For Light

Image: Guiding light: Silver films patterned with structures like this pyramid guide light along their surface and concentrate it at the tips. This structure’s surface is very smooth, which prevents scattering. Credit: Science/American Association for the Advancement of Science

From Technology Review:

A technique makes smooth metal films for optical computing and imaging.

Researchers at the University of Minnesota have developed a cheap way to repeatedly make very smooth nanopatterned thin films. The advance could have implications for making devices--such as more efficient solar cells, higher-resolution microscopes, and optical computers--that use light in an unconventional way.

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The U.S. Army's Solar Enewrgy Program

Acciona solar thermal plant in Nevada.
(Credit: Acciona)

Army Starts Solar Plant; Next Step: Care About Climate Change -- The Danger Room

The U.S. Army is about to start building a 500 megawatt solar thermal plant in the California desert. When it’s done, the facility will be one of the largest renewable energy plants in the world. Which is kind of ironic, since the Army doesn’t pay all that much attention to climate change. Turns out, sustainable energy is safer, said Dr. Kevin Geiss, the program director for the project.

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More News On the Army's Solar Program

Sun power: Army unveils giant solar project -- CNET
Army Green: Ft. Irwin Has Builders for 500 MW Solar Project -- Wall Street Journal
Clark Energy hired for Defense Department solar job -- Business Journal
Army Plans 500 MW of Solar Power at Fort Irwin by 2022 -- Treehugger

Giant Pencil Traces Achaeological Finds Fast

Photo: Less pain, less staking (Image: Felix Ordonez/Reuters)

From New Scientist:

EVERY object unearthed by an archaeological dig must have its exact position recorded. This is normally a painstaking process involving measuring rods and string, but a device that uses technology originally developed to guide robots could speed up the process.

Gran Dolina in central Spain is a Palaeolithic site that contains important hominin remains which date from between 780,000 and 300,000 years ago. Thousands of fossils are discovered there every year, but registering them all by hand makes progress frustratingly slow. So archaeologists working on the site contacted Angélica de Antonio Jiménez and Fernando Seco at the Institute of Industrial Automation in Madrid, to see if they could come up with a better way.

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New HIV Strain Leapt To Humans From Gorillas: Study

A gorilla at a park in Rwanda in 2004

From AFP:

PARIS — French virologists on Sunday said they had found a new subtype of the AIDS virus that appears to have jumped the species barrier to humans from gorillas.

The new strain, found in a woman from Cameroon, West Africa, is part of the HIV-1 family of microbes that account for the vast majority of cases of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), they said.

Until now, all have been linked to the chimpanzee.

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Update: New HIV strain discovered in woman from Cameroon --AP

Evidence Of Liquid Water In Comets Reveals Possible Origin Of Life

Comet Hale-Bopp. The watery environment of early comets, together with the vast quantity of organics already discovered in comets, would have provided ideal conditions for primitive bacteria to grow and multiply, experts argue. (Credit: iStockphoto/Kenneth C. Zirkel)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (July 31, 2009) — Comets have contained vast amounts of liquid water in their interiors during the first million years of their formation, a new study claims.

The watery environment of early comets, together with the vast quantity of organics already discovered in comets, would have provided ideal conditions for primitive bacteria to grow and multiply. So argue Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe and his colleagues at the Cardiff Centre for Astrobiology in a paper published in the International Journal of Astrobiology

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Caught On Video: Immune Cell Destroys Bacteria

Confocal microscope image showing insect immune cells (green) containing fluorescently labeled E.coli (red). Credit: University of Bath

From Live Science:

In a starring role for E. coli, researchers have developed a new technique to make movies of bacteria as they infect their victims and are consumed by the host's immune cells.

The movies mark the first time that scientists have been able to look at bacteria infecting living organisms in real time, according to the researchers. Most studies of bacterial infections are preformed after the host has died.

The scientists, from the University of Bath and the University of Exeter in the UK, tested out their movie-making method on developing fruit fly embryos. They injected fluorescently tagged bacteria into the embryos and observed how the microbes interacted with the insect's immune cells, called hemocytes, using time-lapse confocal microscopy, an imaging technique. They used two types of bacteria for the study Escherichia coli and Photorhabdus asymbiotica.

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Britain's Dirty Money: How theLloose Change In Our Pockets Is Costing The Earth

Escondida in Chile, the world's largest copper mine. A vast amount of water is being drained every day from what is already one of the driest places on earth. These mines are causing significant damage to the planet and its people. Yet the Government-owned Royal Mint continues to buy metal from them

From The Daily Mail:

This vast hole in the ground, visible from space, is the world's biggest copper mine. It supplies the Royal Mint, but is also responsible for inflicting shocking environmental damage and poisoning the local population...

Escondida in Chile, the world's largest copper mine. A vast amount of water is being drained every day from what is already one of the driest places on earth. These mines are causing significant damage to the planet and its people. Yet the Government-owned Royal Mint continues to buy metal from them

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The Secret Life Of Sperm Is Unlocked

Some 15 per cent of couples have trouble conceiving,
about half of them because the man has a problem. SPL

From The Independent:

Infertile couples may be spared years of fruitless treatment with the discovery that the human egg can read the father's genetic key and screen out failures.

Thousands of infertile couples could be spared the pain, anguish and expense of fruitless IVF treatments, thanks to the discovery of a lock-and-key mechanism between sperm and egg cells.

The research could explain why so many couples with no apparent reproductive problems are unable to conceive. Although more than 40,000 in vitro fertilisation cycles are prescribed in Britain each year, only 10,000 births result.

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The World's 18 Strangest Buildings—And Why We Love Them

St. Mary Axe. City: London

From Popular Mechanics:

This July, the American Institute of Architects forecasted steep declines in nonresidential construction spending through 2010. Spending is projected to decrease by 16 percent this year and another 12 percent in 2010. With less money flowing through the industry, high-end design projects are likely to be scaled back; architects, builders and regular folk are opting for retrofits with more practical design. While the demand may be turning to minimal and frugal architecture, unusual design still holds a place for museums and other prominent locations, primarily because it is so effective at turning heads. Here are some of our favorite unusual designs for museums, offices, homes and libraries—and why they are so effective at drawing attention.

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A Biofuel Process to Replace All Fossil Fuels

Image: Solar farming: A photobioreactor houses photosynthetic microorganisms that use the energy in sunlight to make fuel and other chemicals from carbon dioxide and water. Credit: Joule Biotechnologies

From Technology Review:

A startup unveils a high-yield process for making fuel from carbon dioxide and sunlight.

A startup based in Cambridge, MA--Joule Biotechnologies--today revealed details of a process that it says can make 20,000 gallons of biofuel per acre per year. If this yield proves realistic, it could make it practical to replace all fossil fuels used for transportation with biofuels. The company also claims that the fuel can be sold for prices competitive with fossil fuels.

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Sahara Desert Greening Due to Climate Change?

Villagers herd goats near windblown sand dunes in the Sahel region of Niger, North Africa. Vast swaths of North Africa are getting noticeably lusher due to warming temperatures, new satellite images show, suggesting a possible boon for people living in the driest part of the continent. Photograph by Pascal Maitre/NGS

From National Geographic:

Desertification, drought, and despair—that's what global warming has in store for much of Africa. Or so we hear.

Emerging evidence is painting a very different scenario, one in which rising temperatures could benefit millions of Africans in the driest parts of the continent.

Scientists are now seeing signals that the Sahara desert and surrounding regions are greening due to increasing rainfall.

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Honeybees Warn Of Risky Flowers

From The BBC:

Honeybees warn each other to steer clear of dangerous flowers where they might get killed by lurking predators.

Scientists made the discovery by placing dead bees upon flowers and then watching how newly arriving bees react to the danger.

Not only do the bees avoid the flowers, they then communicate the threat when they return to the hive via their well known waggle dance.

The discovery is published in the journal Animal Behaviour.

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Scientists Drill a Mile Into Active Deep Sea Fault Zone

From Wired Science:

In the first deep sea drilling expedition designed to gather seismic data, scientists have successfully drilled nearly a mile beneath the ocean floor into one of the world’s most active earthquake zones.

Researchers aboard the drilling vessel Chikyu — meaning “planet Earth” in Japanese — used a special technology called riser drilling to penetrate the upper portion of the Nankai Trough, an earthquake zone located about 36 miles southeast of Japan. By collecting rock samples and installing long-term monitoring devices, the geologists hope to understand how stress builds up in subduction zones like Nankai, where the Philippine Sea plate plate is sliding beneath the island of Japan.

Riser drilling involves encasing a deep sea drill in a giant metal tube, called a riser, that extends from the ship down to the drilling site, effectively bolting the ship to the sea floor. The researchers circulate lightly pressurized mud down through the drilling tube and back up through the riser.

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Large Hadron Collider 'Atom Smasher' Restart Delayed Yet Again

A large dipole magnet is lowered ito the tunnel in April last year marking the end of a crucial phase of the installation of the LHC. CERN/AFP/Getty Images

From The Independent:

Repairs to two small helium leaks in the world's largest atom smasher will delay the restart of the giant machine another month until November, a spokesman for the operator said.

James Gillies said an additional setback to the timing could result if some other problem is found, but the European Organisation for Nuclear Research is taking pains to make sure it avoids another major shutdown like the electrical failure of Sept. 19.

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Web Use Flattens As Behaviors Change

From CBS News/CNET:

The amount of time people spend online has not increased since last year, according to a report released by Forrester on Monday. Perhaps more interesting, however, is the reason for the trend: people's online behavior has changed.

"Engagement with the online channel has deepened," writes Forrester analyst Jackie Anderson. "Web users are becoming savvier and are better multi-taskers. Many know exactly where they want to go when they log in."

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