Wealthy Nations See Unexpected Baby Boom

From Cosmos:

PARIS: The ironclad axiom that the wealthier a nation the lower its birthrate may reverse when countries pass a certain threshold of development, reports a new study.

Most of the two dozen nations that have passed this tipping point – including Australia, Sweden, France, the United States and Britain – are enjoying modest baby booms, breaking a pattern of declining fertility that has held for decades if not longer.

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Opinion: Do You Believe In Miracles?

Photo: Do miracles depend on definitions of the laws of nature? (Image: Carsten Koall / Getty)

From New Scientist:

THESE days most people think it unscientific to believe in "miracles", and irreligious not to believe in them. But would the occurrence of miracles really violate the principles of science? And would their non-occurrence really undermine religion? David Hume and Richard Dawkins have attempted to answer these questions in their different ways, but I am not convinced by their arguments, and for me they remain open questions.

In 1748, in one of his key essays, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, the Scottish philosopher David Hume gave an account of the philosophy of miracles that impressed and influenced many thinkers. Hume defines a miracle as "a violation of the laws of nature...a transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of the Deity, or by the interposition of some invisible agent".

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How To Delay Doomsday In A Dying Solar System

From Space Daily:

With this essay by Ray Villard, news director for the Hubble Space Telescope, Astrobiology Magazine presents another in our series of 'Gedanken', or thought, experiments - musings by noted scientists on scientific mysteries in a series of "what if" scenarios. Gedanken experiments, which have been used for hundreds of years by scientists and philosophers to ponder thorny problems, rely on the power of one's imagination to project these scenarios to logical conclusions.

They do not involve lab equipment or, often, even experimental data. They can be thought of as focused daydreams. Yet, as in the famous case of Einstein's Gedanken experiments about what it would be like to hitch a ride on a light wave, they have often led to important scientific breakthroughs.

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Another League Under the Sea: Tomorrow's Research Subs Open Earth's Final Frontier

Flying Low: The Deep Flight II sub uses stubby wings that propel it down like an airplane goes up. Nick Kaloterakis

From Popular Science:

Armed with better batteries and stronger materials, new submersibles aim to go deeper than ever before and open up the whole of the unexplored ocean to human eyes.

By liberal estimates, we’ve explored about 5 percent of the seas, and nearly all of that in the first 1,000 feet. That’s the familiar blue part, penetrated by sunlight, home to the colorful reefs and just about every fish you’ve ever seen. Beyond that is the deep—a pitch-black region that stretches down to roughly 35,800 feet, the bottom of the Marianas Trench. Nearly all the major oceanographic finds made in that region—hydrothermal vents and the rare life-forms that thrive in the extreme temperatures there, sponges that can treat tumors, thousands of new species, the Titanic—have occurred above 15,000 feet, the lower limit of the world’s handful of manned submersibles for most of the past 50 years.

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Solar Industry: No Breakthroughs Needed

Photo: Cheaper solar: First Solar’s improvements in manufacturing photovoltaics have helped lead to big drops in cost. A worker at a First Solar factory in Frankfurt, Germany, moves one of the company's solar panels. Credit: First Solar

From Technology Review:

The solar industry says incremental advances have made transformational technologies unnecessary.

The federal government is behind the times when it comes to making decisions about advancing the solar industry, according to several solar-industry experts. This has led, they argue, to a misplaced emphasis on research into futuristic new technologies, rather than support for scaling up existing ones. That was the prevailing opinion at a symposium last week put together by the National Academies in Washington, DC, on the topic of scaling up the solar industry.

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Computer Technology Brings 300million-Year-Old Spider Fossils Back To Life

A CT scan of Eophrynus, an ancient spider that lived 300 million years ago. Scientists used a computer technology to generate 3D images

From The Daily Mail:

Fossils of 300million-year-old spiders have been brought to life with computer technology.

Scientists used a CT scan to generate three dimensional images of two of the creatures, Cryptomartus hindi and Eophrynus prestivicii.

Both were around the size of a 50p piece and they lived during the Carboniferous period, before the age of the dinosaurs.

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Brain Difference In Psychopaths Identified

Scientists have found differences in the brain which may provide a biological explanation for psychopathy. (Credit: iStockphoto/Hayden Bird)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Aug. 5, 2009) — Professor Declan Murphy and colleagues Dr Michael Craig and Dr Marco Catani from the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London have found differences in the brain which may provide a biological explanation for psychopathy.

The research investigated the brain biology of psychopaths with convictions that included attempted murder, manslaughter, multiple rape with strangulation and false imprisonment. Using a powerful imaging technique (DT-MRI) the researchers have highlighted biological differences in the brain which may underpin these types of behaviour and provide a more comprehensive understanding of criminal psychopathy.

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Experts Predict Quieter Atlantic Hurricane Season

This NOAA satellite image shows Hurricane Ike in 2008. Weather experts on Wednesday reduced the number of projected hurricanes in the north Atlantic this season to four, two of them major hurricanes with winds above 178 kilometers (111 miles) per hour.(AFP/NOAA/File)

From Yahoo News/AFP:

MIAMI (AFP) – Weather experts on Wednesday reduced the number of projected hurricanes in the north Atlantic this season to four, two of them major hurricanes with winds above 178 kilometers (111 miles) per hour.

After one of the calmest starts to the hurricane season in a decade, the experts from Colorado State University said the development of an El Nino effect in the Pacific had caused them to scale back their projections for the Atlantic.

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Human Population Expanded During Late Stone Age, Genetic Evidence Shows

align="center"> Cave painting reproduction. (Credit: iStockphoto/Jose Ramirez)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Aug. 4, 2009) — Genetic evidence is revealing that human populations began to expand in size in Africa during the Late Stone Age approximately 40,000 years ago. A research team led by Michael F. Hammer (Arizona Research Laboratory's Division of Biotechnology at the University of Arizona) found that sub-Saharan populations increased in size well before the development of agriculture. This research supports the hypothesis that population growth played a significant role in the evolution of human cultures in the Late Pleistocene.

The team's findings are published in the online peer reviewed journal PLoS ONE on July 29.

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Pneumonic Plague: Should We Worry?

From Live Science:

An outbreak of pneumonic plague in Ziketan, China has killed three people, leading officials to seal off the town, according to news reports that are getting a lot of play this week.

But what is the pneumonic plague, and how is it different from other types of plague?

Plague is caused by the bacteria Yersinia pestis and is a zoonotic disease, meaning it can be transmitted from animals (usually rodents) to people.

There are three types of plague. The bubonic plague is the most common form and is spread to people from flea bites. This type is thought to be responsible for the Black Death, the pandemic that killed millions of people in the 1300s.

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New Technology Could Drill Deeper Into The Earth Than Ever Before

Ultra-Deep Drill G Myers

From Popular Science:

An adaptation of oil drills for deep water could bring scientists closer to the goal of drilling all the way through the earth's crust to the wonders beneath.

In 2005, we came the closest we ever had before to drilling into the mantle: the layer beneath the Earth's crust. Now, with new drilling technology adapted from the oil and gas industry, scientists might finally be ready to reach that holy grail of depth.

The International Ocean Drilling Project announced today that, with the help of a company called AGR Drilling Services, they have engineered a type of technology called Riserless Mud Recovery (RMR) for extremely deep drilling. RMR allows for a closed drilling system -- where the mud and drilling fluid are kept separate from surrounding seawater -- without the need for risers surrounding the drill to draw mud up to the surface. Althought it was originally designed as a shallow water drilling system for oil and gas collection, the IODP says their development has made RMR a good tool for drilling in deep water as well.

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Strange New Air Force Facility Energizes Ionosphere, Fans Conspiracy Flames

From Wired Science:

Todd Pedersen had to hustle—the sky was scheduled to start glowing soon, and he didn't want to miss it. It was just before sunset, a cold February evening in deep-woods Alaska, and the broad-shouldered US Air Force physicist was scrambling across the snow in his orange down parka and fur-lined bomber hat. Grabbing cables and electronics, he rushed to assemble a jury-rigged telescope atop a crude wooden platform.

The rig wasn't much, just a pair of high-sensitivity cameras packed into a dorm-room refrigerator and pointed at a curved mirror reflecting a panoramic view of the sky. Pedersen had hoped to monitor the camera feed from a relatively warm bunkhouse nearby. But powdery snow two feet deep made it difficult to string cables back to the building.

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Giant Particle Collider Struggles

Many of the magnets meant to whiz subatomic particles around the 17-mile underground Large Hadron Collider outside Geneva have mysteriously lost their ability to operate at high energies. Valerio Mezzanotti for The New York Times

From The New York Times:

The biggest, most expensive physics machine in the world is riddled with thousands of bad electrical connections.

Many of the magnets meant to whiz high-energy subatomic particles around a 17-mile underground racetrack have mysteriously lost their ability to operate at high energies.

Some physicists are deserting the European project, at least temporarily, to work at a smaller, rival machine across the ocean.

After 15 years and $9 billion, and a showy “switch-on” ceremony last September, the Large Hadron Collider, the giant particle accelerator outside Geneva, has to yet collide any particles at all.

But soon?

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European Bison On 'Genetic Brink'

From The BBC:

Europe's largest mammal, the European bison, remains extremely vulnerable to extinction, despite long-standing efforts to save it, new research shows.

One of the two remaining wild herds of pure bred European bison is down to an effective population size of just 25.

That is despite the actual number of wild bison in the herd having steadily risen to around 800.

The effective population measures the bison's genetic diversity, and can help predict the animal's survival chances.

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A More Efficient Spacecraft Engine

Photo: Ion power: NASA’s new ion-propulsion system is undergoing testing at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA. Credit: NASA

From Technology Review:

NASA's new ion-propulsion system could be ready for launch as soon as 2013.

NASA engineers have finished testing a new ion-propulsion system for earth-orbiting and interplanetary spacecraft. The system is more powerful and fuel-efficient than its predecessors, enabling it to travel farther than ever before.

Ion propulsion works by electrically charging, or ionizing, a gas using power from solar panels and emitting the ionized gas to propel the spacecraft in the opposite direction. The concept was first developed over 50 years ago, and the first spacecraft to use the technology was Deep Space 1 (DS1) in 1998. Since then, one other spacecraft has used ion propulsion: the Dawn mission to the outer solar system, launched in 2007.

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WHO Maintains 2 Bln Estimate For Likely H1N1 Cases

From Reuters:

* Rough estimate of likely H1N1 cases by end is 2 billion

* No precise estimate of current infections

* High proportion of southern hemisphere flu cases are H1N1

* WHO to update on vaccine efforts this week

* WHO names African expert as H1N1 chief

By Jonathan Lynn

GENEVA, Aug 4 (Reuters) - The World Health Organisation stuck on Tuesday to its statement that about two billion people could catch H1N1 influenza by the time the flu pandemic ends.

But the estimate comes with a big health warning: no one knows how many people so far have caught the new strain, known as swine flu, and the final number will never be known as many cases are so mild they may go unnoticed.

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Has The Mystery Of The Mars 'Monolith' Been Solved?

How the experts see it: The original HiRISE satellite image supplied to Mail Online by the University of Arizona showing a close up of what appears to be a 'monolith' on Mars

From The Daily Mail:

An image of what appears to be a mysterious rocky monument on Mars has excited space junkies around the world.

The 'monolith', was snapped from 165miles away using a special high resolution camera on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

After being published on the website Lunar Explorer Italia, it set tongues wagging with space buffs questioning whether there was once life on the Red Planet.

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Love Songs Of Bowhead Whales: Whales Sings With 'More Than One Voice'

Bowhead whale. (Credit: Photo by John Jacobsen, University of Copenhagen)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Aug. 3, 2009) — It wasn’t that many years ago that the bowhead whale was written off as extinct in the waters around Greenland and especially in Disko Bay in northwest Greenland where University of Copenhagen has its Arctic Field Station.

But now the situation has changed and adult bowhead whales, which can grow up to 18 metres long and weigh 100 tons, have returned to the bay. This is probably because global warming has opened up the Northwest Passage, making it ice free at certain times of the year for the first time in 125,000 years. This gives bowhead whales from the northern Pacific a chance to reach Disko Bay and mate with the small local population.

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8 Tools and Gadgets to Prepare Your Home For Any Disaster

(Illustration by Gabriel Silveira)

From Popular Mechanics:

For millions of Americans living along the Gulf and Atlantic coastlines, hurricane season is an annual call to arms, a six-month stretch from June through November spent watching the skies and the local news for signs of trouble. Other regions cope with the threat of wildfires, quakes and tornadoes—and blackouts can strike anywhere. While no season is safe from disruption, late summer seems particularly inviting to the demons of disaster. Here’s a step-by-step guide to preparing your home and family.

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Launch Your Own Personal Satellite

TubeSat: My First Satellite

From Popular Science:

Ever wanted to launch your own satellite into low earth orbit, then track it on ham radio for a few weeks before it burns up on re-entry? Well, 52 years after the launch of Sputnik, you can. Interorbital Systems is offering YOU the chance (by the end of 2010) to send up a TubeSat Personal Satellite Kit for the low introductory price of just $8,000.

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