Space Shuttle Discovery On Track For Tuesday Launch

Space shuttle Discovery back on Earth (AFP: Pierre Ducharme)

From Yahoo News/Space:

NASA's space shuttle Discovery is on track for a planned Tuesday launch toward the International Space Station, mission managers said Saturday.

The shuttle and its seven-astronaut crew are nearly ready for their predawn launch Tuesday at 1:36 a.m. EDT (0536 GMT) from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, said NASA test director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson.

"All of our vehicle systems are in good shape. Our countdown work is progressing well," Blackwell-Thompson said today in a morning status briefing. "Discovery and her launch team are ready to go."

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Universal Vaccine Could Put An End To All Flu

From New Scientist:

IT IS not a nice way to die. As the virus spreads through your lungs, your immune system goes into overdrive. Your lungs become leaky and fill with fluid. Your lips and nails, then your skin, turn blue as you struggle to get enough oxygen. Basically, you drown.

Flu can kill in other ways, too, from rendering you vulnerable to bacterial infections to triggering heart attacks. Of course, most flu strains, including (so far) the 2009 pandemic virus, cause only mild symptoms in the vast majority of people. But with 10 to 20 per cent of people worldwide getting flu every year, that still adds up to a huge burden of illness - and even in a good year some half a million die.

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Evolution Of The Human Appendix: A Biological 'Remnant' No More

Normal location of the appendix relative to other organs of the digestive system (frontal view). (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Aug. 21, 2009) — The lowly appendix, long-regarded as a useless evolutionary artifact, won newfound respect two years ago when researchers at Duke University Medical Center proposed that it actually serves a critical function. The appendix, they said, is a safe haven where good bacteria could hang out until they were needed to repopulate the gut after a nasty case of diarrhea, for example.

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What You Should Know About Arthritis

A graphic shows what's inside your joints, and what can go wrong.

From Live Science:

This Week's Question: I'm pretty sure I have arthritis in my knee. Is there any danger this will spread?

First, anyone who thinks they may have arthritis should see a doctor. Self-diagnosis is hazardous to your health. Now for some information about arthritis all geezers should know.

Arthritis, which comes in different forms, is inflammation of the joints. Osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis and gout are the three most common forms of arthritis among seniors. Osteoarthritis is the most prevalent. None is contagious.

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You Are What You Listen To, Says New Study Of Music Lovers

Playlists can give an insight into your personality Photo: GETTY IMAGES

From The Telegraph:

Think twice before proudly showing off your iPod playlist. Your choice of music may mark you out as boring, dim and unattractive, according to new research from the University of Cambridge.

The study found that we make assumptions about someone’s personality, values, social class and ethnicity based on their musical preferences.

Classical buffs are seen as ugly and boring, while rock lovers are regarded as emotionally unstable and pop fans are considered to be rather dim.

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Let Private Sector Help NASA

From Autopia/Wired News:

After leading the way in the human exploration of space for nearly 50 years, the future of U.S. manned space flight is in question. The space shuttle makes its last flight next year. After that, NASA must rely on the Russians to put astronauts in space.

Unless the country looks to the private sector.

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Yahoo Wins Appeal Of Music-Streaming Case

From CNET:

A three-judge panel ruled Friday that Yahoo will not have to pay up every time it plays a song on its Internet radio service, affirming an earlier verdict.

In what is being seen as a defeat for the music industry, Yahoo Music was not deemed "interactive" enough to require the company to negotiate with record companies for the rights to play songs over the Internet. Instead, according to Reuters, it merely has to pay licensing fees to digital music rights organization SoundExchange.

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France Worried By Hornet Invasion

The Asian predatory wasp could threaten bee-keepers' livelihoods

From The BBC:

France faces an invasion of Chinese hornets that could hasten the decline of the honeybee population.

The wasps, known by their scientific name Vespa velutina, could also threaten bee-keepers' livelihoods, researchers say.

They have spread rapidly in south-western France - a region popular with tourists - and could reach other European countries soon.

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Why We Walk in Circles

Into the woods. People walking through a forest were more likely to walk in circles on cloudy days (blue paths) than they were on days when the sun was visible (yellow paths). Credit: (Map) Adapted from Google Earth by J. L. Souman et al., Current Biology 19 (20 August 2009); (inset: Jan Souman)

From Science Now:

Adventure stories and horror movies ramp up the tension when hapless characters walk in circles. The Blair Witch Project, for example, wouldn't have been half as scary if those students had managed to walk in a straight line out of the forest. But is this navigation glitch real or just a handy plot device? A new study finds that people really do tend to walk in circles when they lack landmarks to guide them.

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End Of Civil War Opens Up Angolan 'Jurassic Park'

Fossils are seen in the Bentiaba desert, southern province of Namibe in Angola. Much of Angola's fossil richness results from dramatic continental shifts tens of millions of years ago, which saw the land transform from desert to tropics. (AFP/HO/File/Anne Schulp)

From Yahoo News.AFP:

LUANDA (AFP) – Angola is best known for oil and diamonds, but dinosaur hunters say the country holds a "museum in the ground" of rare fossils -- some actually jutting from the earth -- waiting to be discovered.

"Angola is the final frontier for palaeontology," explained Louis Jacobs, of Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, part of the PaleoAngola project which is hunting for dinosaur fossils.

"Due to the war, there's been little research carried out so far, but now we're getting in finally and there's so much to find.

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Building Safer Airplanes Out of Teeth

Smile for Airplane Safety!: Curtiss P-40 Warhawk USAF Museum

From Popular Science:

In a recent study, molars beat materials science.

Airplane design could be improved with a little inspiration from mammalian chompers. Or so said aerospace engineer Herzl Chai of Tel Aviv University in a press release Wednesday.

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The Origin of Zero

ZERO IN: The number zero developed in fits and starts over thousands of years.
©iStockphoto/dbuffoon

From Scientific American:

Much ado about nothing: First a placeholder and then a full-fledged number, zero had many inventors.

The number zero as we know it arrived in the West circa 1200, most famously delivered by Italian mathematician Fibonacci (aka Leonardo of Pisa), who brought it, along with the rest of the Arabic numerals, back from his travels to north Africa. But the history of zero, both as a concept and a number, stretches far deeper into history—so deep, in fact, that its provenance is difficult to nail down.

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A Look Into The Hellish Cradles Of Suns And Solar Systems

The dense star cluster RCW 38 glistens about 5500 light years away in the direction of the constellation Vela (the Sails). RCW 38 is an "embedded" cluster, in that the nascent cloud of dust and gas still envelops its stars. (Credit: Image courtesy of ESO)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Aug. 20, 2009) — New images released today by ESO delve into the heart of a cosmic cloud, called RCW 38, crowded with budding stars and planetary systems. There, young stars bombard fledgling suns and planets with powerful winds and blazing light, helped in their task by short-lived, massive stars that explode as supernovae. In some cases, this onslaught cooks away the matter that may eventually form new solar systems. Scientists think that our own Solar System emerged from such an environment.

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Human Lifespans Nearly Constant for 2,000 Years

From Live Science:

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, often the harbinger of bad news about e. coli outbreaks and swine flu, recently had some good news: The life expectancy of Americans is higher than ever, at almost 78.

Discussions about life expectancy often involve how it has improved over time. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, life expectancy for men in 1907 was 45.6 years; by 1957 it rose to 66.4; in 2007 it reached 75.5. Unlike the most recent increase in life expectancy (which was attributable largely to a decline in half of the leading causes of death including heart disease, homicide, and influenza), the increase in life expectancy between 1907 and 2007 was largely due to a decreasing infant mortality rate, which was 9.99 percent in 1907; 2.63 percent in 1957; and 0.68 percent in 2007.

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Artificial Life Will Be Created 'Within Months' As Genome Experts Claim Vital Breakthrough

Breakthrough: New DNA was protected by a process called methylation (step 5)

From The Daily Mail:

Scientists are only months away from creating artificial life, it was claimed today.

Dr Craig Venter – one of the world’s most famous and controversial biologists – said his U.S. researchers have overcome one of the last big hurdles to making a synthetic organism.

The first artificial lifeform is likely to be a simple man-made bacterium that proves that the technology can work.

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Vast Oceans Lay Beneath Surface Of The Earth

From The Telegraph:

Vast oceans may lay beneath the Earth's surface, new research suggests.

Scientists believe areas of enhanced electrical conductivity in the mantle - the thick region between the Earth's crust and its core - betray the presence of water.

Water divining researchers produced a global three-dimensional map of the mantle showing the areas through which electricity flowed most freely.

Conductivity hot spots were found to coincide with subduction zones, sites where the tectonic plates that divide up the Earth's surface are being forced downwards.

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Scientists Develop Intelligent Coffee Mug

From Spiegel Online:

Materials to keep drinks cold or hot for longer have been around for quite a while. Now a pair of German scientists has come up with a high-tech mug they claim keeps coffee at the perfect temperature.

The idea came to the researchers at the Christmas market in the Bavarian town of Rosenhiem. "We got upset because the mulled wine" -- Glühwein, in German -- "was always either too hot or too cold," say Klaus Sedlbauer, the head of the Fraunhofer Institute for Building Physics (IBP), and his colleague Herbert Sinnesbichler. "We had to find a solution."

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Why Is Human Mars Exploration So Surprisingly Hard?

Mars as seen near opposition late August 2003, by the Hubble Space Telescope
Credit: NASA/STSci/Hubble; Captioning credit MSSS/ ASU Themis/ NASA/ JPL

From The Space Review:

As space policy experts mull over alternative strategies for astronaut exploration of the solar system, possibly including human flight to Mars, the recently-concluded fortieth anniversary celebrations of the Apollo 11 moon landing inspire one specific question: what’s taken so long?

In the heady days of the Apollo triumphs, even the “pessimistic” forecasts imagined it might take as long as twenty years to get astronauts to Mars. Optimistic schedules put the first footsteps on the Red Planet—another “giant leap for mankind”—as early as 1982.

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Echoes Of The Birth Of The Universe: New Limits On Big Bang's Gravitational Waves

Aerial view of LIGO facility in Livingston, Louisiana.
(Credit: LIGO, California Institute of Technology.)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Aug. 20, 2009) — An investigation by the LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) Scientific Collaboration and the Virgo Collaboration has significantly advanced our understanding the early evolution of the universe.

Analysis of data taken over a two-year period, from 2005 to 2007, has set the most stringent limits yet on the amount of gravitational waves that could have come from the Big Bang in the gravitational wave frequency band where LIGO can observe. In doing so, the gravitational-wave scientists have put new constraints on the details of how the universe looked in its earliest moments.

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Astronauts Eye Hurricane Bill

The spiral bands of Hurricane Bill in the Atlantic Ocean fill the view as Expedition 20 crew members on the International Space Station look east-southeastward along the horizon. This view was taken on Aug. 18, 2009 at 16:08:54 GMT with a Nikkor 28-70mm zoom lens at the 40mm lens setting. At the time this photograph was taken, Hurricane Bill was centered at 15.9 degrees north latitude and 51.2 degrees west longitude, the winds were 90 knots (103.7 miles per hour) gusting to 110 knots (126.7 mph) and it was moving west-northwest (285 degrees) at 14 knots (16.1 mph). Credit: NASA

From Live Science:

From space, fury is beauty.

The spiral bands of Hurricane Bill in the Atlantic Ocean fill the view of a new image by Expedition 20 crew members on the International Space Station.

The picture looks east-southeastward along the horizon.

It was taken on Aug. 18, 2009 when the storm was centered at 15.9 degrees north latitude and 51.2 degrees west longitude.

Bill is expected to stay offshore as it curves north and then eastward along the eastern coast of North America, according to the latest update from the National Hurricane Center. The route is a typical one for hurricanes.

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