Banana Diseases Hit African Crops

From The BBC:

Food supplies in several African countries are under threat because two diseases are attacking bananas, food scientists have told the BBC.

Crops are being damaged from Angola through to Uganda - including many areas where bananas are a staple food.

Experts are urging farmers to use pesticides or change to a resistant variety of banana where possible.

Scientists have been meeting in Tanzania to decide how to tackle the diseases, which are spread by insects.

Read more ....

Find Out How You'll Die, In 4 Easy Online Steps

What Will Finally Do You In?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/44165698@N00/ / CC BY 2.0

From Popular Science:

A new website lets you figure out how you might die, by sorting death data by cause of death, sex, and age. For American males ages 20-29, the most common cause of death is accidents (40.2 percent of deaths), followed by homicide (17.5 percent), and suicide (11.7 percent). Urinary tract infections? 0.3 percent.

The Death Risk Rankings site was compiled by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, and seems to have about a zillion ways to organize the data. It's quite cumbersome to use, so I'm going to save you the effort.

Read more ....

Laser Tests Could Silence The Dentist's Drill

From New Scientist:

THE dentist's dreaded drill could become a medical relic thanks to laser tests which spot weaknesses in dental enamel in time to repair the surface before more drastic intervention is needed.

Dentists currently check for cavities with X-rays and metal probes, but these cannot detect weaknesses in the enamel while there is still a chance to repair it. David Wang, a graduate student at the University of Sydney in Australia, instead studied whether the propagation of sound waves through the enamel could provide an early warning (Optics Express, vol 17, p 15592).

Read more ....

Wikipedia To Color Code Untrustworthy Text

From Wired Science:

Starting this fall, you’ll have a new reason to trust the information you find on Wikipedia: An optional feature called “WikiTrust” will color code every word of the encyclopedia based on the reliability of its author and the length of time it has persisted on the page.

More than 60 million people visit the free, open-access encyclopedia each month, searching for knowledge on 12 million pages in 260 languages. But despite its popularity, Wikipedia has long suffered criticism from those who say it’s not reliable. Because anyone with an internet connection can contribute, the site is subject to vandalism, bias and misinformation. And edits are anonymous, so there’s no easy way to separate credible information from fake content created by vandals.

Read more ....

Space shuttle reaches space station for 9-day stay

The shuttle Discovery, docked to the International Space Station.
(Credit: NASA TV)

From Reuters:

*Three spacewalks planned during shuttle's visit

*Discovery astronaut Nicole Stott to join station crew

*Shuttle delivering more than 7 tons of gear for outpost

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., Aug 30 (Reuters) - U.S. space shuttle Discovery arrived at the International Space Station on Sunday with food, equipment and new lab gear for the orbital outpost.

After nearly two days of traveling following its launch late Friday night, Discovery reached the Space Station at 8:54 p.m. EDT (0054 GMT Monday) as it sailed 225 miles (362 km) over the Atlantic.

"The entire rendezvous and docking was smooth as silk," said NASA mission commentator Rob Navias.

Read more ....

Energy Saving Light Bulbs Offer Dim Future

Light Bulb Test Photo: JULIAN SIMMONDS

From The Telegraph:

Energy saving light bulbs are not as bright as their traditional counterparts and claims about the amount of light they produce are "exaggerated", the European Union has admitted.

Soon they will be the only kind of light bulb allowed, but now officials in Brussels have admitted that energy-saving bulbs are not as bright as the old-fashioned kind they are replacing.

From tomorrow a Europe-wide ban on traditional incandescent bulbs will begin to be rolled out, with a ban on 100W bulbs and old-style frosted or pearled bulbs.

Read more ....

Three Months From a Climate Summit, Agreement Far Off

Ice sculptures, made from glacial melt water, placed by Greenpeace at the Temple of Earth in Beijing, mark the start of the 100-day countdown to the United Nations Copenhagen Climate Summit and the launch of the Tck Tck Tck campaign. LU GUANG / GREENPEACE INTERNATIONAL / EPA

From Time Magazine:

If you happened on Friday morning to walk into the Temple of Earth in Beijing — the nearly 500-year-old monument where Chinese emperors once prayed for good harvests — you would have noticed a steady drip. The environmental group Greenpeace placed ice sculptures of 100 children — made of the glacial meltwater that feeds China's great rivers — inside the temple, to symbolize the risk that climate change and disappearing ice poses to the more than 1 billion people in Asia threatened by water shortages.

Read more ....

iPhones For The Blind

Blind Man with Touch Interface: courtesy of Sungkyunkwan University in South Korea

From Popular Science:

Quick, get out your iPhone. Unlock it and slide over to that game you've been playing when your boss isn't looking. Now mute it, put the phone to sleep, close your eyes, and try to do that again. Can you do it? Didn't think so.

There's not a simple way to use touchscreens when you can't see what you're doing, which means 10 million blind and low-vision Americans can't use this ubiquitous technology. But what if you could feel it? What if the "slide to unlock" key was an actual slide? Even better, what if you could have a Braille iPhone?

Read more ....

Aspirin Does More Harm Than Good In Healthy People: Research

Aspirin: The drug does more harm than good in healthy people,
British researchers have said Photo: GETTY

From The Telegraph:

Healthy people who take aspirin to prevent a heart attack are doing themselves more harm than good, researchers have said.

Millions of people - including a substantial number of the "worried well" - take a daily dose of the drug in the belief it will keep them healthy.

But at a conference for leading doctors, British scientists said they have found that for healthy people taking aspirin does not significantly reduce the risk of a heart attack.

Read more ....

White Europeans 'Only Evolved 5,500 Years Ago After Food Habits Changed'

Photo: People with pale skin like model Lily Cole may be descended from Europeans who dramatically changed their diets

From The Daily Mail:

People in England may have only developed pale skin within the last 5,500 years, according to new research.

Scientists believe that a sudden change in the diet around that time from hunter-gathering to farming may have led to a dramatic change in skin tone to make up for a lack of vitamin D.

Farmed food is lacking in vitamin D and while humans can produce it when exposed to the ultraviolet light in sunlight darker skin is far less efficient at it.

Read more ....

Social Media As A Paradigm Shift

Photosynthetic Viruses Keep World's Oxygen Levels Up

From New Scientist:

NEXT time you take in a lungful of oxygen, consider this: it was made possible in part by ocean viruses.

The viruses, which infect single-celled algae called cyanobacteria, are hyperefficient photosynthesisers thanks to a unique set of genes.

Previous work had shown that cyanophage viruses have some photosynthesis genes, apparently used to keep the host cyanobacteria on life support during the infection, which otherwise knocks out the cells' basic functions.

Read more ....

India Loses Moon Satellite Links

From The BBC:

All communication links with the only Indian satellite orbiting the Moon have been lost, India's space agency says.

Radio contact with the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft was lost abruptly early on Saturday, said India's Bangalore-based Space Research Organization (Isro).

The unmanned craft was launched last October in what was billed as a two-year mission of exploration.

The launch was regarded as a major step for India as it seeks to keep pace with other space-faring nations in Asia.

Following its launch from the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, it was hoped the robotic probe would orbit the Moon, compile a 3-D atlas of the lunar surface and map the distribution of elements and minerals.

Read more ....

Ancient Skeletons Could Help Solve Mystery Of Rare Disease

Ballyhanna graveyard site at Ballyshannon. Photo from Ask About Ireland

From Independent (Ireland):

TWO ancient skeletons with a rare genetic bone disease unearthed from a medieval Irish graveyard may hold key insights for medical experts.

An archaeologist believes the discovery of the remains -- afflicted by massive bone growths -- could help modern-day clinicians glean more information about that unusual debilitating condition.

There have only been 16 cases of the hereditary bone growth disorder, now known as multiple osteochondromas, identified in ancient remains worldwide. Four of these have been located in Ireland.

Read more ....

Star-Birth Myth 'Busted'

False-colour images of two galaxies, NGC 1566 (left) and NGC 6902 (right), showing their different proportions of very massive stars. Regions with massive O stars show up as white or pink, while less massive B stars appear in blue. NGC 1566 is much richer in O stars than is NGC 6902. The images combine observations of UV emission by NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer spacecraft and H-alpha observations made with the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) telescope in Chile. NGC 1566 is 68 million light years away in the southern constellation of Dorado. NGC 6902 is about 33 million light years away in the constellation Sagittarius. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/JHU)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Aug. 30, 2009) — An international team of researchers has debunked one of astronomy's long held beliefs about how stars are formed, using a set of galaxies found with CSIRO’s Parkes radio telescope.

When a cloud of interstellar gas collapses to form stars, the stars range from massive to minute.

Since the 1950s astronomers have thought that in a family of new-born stars the ratio of massive stars to lighter ones was always pretty much the same — for instance, that for every star 20 times more massive than the Sun or larger, you’d get 500 stars the mass of the Sun or less.

Read more ....

Dangers In The Deep: 10 Scariest Sea Creatures

From Live Science:

On land during the day, we humans rule. Or at least we're considered top predators, and with our feet on the ground, we're in our element.

In the sea, sans a boat, forget about it. We're too slow, too encumbered with gear, and often too stupid to be much more than prey. What's to worry about down there? Plenty!

Read more ....

NASA Looking To Solve Medium-Lift Conundrum

NASA hopes the Taurus 2 and Falcon 9 rockets will be ready to launch medium-class science missions. Credit: Orbital Sciences and SpaceX

From Spaceflight Now:

Facing a lack of rocket options for medium-class robotic missions, NASA's launch czar said the agency will not need another medium-lift rocket until at least 2014, enough time for new boosters to prove themselves.

William Wrobel, NASA's assistant associate administrator for launch services, said future medium-class missions will most likely fly on Falcon 9 or Taurus 2 rockets now being developed for resupply missions to the International Space Station.

Read more ....

Space Shuttle News Updates -- August 30, 2009

The space shuttle Discovery sits atop Launch Pad 39A during final launch preparations at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida August 24, 2009. Discovery is scheduled for launch later in the day on a mission to the International Space Station. REUTERS/Pierre Ducharme

Astronauts Inspect Discovery Heat Shield -- CBS News

(CBS) The Discovery astronauts conducted an inch-by-inch inspection of the most critical sections of the shuttle's heat shield Saturday, examining the ship's nose cap and wing leading edge panels with a laser scanner on the end of a 50-foot-boom attached to the shuttle's robot arm. No obvious problems stood out, reports CBS News space analyst Bill Harwood.

But it will take engineers several more days to complete the normal (post-Columbia tragedy) assessment of launch imagery, laser scans carried out Saturday, and close-up photos of Discovery's belly during final approach to the International Space Station Sunday evening, before the heat shield is given a clean bill of health.

Read more ....

More News On The Space Shuttle

Shuttle steers closer to space station for hookup -- AP
Shuttle Discovery to Dock with Space Station Today -- WBKO
Shuttle steers closer to space station for hookup -- AP
Space Shuttle's Midnight Launch Dazzles in Photos -- Space.com
'Space rookies' soak it up -- BBC

Dual-Screen Laptop On Sale By Christmas

One of the first photos of the gScreen Spacebook Photo: GIZMODO

From The Telegraph:

The world's first truly dual-screen laptop, which will allow computer users to multi-task while on the move, is due to go on sale by the end of the year.

The pioneering PC, known as the Spacebook, is the brainchild of Alaska-based technology firm gScreen.

While growing numbers of office workers – especially in the financial industries – use several desktop monitors to track many programmes and information sources at the same time, no manufacturer has yet released a portable equivalent.

The gScreen Spacebook will boast two 15.4 in screens which can slide away to fill the space of a single screen when the laptop is being stored or transported.

Read more ....

Why The Greenland And Antarctic Ice Sheets Are Not Collapsing

From Watts Up With That:

Global warming alarmists have suggested that the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica may collapse, causing disastrous sea level rise. This idea is based on the concept of an ice sheet sliding down an inclined plane on a base lubricated by meltwater, which is itself increasing because of global warming.

In reality the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets occupy deep basins, and cannot slide down a plane. Furthermore glacial flow depends on stress (including the important yield stress) as well as temperature, and much of the ice sheets are well below melting point.

Read more ....