The Mystery Of Chernobyl

Nuclear wasteland? The 30-mile exclusion zone around Chernobyl and the abandoned town of Pripyat is now home to animals Photo: Reuters

From The Telegraph:

A bitter dispute is raging over whether the fallout zone is a wasteland or wonderland. Now, a team of scientists is heading back into the contaminated area to find out the truth.

We walked out into a wasteland, grey and desolate. The buildings had deteriorated, windows had been smashed. Trees and weeds had grown over everything: it was a ghost town." It reads like a passage from a post-apocalyptic novel, such as Cormac McCarthy's The Road; in fact, it's how Tim Mousseau describes his first visit to Chernobyl.

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Bionic Brain Chips Could Overcome Paralysis

Regaining control of the body (Image: Daniel Chang)

From New Scientist:

A MONKEY sits on a bench, wires running from its head and wrist into a small box of electronics. At first the wrist lies limp, but within 10 minutes the monkey begins to flex its muscles and move its hand from side to side. The movements are clumsy, but they are enough to justify a rewarding slug of juice. After all, it shouldn't be able to move its wrist at all.

A nerve connection in the monkey's upper arm had previously been blocked with an anaesthetic that prevented signals travelling from its brain to its wrist, leaving the muscles temporarily paralysed. The monkey was only able to move its arm because the wires and the black box bypassed the broken link.

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Engineering Earth 'Is Feasible'

From BBC:

A UK Royal Society study has concluded that many engineering proposals to reduce the impact of climate change are "technically possible".

Such approaches could be effective, the authors said in their report.

But they also stressed that the potential of geo-engineering should not divert governments away from their efforts to reduce carbon emissions.

Such engineering projects could either remove carbon dioxide or reflect the Sun's rays away from the planet.

Suggestions range from having giant mirrors in space, to erecting giant CO2 scrubbers that would "clean up" the air.

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Facebook To Tighten Privacy Policies And Give Users More Control Over Personal Data

From Times Online:

Facebook, the world's largest online social network, has bowed to pressure and agreed to tighten up its privacy policies further.

The company will give its 250 million users more control over the personal information they share with third-party applications such as games and quizzes and will clarify what happens to data when a user deactivates an account.

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Eye Say! How The Animal Kingdom Views The World

All-round vision: Tarantulas have eight eyes - two wide ones at the front, with four small ones underneath, and two more small ones on the side of the upper head

From The Daily Mail:

To say they come in all shapes and sizes is an understatement.

Tarantulas boast an eight-pack for all-round vision. Male elephants give off scent from behind theirs' to attract mates. And the octopus relies as much on its tentacles to get around.

These fascinating images give a tantalising glimpse of the wonders nature has evolved to see - and the extra functions they bring.

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Acoustic Tweezers Can Position Tiny Objects

"Acoustic tweezers" enable flexible on-chip manipulation and patterning of cells using standing surface acoustic waves. (Credit: Tony Jun Huang, Jinjie Shi, Penn State)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Aug. 31, 2009) — Manipulating tiny objects like single cells or nanosized beads often requires relatively large, unwieldy equipment, but now a system that uses sound as a tiny tweezers can be small enough to place on a chip, according to Penn State engineers.

"Current methods for moving individual cells or tiny beads include such devices as optical tweezers, which require a lot of energy and could damage or even kill live cells," said Tony Jun Huang, assistant professor of engineering science and mechanics. "Acoustic tweezers are much smaller than optical tweezers and use 500,000 times less energy."

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Coldest, Driest, Calmest Place On Earth Found

From Live Science:

The search for the best observatory site in the world has lead to the discovery of what is thought to be the coldest, driest, calmest place on Earth — a place where no human is thought to have ever set foot.

To search for the perfect site to take pictures of the heavens, a U.S.-Australian research team combined data from satellites, ground stations and climate models in a study to assess the many factors that affect astronomy — cloud cover, temperature, sky-brightness, water vapor, wind speeds and atmospheric turbulence.

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Opera 10 To Emerge Tuesday

From CNET:

Opera Software will release version 10 of its browser Tuesday, a new version of software that has loyal fans but not as much adoption as several rivals.

The Norwegian company says Opera 10 has better performance, a Turbo mode for slow Internet connections, support for a variety of Web standards such as Web fonts, and improvements to the Opera Mail feature. The company issued two Opera 10 release candidates for the free software in the last week, and spokeswoman Falguni Bhuta announced Monday the final version will arrive September 1.

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7 Equipment Breakthroughs That Shook Up Sports

From Popular Mechanics:

It's one of the most entertaining games of cat and mouse in the sports world. A competitor, or a manufacturer, comes up with a piece of gear that threatens to turn a sport upside down. Then the game's powers that be are faced with a dilemma. Ban it outright? Rewrite the rule book? Or just let it be? Just such a controversy is raging in swimming, where streamlined suits have been banned, but it's important to remember that seeking an edge through better equipment is as old as sport itself. Here are seven pieces of gear that shook up their respective sports and sent officials back to the drawing board.

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Diving Deep For A Living Fossil

Light-equipped booms on Alvin illuminate the sea floor and pillow lava formations created by eruptions on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. The Stephen Low Company and Rutgers University

From The New York Times:

For 33 years, Peter A. Rona has pursued an ancient, elusive animal, repeatedly plunging down more than two miles to the muddy seabed of the North Atlantic to search out, and if possible, pry loose his quarry.

Like Ahab, he has failed time and again. Despite access to the world’s best equipment for deep exploration, he has always come back empty-handed, the creature eluding his grip.

The animal is no white whale. And Dr. Rona is no unhinged Captain Ahab, but rather a distinguished oceanographer at Rutgers University. And he has now succeeded in making an intellectual splash with a new research report, written with a team of a dozen colleagues.

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Four Years Later, New Orleans' Green Makeover

A house under construction in the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans in the "Make It Right" program is designed to be extremely eco-friendly. Charlie Varley / Sipa

From Time Magazine:

After Hurricane Katrina flattened New Orleans exactly four years ago, on Aug. 29, 2005, the city emerged as an inadvertent symbol of global warming, the first American victim of climate change. Over 200,000 homes were destroyed during the Category 5 hurricane. But in the years since, the Crescent City has quietly embraced a new and unexpected role as a laboratory for green building. Sustainable development groups that range from the international nonprofit Global Green to earth-friendly celebrities like Brad Pitt descended on New Orleans, determined not just to build the city back, but to build it back green. "It's going to come back," says Matt Petersen, the president of Global Green USA. "But we want to build it better than it was before."

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US Scientists Set To Reveal The True Colour Of Dinosaurs

From Independent:

A new technique that identifies the hue of ancient birds may help a Yale team with bigger beasts.

It is a question that has baffled the greatest scientific minds – and those of the average seven-year-old: what colour were dinosaurs?

Now a dramatic breakthrough in fossil examination has sparked a race to discover an answer that may satisfy the scientific community as well as anxious crayon-wielders. A research team at Yale University believes it has established a technique that can identify the colour of fossilised feathers and fur. Preliminary results suggest that the true colours of dinosaurs may soon be revealed.

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In Vino Veritas

Photo: Insectaries are natural habitats for beneficial insects that control pests. The Benziger Family Winery’s main insectary is planted with more than 50 kinds of plants and flowers. Credit: Benziger Family Winery

From Technology Review:

Winemakers disappointed by organic methods have turned to biodynamics as the purest route to wine that's true to soil, grape, and climate.

For years the question in winemaking was how technology could make wine better. This was especially true if the wine was Californian. When California cabernet sauvignon bested the best of Bordeaux--in a legendary blind tasting, the "Judgment of Paris," convened by the English wine merchant Steven ­Spurrier--it was a moment of great national pride at the time of America's Bicentennial, and it was achieved in part because California winemakers had used technology in ways tradition-bound French winemakers would not. As California wine became respectable, Silicon Valley millionaires bought vineyards in Napa and Sonoma counties. California wine and tech soon enjoyed a happy marriage.

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Tumors Feel The Deadly Sting Of Nanobees

Bee on a finger. Researchers have recently harnessed the toxin in bee venom to kill tumor cells. (Credit: iStockphoto/Tatiana Buzuleac)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Aug. 31, 2009) — When bees sting, they pump poison into their victims. Now the toxin in bee venom has been harnessed to kill tumor cells by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The researchers attached the major component of bee venom to nano-sized spheres that they call nanobees.

In mice, nanobees delivered the bee toxin melittin to tumors while protecting other tissues from the toxin's destructive power. The mice's tumors stopped growing or shrank. The nanobees' effectiveness against cancer in the mice is reported in advance online publication Aug. 10 in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.

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What Makes A Psychopath? Answers Remain Elusive

Psychopathic behavior can take many forms, not all of it violent. But some common themes underlie the condition, with pieces of a brain's emotional machinery missing. Psychopaths often lack empathy, guilt, conscience or the ability to show remorse. Image credit: stockxpert

From Live Science:

As exaggerated as many popular depictions of psychopaths often are, many nevertheless do pose a genuine danger to others. So what makes psychopaths the way they are?

Scientists are now working toward uncovering the roots of this disorder in the brain. Their research could lead to ways to intervene against the disorder and hopefully prevent it from manifesting.

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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.

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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.

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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).

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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.

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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.

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