New Hope For Aids Vaccine As Scientists Find 'Achilles Heel'

From Times Online:

The search for an HIV vaccine has taken a major step forward with the discovery of a potential Achilles heel of the virus that causes Aids.

Two powerful antibodies that attack a vulnerable spot common to many strains of HIV have been identified, improving the prospects for a vaccine against a virus that affects an estimated 33 million people and kills over 2 million each year.

The discovery is important because it highlights a potential way around HIV’s defences against the human immune system, which have so far thwarted efforts to make a workable vaccine. The hope is that a vaccine that stimulates the production of these antibodies could remain effective against HIV even as the virus mutates.

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Money Woes Likely To Hobble NASA's Planned Moon Mission

From McClatchy News:

WASHINGTON — NASA, whose successes helped cement America's reputation as the world's technological leader, is facing a series of money woes that could thwart its hopes of remaining the globe's leader in space exploration.

A blue-ribbon presidential panel is expected to advise the White House later this month that returning astronauts to the moon by 2020, as former President George W. Bush proposed, is financially impossible under NASA's $18.7 billion budget.

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1000 MPH or Bust: Behind the Scenes With Supersonic Car Tech

(Illustration by Curventa)

From Popular Mechancis:

A series of successful rocket tests in the Mojave desert recently marks another step in the development of a car built to reach 1000 mph. The British team Bloodhound Supersonic Car (SSC) is comprised of some legendary land speed experience. Richard Noble was the man behind the Thrust SSC—the car that set the current land speed record. And the man that will slide behind the wheel of the Bloodhound is Andy Green, the former fighter pilot who holds the land speed record for the fastest diesel vehicle in the world (just over 350 mph, back in 2006). We met with the team recently to get a sense of the scope of the Bloodhound project and the challenges that lie ahead on the road to 1000 mph.

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Study Finds Prime Time On The Internet Is 11 p.m.

Newscom

From Christian Science Monitor:

According to a study, North Americans have been staying up late to do their Internet surfing this summer, so late that the peak usage for the whole day has been at 11 p.m. Eastern time.

It’s 11 p.m. Do you know where your neighbors are?

Chances are they’re online. According to a study, North Americans have been staying up late to do their Internet surfing this summer, so late that the peak usage for the whole day has been at 11 p.m. Eastern time.
That appears to be a shift from previous years, when most Internet activity was in the daytime.

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Diesel Exhaust Is Linked To Cancer Development Via New Blood Vessel Growth

New research shows that diesel exhaust can induce the growth of new blood vessels that serve as a food supply for solid tumors. (Credit: iStockphoto)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 2, 2009) — Scientists have demonstrated that the link between diesel fume exposure and cancer lies in the ability of diesel exhaust to induce the growth of new blood vessels that serve as a food supply for solid tumors.

The researchers found that in both healthy and diseased animals, more new blood vessels sprouted in mice exposed to diesel exhaust than did in mice exposed to clean, filtered air. This suggests that previous illness isn’t required to make humans susceptible to the damaging effects of the diesel exhaust.

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Eating At Night May Put On Pounds

From Live Science:

When you eat, not just what you eat, can affect your weight, a new study on mice suggests.

Mice that were fed a high-fat diet during the time they'd normally eat — the regular hours in their daily circadian cycle — gained 20 percent in weight over six weeks. But mice fed the same high-fat diet during hours they should have been sleeping put on 48 percent compared to the weight they started with.

While the results would have to be replicated on humans to see if the effects are the same, researchers suspect they are.

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The 15 Biggest Wikipedia Blunders

From PC World:

Wikipedia's just announced plans to restrict the editing of some of its articles. Under the new system, any changes made to pages of still-living people will have to be approved by an "experienced volunteer" before going online.

The change marks a significant shift in the philosophy of the openly edited user-controlled encyclopedia -- and that may not be a bad thing. Here are 15 of the biggest Wikipedia blunders the new editing system might have prevented. These false facts, according to widely published accounts, all appeared on the Wikipedia site at some point.

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New Microprocessor Runs On Thin Air

From The New Scientist:

There's no shortage of ways to perform calculations without a standard electronic computer. But the latest in a long lineMovie Camera of weird computers runs calculations on nothing more than air.

The complicated nest of channels and valves (see image) made by Minsoung Rhee and Mark Burns at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, processes binary signals by sucking air out of tubes to represent a 0, or letting it back in to represent a 1.

A chain of such 1s and 0s flows through the processor's channels, with pneumatic valves controlling the flow of the signals between channels.

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A Dental Filling Made From Bile And Silica

A Smile for Bile:
Science Photo Library/Photo Researchers; © Thomas J. Peterson/Getty Images; iStock

From Popular Science:

The ancient Greeks thought an excess of bile could make you angry or melancholy, but Julian Zhu thinks the digestive juice could improve your smile. Zhu, a chemist at the University of Montreal, hit upon the idea while developing a bile-acid-based gel for tissue repair. He found that combining modified bile acids with silica created a hard plastic—perfect for patching broken pearly whites. The bile plastic matches the durability of plastic composite fillings and is more resistant to cracks. And it doesn’t leach mercury, as many commonly used metal fillings do. Bile occurs naturally in the body, so it wouldn’t cause any harm if the fillings were to decompose over time.

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Google's Gmail Goof-Up

From Business Week:

The Web company initially offered little explanation for its e-mail failure; government may think twice before trusting it with vital tasks, says Computerworld.

It's too bad the National Transportation Safety Board can't investigate Google to find out just why Gmail crashed Tuesday as Google's explanations for its outages (via its dashboard) are short and kindergarten-like.

The NTSB would seek out the root cause of the outage, hold hearings and issue a report with recommendations for fixing the problem. But Google follows the standard operating practice of cloud and SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) providers, and that is to tell customers as little as possible about an outage. They treat their customers like dumb bunnies.

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Update: Google Explains Why You Didn’t Have Gmail -- Epicenter/Wired

Global Warming Could Forestall Ice Age

Researchers use a floating platform to take sediment cores from Sunday Lake in southwestern Alaska. Darrell Kaufman/Northern Arizona University

From The New York Times:

The human-driven buildup of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere appears to have ended a millenniums-long slide toward cooler summer temperatures in the Arctic, the authors of a new study report.

Scientists familiar with the work, to be published Friday in the journal Science, said it provides fresh evidence that human activity is not only warming the globe, particularly the Arctic, but could even fend off what had been presumed to be an inevitable descent into a new ice age over the next several dozen millenniums.

The reversal of the slow cooling trend in the Arctic, recorded in samples of layered lakebed mud, glacial ice and tree rings from Alaska to Siberia, has been swift and pronounced, the team writes.

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More Climate Change News

Arctic reverses trend, is warmest in two millennia -- AP
Arctic now warmest in 2000 years, researchers say -- Reuters
Human Activity Blamed in Reversal of Cooling in Arctic -- Washington Post
Next Ice Age Delayed by Global Warming, Study Says -- National Geographic
Arctic Temperatures Are Warmest in 2,000 Years -- Live Science
Recent Arctic warming follows centuries of natural cooling -- CBC
Arctic ice reveals last decade was hottest in 2,000 years -- Daily Mail

Telegraphs Ran on Electric Air in Crazy 1859 Magnetic Storm

Image from Wikipedia

From Wired Science:

On Sept. 2, 1859, at the telegraph office at No. 31 State Street in Boston at 9:30 a.m., the operators’ lines were overflowing with current, so they unplugged the batteries connected to their machines, and kept working using just the electricity coursing through the air.

In the wee hours of that night, the most brilliant auroras ever recorded had broken out across the skies of the Earth. People in Havana and Florida reported seeing them. The New York Times ran a 3,000 word feature recording the colorful event in purple prose.

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Will Kepler Find Habitable Moons?

Artist's impression of a hypothetical exomoon in orbit around a Saturn-like planet in another planetary system. (Credit: Dan Durda)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 3, 2009) — Since the launch of the NASA Kepler Mission earlier this year, astronomers have been keenly awaiting the first detection of an Earth-like planet around another star. Now, in an echo of science fiction movies a team of scientists led by Dr David Kipping of University College London thinks that they may even find habitable ‘exomoons,’ too.

The new results will appear in a paper in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

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New Origin of Life Proposed: Zinc & Zap

Unlike Miller and Urey, who believed the early Earth had a reducing atmosphere, scientists today believe the early Earth had a neutral atmosphere composed primarily of carbon dioxide. Credit: NASA

From Live Science:

The Miller-Urey experiment, conducted by chemists Stanley Miller and Harold Urey in 1953, is the classic experiment on the origin of life. It established that the early Earth atmosphere, as they pictured it, was capable of producing amino acids, the building blocks of life, from inorganic substances.

Now, more than 55 years later, two scientists are proposing a hypothesis that could add a new dimension to the debate on how life on Earth developed.

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Cairo Slums Get Energy Makeover

Solar CITIES project leader T.H. Culhane (right) and organization intern Omar Nagy stand next to a solar-powered water heater on the roof of an apartment building in the Zabaleen neighborhood of Cairo, Egypt. The project offers people in Cairo's slums clean energy through solar panels and biogas reactors and a chance to improve their lives, according to Culhane. Photograph courtesy T.H. Culhane

From National Geographic:

In the ghettos of Egypt's largest city, solar panels are sprouting on apartment rooftops, providing residents with clean power and water and a chance to directly improve their lives.

Since 2003 the nonprofit Solar CITIES project has installed 34 solar-powered hot water systems and 5 biogas reactors in Cairo's poor Coptic Christian and Islamic neighborhoods.

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NASA Monitoring Space Junk; May Need to Move ISS

International Space Station

From Daily Tech:

The U.S. space agency is monitoring a piece of space junk that could impact the ISS

NASA is now monitoring a piece of space trash that may force a shift in position for the International Space Station and shuttle Discovery, which is currently docked at the ISS.

An old piece of metal from the Ariane 5 rocket body will fly by the ISS sometime on Friday, with it reaching its closest point just 6.2 miles away from the ISS. The size of the space junk remains unknown, though a decision will be made later this evening.

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'Telepathic' Microchip Could Help Paraplegics Control Computers

Dr Jon Spratley says his device could motor neuron sufferers such as Stephen Hawking, operate PCs and television by thought alone Photo: MARTIN POPE

From The Telegraph:

A 'telepathic' microchip that enables paraplegics to control computers has been developed by Dr Jon Spratley, a British scientist.

The chip is implanted onto the surface of the brain, where it monitors electronic 'thought' pulses.

While paraplegics may be unable to move their limbs, their brains still produce an electronic signal when they try.

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Ancient Wall Found In Jerusalem

From The BBC:

A 3,700-year-old wall has been discovered in east Jerusalem, Israeli archaeologists say.

The structure was built to protect the city's water supply as part of what dig director Ronny Reich described as the region's earliest fortifications.

The 26-ft (8-m) high wall showed the Canaanite people who built it were a sophisticated civilisation, he said.

Critics say Israel uses such projects as a political tool to bolster Jewish claims to occupied Palestinian land.

Excavations at the site, known as the City of David, are in a Palestinian neighbourhood just outside the walls of Jerusalem's old city.

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Star Wars As Andromeda Galaxy Devours Its Neighbour

Stars are being pulled from Triangulum as it orbits Andromeda due to the strong gravity of this massive galaxy, according to new research

From The Daily Mail:

British astronomers have captured the first ever images of a cannibalistic galaxy of stars 'consuming' another.

The remarkable photographs showing the giant Andromeda galaxy 'devouring' a smaller star formation is described by experts as the 'Holy Grail' of space photography.

Stargazers have long known that Andromeda, which lies approximately 2.5 million light years away, has grown by 'feeding' on other clusters, But this is the first time that its expansion has been caught on camera.

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13 More Things That Don't Make Sense

From New Scientist:

Strive as we might to make sense of the world, there are mysteries that still confound us.

Here are thirteen of the most perplexing. Cracking any one of them could yield profound truths.

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