Why 09/09/09 Is So Special

In some cultures, the number 9 is special and can carry good or bad omens. These characters from the movie "9," which opens on 09/09/09, flee for their lives from the Fabrication Machine. Credit: Focus Features

From Live Science:

Have special plans this 09/09/09?

Everyone from brides and grooms to movie studio execs are celebrating the upcoming calendrical anomaly in their own way.

In Florida, at least one county clerk's office is offering a one-day wedding special for $99.99. The rarity of this Sept. 9 hasn't been lost on the creators of the iPod, who have moved their traditional Tuesday release day to Wednesday to take advantage of the special date. Focus Features is releasing their new film "9," an animated tale about the apocalypse, on the 9th.

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Laser Cooling May Create "Exotic" States of Matter

An infrared picture shows the change in temperature for laser-cooled gas (blue) and a surrounding metal chamber (red and yellow). After a 30-second pulse from a special type of laser beam, the gas cooled by several degrees compared to its container. Picture courtesy Martin Weitz

From National Geographic:

Laser beams are best known as weapons in science fiction and as heating and cutting tools in science fact. But a new study has flip-flopped conventional physics to show lasers in a whole new light.

In a new technique, Martin Weitz and Ulrich Vogl of the University of Bonn in Germany used a laser to bring the temperature of dense rubidium gas far below the normal point at which the gas becomes a solid.

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Underwater Laser Pops In Navy Ops

From The BBC:

US military researchers are developing a method for communication that uses lasers to make sound underwater.

The approach focuses laser light to produce bubbles of steam that pop and create tiny, 220-decibel explosions.

Controlling the rate of these explosions could provide a means of communication or even acoustic imaging.

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My Comment: The geek in me loves reading reports like this one.

The House That Twitters

IBM head of invention Andy Stanford-Clark at his home on the Isle of Wight which he has turned into a hi-tech house using Twitter

From The Telegraph:

A Tudor cottage has been converted into one of the most hi-tech homes in the world after its owner connected it to the internet messaging service Twitter.

Now the house tells its owner when his dinner is ready, if someone is at the door or when a mouse has been caught in a trap.

Dr Andy Stanford-Clark has fitted the grade 1 listed cottage with hundreds of sensors, allowing everything from energy usage to the burglar alarm to be relayed by the blogging website.

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Ancient Skeletons Discovered In Georgia Threaten To Overturn The Theory Of Human Evolution

Astonishing discovery: Archaeologists have unearthed six ancient skeletons dating back 1.8 million years in the hills of Georgia

From The Daily Mail:

For generations, scientists have believed Africa was the cradle of mankind.

Now an astonishing discovery suggests the human race may have spent a 'gap year' in Eurasia.

Archaeologists have unearthed six ancient skeletons dating back 1.8 million years in the hills of Georgia which threaten to overturn the theory of human evolution.

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Clues To Blast-Related Brain Injury

Photo: Brain blast: Scientists found that people who suffered concussions as the result of a blast had a more diffuse pattern of brain injury (shown in red) than those whose concussions resulted from a blow to the head or an acceleration injury.
Credit: David Moore et al.

From Technology Review:

New research shows that explosions trigger unique damage to brain tissue.

The blasts caused by improvised explosive devices in Iraq and Afghanistan appear to inflict a fundamentally different type of brain damage than do more traditional sources of concussions, such as blunt trauma. The findings point toward new approaches to diagnosing and monitoring these injuries, which have been a huge concern to the military in recent years. The research also begins to resolve a controversy in brain-injury research--whether soldiers who are near an explosion but don't get hit in the head can still suffer a unique type of brain damage.

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My Comment: If this report is true, it means that thousands of Iraqi/Afghan veterans may have experienced brain trauma that were never diagnosed .... or .... for those who were diagnosed, it may mean years of treatment and care that was never contemplated just a few years back. This is a very sobering report, and will be followed up by this blog in the future.

The Complicated World of Ancient Humans

Paved entrance to the Tayinat Temple in Turkey, a hotbed of trade in the Iron Age.

From Discover Magazine:

Recent digs show long-distance trade and complex social structures were around for longer than archaeologists thought.

For civilizations in Europe and the Near East, the Bronze and Iron Ages—when metalworking was first developed—have been viewed as times when simple societies struggled through technological upheaval, famine, and sickness. But new findings are revealing surprising social and cultural complexity.

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Earth-Sized Planets Are Just Right For Life

Auroras, like this one seen from Alaska, may be a sign that a planet can support life (Image: Joshua Strang, United States Air Force / Wikimedia Commons)

From New Scientist:

THE discovery of extrasolar super-Earths - rocky planets about five to ten times the mass of Earth - has raised hopes that some may harbour life. Perhaps it's a vain hope though, since it now seems that Earth is just the right size to sustain life.

Life is comfortable on Earth in part because of its relatively stable climate and its magnetic field, which deflects cosmic radiation capable of damaging organic molecules as well as producing amazing auroras (see right).

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RoboBath: NASA Studies The Cleanest Robot in the World

Mars Mountaineer

+ Arctic Outdoor Lab: Scientists use Norway’s far northern Svalbard islands to test gear-sterilization techniques and space-bound rovers such as this prototype.

+ Social Climber: Cliffbot is part of a three-rover team. Two other robots are tethered to the machine to let it access terrain as steep as 85 degrees.

+ Bot Specs: The rover is the size of a toy wagon, weighs nearly 18 pounds and creeps at 6 inches a second on level ground.

From Popular Mechanics:

In the icy north, scientists learn to sanitize their tools before sending out rovers to search for life on other planets.

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Asus's New E-Reader Looks More Like a Real, Live Book

Asus Eee Reader

From Popular Science:

The company's forthcoming reader sports a dual-screen, two-page layout and (yes) color.

For a lot of people, e-book readers are a long game of "I'll buy it when..." For some, the rest of that sentence is "it has a color screen," and for others it's "it's cheaper." Asus's upcoming Eee Reader (due by the end of this year) delivers on both counts. Oh, and it will have two screens, too.

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Half Of Fish Consumed Globally Is Now Raised On Farms, Study Finds

These are moi, or Pacific threadfin, being sorted for market after harvest from an offshore aquaculture cage in Hawaii. (Credit: NOAA)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 8, 2009) — Aquaculture, once a fledgling industry, now accounts for 50 percent of the fish consumed globally, according to a new report by an international team of researchers. And while the industry is more efficient than ever, it is also putting a significant strain on marine resources by consuming large amounts of feed made from wild fish harvested from the sea, the authors conclude. Their findings are published in the Sept. 7 online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

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How Much Spit Does A Person Produce?

From Live Science:

Our salivary glands, which are located on the inside of each cheek, at the bottom of the mouth and under the jaw at the front of the mouth, churn out about two to four pints (one to two liters) of spit every day.

The mere mention or aroma hint of chocolate chip cookies can make for a mouth full of drool. That's a good thing. The clear substance, made up mostly of water, mixes in with food to help even the driest snack slide with ease down into your stomach. Before those morsels hit the belly, special enzymes in saliva start to break down that food into its simpler components.

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Fatal Fungus Killing Bats At Alarming Rate

Watch CBS Videos Online

From CBS:

Biologist Explains How a Dying Bat Population Results in Damage to Forests and Farms.

CBS) The race is on throughout the northeast. From tagging bats with tiny transmitters to infrared flight analysis and blood testing of their immune systems, researchers are trying to solve one of the most devastating mysteries in the natural world: The huge and rapid die off of the species named little brown bats.

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Fragment From World's Oldest Bible Found Hidden In Egyptian Monastery

A page from the earliest surviving Bible, of which another fragment has been discovered in Egypt. PA


From The Independent:

Academic stumbles upon previously unseen section of Codex Sinaiticus dating back to 4th century.

A British-based academic has uncovered a fragment of the world's oldest Bible hiding underneath the binding of an 18th-century book.

Nikolas Sarris spotted a previously unseen section of the Codex Sinaiticus, which dates from about AD350, as he was trawling through photographs of manuscripts in the library of St Catherine's Monastery in Egypt.

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My Comment: Bookyards section on Christianity is here, and on the Bible it is here.

Virus Linked To Prostate Tumours

From The BBC:

Scientists have produced compelling evidence that a virus known to cause cancer in animals is linked to prostate cancer in humans.

The researchers from the University of Utah and Columbia University medical schools found the virus in 27% of the 200 cancerous prostates they looked at.

They say it was associated with more aggressive tumours and found in only 6% of non-cancerous prostates.

The finding raises the prospect of one day producing a vaccine.

Previous research has linked XMRV (Xenotropic murine leukaemia virus) to prostate cancer but not in such an aggressive way.

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Chinese Scientists 'Filmed UFO For 40 Minutes'

From The Telegraph:

The UFO world is alive with speculation that China is about to reveal details of startling and detailed footage of an unidentified flying object taken during the solar eclipse on July 22.

Scientists at the Purple Mountain Observatory in Nanjing are reported to have confirmed that they filmed a UFO during the eclipse for 40 minutes. They say that they will spend the next 12 months studying the footage before drawing any conclusions.

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More Rubbish From 60 Minutes Tonight. “The Age Of Megafires”

From Watts Up With That:

Right on cue, CBS news 60 minutes is expected link the recent California fires to “global warming”. Never mind that the fire was caused by arson, or that the area hadn’t burned in 40-60 years, leading up to a collection of dry dead underbrush which is part of the natural fire cycle. Never mind that La Nina made for a dry couple of years exacerbating the problem. Never mind that we get fires in California about this time every year. No, its the “Age of Megafires”:

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Windmills Are Killing Our Birds -- A Commentary

From Wall Street Journal:

One standard for oil companies, another for green energy sources.

On Aug. 13, ExxonMobil pleaded guilty in federal court to killing 85 birds that had come into contact with crude oil or other pollutants in uncovered tanks or waste-water facilities on its properties. The birds were protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, which dates back to 1918. The company agreed to pay $600,000 in fines and fees.

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Green Machine

Fuel for thought: The car is powered by vegetables such as potatoes and carrots

Green Machine: The 135mph Racing Car Built Out Of Recyclables And Powered By Vegetables And Chocolate -- The Daily Mail

A racing car built from vegetables and powered by chocolate is to make its track debut next month, scientists have announced.

The £500,000 WorldFirst - described as the greenest car of its kind in the world - is expected to reach a top speed of 135mph when it hits the track at Brands Hatch.

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Saddle Up For The U.S. Army's Robotics Rodeo

Robot Gunslinger: Steady there, cowboy Mark Rutherford/CNET

From Popular Science:

The Army invites robotic handlers to show off their wares.

At the first Robotics Rodeo, hosted this week by the U.S. Army and the Fort Hood III Corps in Texas, war machines replaced bulls and horses. Soldiers and civilian contractors used the opportunity, starting on Wednesday, to inspect a lineup of robots that could potentially find a place on the battlefield.

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