Last Days of Big American Physics: One More Triumph, Or Just Another Heartbreak?

From The Wire Science:

BATAVIA, Illinois — High-energy particle physicists around the world are collectively holding their breath waiting for the Large Hadron Collider to come online and start unlocking the most elusive secrets of the universe. It’s as if time is standing still until their shiny new toy is ready to play with.

But not at Fermilab. Here, physicists are in the scientific equivalent of an all-out sprint, still clinging to the ever-thinning hope that before the LHC ramps up to full power, their own 28-year old particle collider, the Tevatron, will catch the coveted Higgs boson, a theoretical particle that is at the heart of the Standard Model of physics.

Read more ....

Space Junk Forces Shuttle Discovery To Dodge On Way Home

Earth is seen behind Space Shuttle Discovery in this image photographed by an Expedition 20 crew member on the International Space Station soon after the shuttle and station began their post-undocking relative separation in this NASA handout photo taken September 8, 2009. The STS-128 and Expedition 20 crew concluded nine days of cooperative work onboard the shuttle and station before undocking the two spacecraft. REUTERS/NASA/Handout

From Yahoo News/Space.com:

The space shuttle Discovery will have to dodge a mysterious piece of orbital trash before trying to land in Florida Thursday.

Shuttle commander Rick Sturckow and pilot Kevin Ford will fire Discovery's thrusters at about 12:02 p.m. EDT (1605 GMT) to move their spacecraft clear of the space junk and continue on with their planned landing attempt today.

The "mystery orbital debris," as Mission Control called it, apparently came free from the shuttle or the International Space Station while both vehicles were linked during a spacewalk on Saturday. NASA engineers do not know what the object is or its size, but it has been creeping ever closer to Discovery since the shuttle fired its engines to leave the station's orbital neighborhood Tuesday.

Read more ....

Japan's Space Truck Ready To Fly

From The BBC:

Japan is ready to launch its new space freighter from the Tanegashima base in the south of the country.

The 16.5-tonne unmanned H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV) will haul cargo to the International Space station (ISS).

Its success is vitally important to the station project, which is set to lose the servicing capability of the US shuttle fleet next year.

When the orbiters retire, re-supply will be in the hands of a number of robotic vessels - the HTV included.

The logistics demands of a fully crewed, fully functional ISS will require all of the freighters to play their part.

Lift-off for the HTV is timed for 0201 local time on Friday (1701 GMT, Thursday).

Read more ....

Nasa Scientists Levitate Mice With Magnet

Scientists have previously managed to levitate frogs and grasshoppers

From The Telegraph:

Nasa-backed scientists have successfully levitated mice, as part of research into the conditions endured by astronauts in space.

The mice were made to float using a superconducting magnet that produces a field strong enough to rival the pull of gravity.

After initial tests on baby mice left them frantically spinning in the air, the scientists decided to sedate the rodents to make their weightless ordeals less disturbing.

Describing the first test on a three-week-old baby mouse, researcher Yuanming Liu of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said: "It actually kicked around and started to spin.

Read more ....

Apple Launches iPod Nano With Video Camera And iTunes9 As Steve Jobs Makes Surprise Appearance

The new iPod nano with video camera comes in
nine different colours and is as slim as the old model

From The Daily Mail:

Steve Jobs made a surprise entrance at Apple's 'It’s only rock and roll' event in San Francisco to launch the company's latest products today.

Looking gaunt, Apple's co-founder unveiled a new version of the iPod Nano now with a video camera, microphone, and speaker built in.

It also comes with an FM radio, which can be paused, and a pedometer which can be synchronised to run at the beat of the music track being played. It also features iTunes Tagging, where users tag a song they like and can purchase it when they sync to iTunes.

Read more ....

New Malaria 'Poses Human Threat'

From The BBC:

An emerging new form of malaria poses a deadly threat to humans, research has shown.

It had been thought the parasite Plasmodium knowlesi infected only monkeys.

But it has recently been found to be widespread in humans in Malaysia, and the latest study confirms that it can kill if not treated quickly.

The work, by an international team, appears in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases.

Read more ....

Bacteria Used To Make Radioactive Metals Inert

Judy Wall, a professor of biochemistry at the University of Missouri, is working with bacteria that convert toxic radioactive metal to inert substances.

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 9, 2009) — The Lost Orphan Mine below the Grand Canyon hasn't produced uranium since the 1960s, but radioactive residue still contaminates the area. Cleaning the region takes an expensive process that is only done in extreme cases, but Judy Wall, a biochemistry professor at the University of Missouri College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources, is researching the use of sulfate-reducing bacteria to convert toxic radioactive metal to inert substances, a much more economical solution.

Read more ....

Infection Could Hasten Alzheimer's Memory Loss

From Live Science:

Catching a cold or any other infection could cause more memory loss in people with Alzheimer's disease, a new study suggests.

Alzheimer's is a form of dementia generally diagnosed in some people over 65. While it can result in everything from mood swings to language breakdown and loss of bodily functions, the most familiar hallmark of the disease is memory loss.

Read more ....

Robot To Be Controlled By Human Brain Cells

Artist's impression of the surge of electrical activity from certain brain cells that causes an epileptic seizure (Image: DAVID MACK / SPL)

From New Scientist:

A robot controlled by human brain cells could soon be trundling around a British lab, New Scientist has learned.

Kevin Warwick and Ben Whalley at the University of Reading, UK, have already used rat brain cells to control a simple wheeled robotMovie Camera.

Some 300,000 rat neurons grown in a nutrient broth and producing spikes of electrical activity were connected to the output of the robot's distance sensors. The neurons proved capable of steering the robot around a small enclosure (see videoMovie Camera).

Read more ....

Panel Urges NASA to Reset Priorities

Astronaut Nicole Stott works on the International Space Station last week. Reuters

From The Wall Street Journal:

A blue-ribbon panel is recommending that NASA shelve its goal of rapidly returning to the moon and instead focus on nurturing a robust commercial space industry that can handle short-term objectives of the nation's space program, such as ferrying cargo and crew to the international space station.

The panel, called the Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee, headed by former Lockheed Martin Corp. Chairman Norman Augustine, was convened by the Obama administration earlier this year to provide an independent assessment of the priorities of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. It presented its findings to the White House Tuesday.

Read more ....

Steve Jobs Is Back On The Job

China Plans World's Largest Solar Power Plant

First Solar: Here the company installs a 2 megawatt solar plant in California. Up next, one that's one thousand times the wattage, in China. First Solar

From Popular Science:

First Solar just signed an agreement with China to build the biggest solar power plant yet, according to a statement released today by the company. The 2-gigawatt plant in the Mongolian desert will generate enough electricity to power three million homes.

That's a heck of a lot of cadmium telluride, the semiconductor they use for their thin film cells.

The largest solar plant currently in operation is a mere 60-megawatt plant in Spain, according to pvresources.com.

Read more ....

Buzz Aldrin to NASA: U.S. Space Policy Is on the Wrong Track

Platon photographed Buzz Aldrin for PM in Los Angeles, May 2009. “It’s mankind’s destiny to walk on another planet,” Aldrin says. “We can achieve it, but we’ve got to have the right plan.” (Photograph by Platon)

From Popular Mechanics:

Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin has a problem with NASA’s current manned space plan: Namely, the five-year gap between the shuttle’s scheduled retirement next year and the debut of the Ares I rocket and the Orion spacecraft, which will take us no further than the moon—a place we’ve already been. Aldrin thinks NASA can do better. His plan is to scrap Ares I, stretch out the remaining six shuttle flights and fast-track the Orion to fly on a Delta IV or Atlas V. Then, set our sites on colonizing Mars. Here, Buzz challenges NASA to take on his bolder mission.

Read more ....

After Repairs, New Space Images From Hubble

The Hubble's new Wide Field Camera 3 peered into one of the more crowded places in the universe in this view of a small region inside the globular cluster Omega Centauri, which has nearly 10 million stars. NASA, ESA, and the Hubble SM4 ERO Team

From New York Times:

The cosmic postcards are back.

Astronomers on Wednesday unveiled new pictures and observations from the Hubble Space Telescope. With the exception of a picture last month of the bruise on Jupiter caused by a comet, they were the first data obtained with the telescope since a crew spent 13 days in orbit last May replacing, refurbishing and rebuilding its vital components.

“This is truly Hubble’s new beginning,” Edward Weiler, the associate administrator for science at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, said at a news conference in Washington.

Read more ....

How Air Pollution Can Damage The Heart

Brooks Kraft / Corbis for TIME

From Time Magazine:

Sitting in traffic can certainly be infuriating enough to raise your blood pressure. But new research shows that traffic can raise your blood pressure and put your heart at risk in a more direct way — by exposing you to the pollution in exhaust fumes.

Read more ....

ADHD Sufferers Have Lower Brain Chemicals

From The Telegraph:

People with attention deficit disorder have lower levels of a chemicals in the brain needed to experience the sensations of reward and motivation, research has shown.

Attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder has been dismissed by some as a label used by parents to excuse badly behaved children but this research provides the first definitive evidence that there is a chemical imbalance in the brain of sufferers.

Read more ....

Darpa Seeks To Tap Water’s Power Potential

From The Danger Room:

The quest for limitless energy has preoccupied military researchers for years, and Darpa, the Pentagon’s far-out science arm, has often led the way. Now the agency is looking for yet another method to harness cheap and environmentally friendly energy that would be as simple as turning on the tap.

Read more ....

'NanoPen' May Write New Chapter In Nanotechnology Manufacturing

These highly-magnified images are composed of tiny nanoparticles produced by a "NanoPen."

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 8, 2009) — Researchers in California are reporting development of a so-called "NanoPen" that could provide a quick, convenient way of laying down patterns of nanoparticles — from wires to circuits — for making futuristic electronic devices, medical diagnostic tests, and other much-anticipated nanotech applications. A report on the device, which helps solve a long-standing challenge in nanotechnology, appeared in ACS' Nano Letters.

Read more ....

Houseplants Make Air Healthier

Houseplants were placed into experimental chambers in a greenhouse equipped with a charcoal filtration air supply system to measure ozone depletion rates. Credit: Dennis Decoteau.

From Live Science:

Houseplants can neutralize harmful ozone, making indoor air cleaner, according to a new study.

Ozone, which is the main component of smog, forms when high-energy light, such as the ultraviolet light from the sun, breaks oxygen bonds, ultimately resulting in O3, three atoms of oxygen joining together. When formed higher up in the atmosphere, the ozone layer protects us from harmful UV rays. Ground-level ozone is not so pleasant.

Read more ....

Ancient 'Smell Of Death' Revealed

Dying stinks, even for woodlice

From The BBC:

When animals die, their corpses exude a particular "stench of death" which repels their living relatives, scientists have discovered.

Corpses of animals as distantly related as insects and crustaceans all produce the same stench, caused by a blend of simple fatty acids.

The smell helps living animals avoid others that have succumbed to disease or places where predators lurk.

This 'death recognition system' likely evolved over 400 million years ago.

The discovery was made by a team of researchers based at McMaster University, near Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, and is published in the journal Evolutionary Biology.

Read more ....