Surprise In Earth's Upper Atmosphere: Mode Of Energy Transfer From The Solar Wind

In addition to emitting electromagnetic radiation, the sun emits a stream of ionized particles called the solar wind that affects Earth and other planets in the solar system. (Credit: SOHO image composite by Steele Hill (NASA))

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 11, 2009) — UCLA atmospheric scientists have discovered a previously unknown basic mode of energy transfer from the solar wind to the Earth's magnetosphere. The research, federally funded by the National Science Foundation, could improve the safety and reliability of spacecraft that operate in the upper atmosphere.

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New Glass Resists Small Explosions

From Live Science:

Scientists have created a new type of blast-resistant glass that is thinner, lighter and less vulnerable to small-scale explosions than existing glass.

In tests, the improved glass design has been shown to withstand a hand grenade-strength bomb explosion originating close to the window panel. The blast caused the glass panel to crack, but didn’t puncture the composite layer.

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Brain Cells Slicker Than We Thought

From New Scientist:

Rat brain cells waste little energy when talking to one another. That finding might not sound unusual, but it challenges the long-standing view that brain cells are extremely inefficient at sending signals.

In 1939, Alan Hodgkin of the University of Cambridge and Andrew Huxley of University College London experimented on nerve cells from the giant squid. They concluded that the energy of electrical signals sent along axons – the cells' "cables", each 1 millimetre in diameter in the giant squid – was four times the theoretical minimum.

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Where Did All the Flowers Come From?

RARE PLANT Amborella trichopoda, a small shrub found only on the island of New Caledonia in the South Pacific, represents the oldest living lineage of flowering plants. Sangtae Kim/University of Florida

From The New York Times:

Throughout his life, Charles Darwin surrounded himself with flowers. When he was 10, he wrote down each time a peony bloomed in his father’s garden. When he bought a house to raise his own family, he turned the grounds into a botanical field station where he experimented on flowers until his death. But despite his intimate familiarity with flowers, Darwin once wrote that their evolution was “an abominable mystery.”

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Stone Man Joins Carved Animals In Neolithic Farmyard

Stone figurine of a reclining man found at Çatalhöyük in Turkey. Photograph: Jason Quinlan/Çatalhöyük Research Project

From The Guardian:

The figurine was dug up at the ancient site of Çatalhöyük in Turkey, which is thought to have been home for some of the world's first farmers.

A reclining man with a bushy beard and big nose is the latest to join a haul of stone figurines unearthed at the ancient site of Çatalhöyük in Turkey. The sculpture, which measures around six inches high, was uncovered at the neolithic site last week.

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Twitter Paves Way For Advertising By Changing Terms Of Use

From Times Online:

Social networking site could start making money after amending terms of use so advertising can reach its users.

Twitter, the popular micro-blogging website, took another step towards making money yesterday by amending its terms of use to allow advertisers to reach its 45 million regular visitors.

The company, founded two years ago, has exploded in popularity but has held back from introducing ways to monetise its internet traffic. Its founders have said they wanted to concentrate on growth and not alienate account holders.

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Wolves Aren’t Making It Easy for Idaho Hunters

Marv Hagedorn, an Idaho state representative and hunter, hunting for wolves in the Boise Mountains with his son, John, ahead. Paul Hosefros for The New York Times

From The New York Times:

BOISE NATIONAL FOREST, Idaho — Hunting and killing are not the same thing. Even as Idaho has sold more than 14,000 wolf-hunting permits, the first 10 days of the first legal wolf hunt here in decades have yielded only three reported legal kills.

Such modest early results might seem surprising in a state that has tried for years to persuade the federal government to let it reduce the wolf population through hunting.

Idahoans, among the nation’s most passionate hunters, are learning that the wolf’s small numbers — about 850 were counted in the state at the end of last year — make it at once more vulnerable and more elusive.

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Frankfurt Motor Show: Mercedes SLS AMG Is The New 'Gullwing'

From The Telegraph:

A dashing new interpretation of Mercedes-Benz's fabled "Gullwing" model, called the SLS AMG, will be one of the stars of the Frankfurt Motor Show.

Gone are the familiar rounded nose, circular headlights and triangular rear quarter-lights of the 1950s model.

In their place, the German firm will unveil a chiselled, aerodynamic new model with vertically slanted headlights, a steeply-raked windscreen and taut, muscular, ground-hugging lines.

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Discovery Glides To Smooth California Landing

The shuttle Discovery banks to line up on runway 22 at Edwards Air Force Base in California's Mojave Desert north of Los Angeles. (Credit: NASA TV)

From CNET:

Detoured by bad weather in Florida, the shuttle Discovery dropped out of orbit and swooped to a flawless California landing Friday to close out a successful space station resupply mission.

Shuttle commander Frederick "C.J." Sturckow and pilot Kevin Ford fired the shuttle's twin braking rockets at 4:47 p.m. PDT to drop the ship out of orbit for an hour-long descent to Edwards Air Force Base.

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You Can Believe Your Eyes: New Insights Into Memory Without Conscious Awareness

New findings may shed light on the role of the hippocampus in memory and awareness, as they suggest that even when people fail to recollect a past event, the hippocampus might still support an expression of memory through eye movements. (Credit: iStockphoto)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 10, 2009) — Scientists may have discovered a way to glean information about stored memories by tracking patterns of eye movements, even when an individual is unable (or perhaps even unwilling) to report what they remember. The research, published by Cell Press in the September 10th issue of the journal Neuron, provides compelling insight into the relationship between activity in the hippocampus, eye movements, and both conscious and unconscious memory.

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7 Thoughts That Are Bad For You

From Live Science:

Our personalities do more for us than determine our social circles. Temperament can impact a person's physical health.

"The idea that behavior or personality traits can influence health is one that's been around for a long time. We're just now getting a handle on to what extent they do," said Stephen Boyle of Duke University Medical Center in North Carolina.

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NASA's Plans Lack The Cash

Photo: Fly me to the moon? Astronaut Buzz Aldrin walks on the surface of the moon during the Apollo 11 mission. Credit: NASA

From Technology News:

On Tuesday, after months of deliberation, the independent committee charged with reviewing the future of the U.S. human space program released a summary report of its findings, a document that will guide key decisions that lie ahead for the Obama administration.

According to the report, the current crisis facing NASA lies with its budget, and not with technical or programmatic issues. "The report clearly stated that the current program is not executable or sustainable with the budget that we have," says Scott Pace, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, in DC.

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Our Stone Age Ancestors Wore Bright And Garish Clothes

Our stone age ancestors may have worn brightly coloured threads rather than drab skins as portrayed in films like One Million Years BC

From The Daily Mail:

They are normally pictured wearing drab furs and skins. But an astonishing new discovery suggests that our Stone Age ancestors had a taste for garish, colourful clothes.

Archaeologists have uncovered an extraordinary haul of pink, turquoise and black fibres that were used to make thread more than 34,000 years ago.

The flax fibres, which were buried in a cave in the hills of the Republic of Georgia, were discovered by an international team of fossil hunters.

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The iPod Is Dead

From Slate:

One sign that Steve Jobs is back to his old self: He's already sniping at rivals. After Apple's iPod launch event on Wednesday, the New York Times' David Pogue asked the CEO whether he has doubts—as he's expressed in the past—about the market for e-readers, especially Amazon's Kindle. Jobs said he was still skeptical. Amazon, he pointed out, has never released sales numbers for the Kindle, and "usually, if they sell a lot of something, you want to tell everybody." More importantly, Jobs doesn't think people want to buy a device just to read books. "I'm sure there will always be dedicated devices, and they may have a few advantages in doing just one thing," Jobs said. "But I think the general-purpose devices will win the day."

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Memories Exist Even When Forgotten, Study Suggests

Jeff Johnson of the UCI Center for the Neurobiology of Learning & Memory and colleagues discovered that a person's brain activity while remembering an event is very similar to when it was first experienced, even if specifics can't be recalled. Johnson says brain imaging shines a "searchlight" into the brain. (Credit: Daniel A. Anderson / University Communications)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 10, 2009) — A woman looks familiar, but you can't remember her name or where you met her. New research by UC Irvine neuroscientists suggests the memory exists – you simply can't retrieve it.

Using advanced brain imaging techniques, the scientists discovered that a person's brain activity while remembering an event is very similar to when it was first experienced, even if specifics can't be recalled.

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Computer Could Call Football Plays

New York Jets place kicker Jay Feely (3) kicks an overtime, game-winning field goal against the New England Patriots in their NFL football game in Foxborough, Massachusetts November 13, 2008. Brian Snyder / Reuters

From Live Science:

WASHINGTON (ISNS) -- Football coaches are famous for their dedication to winning. Video studies of upcoming opponents begin so early in the morning that most people are still dreaming about their first cup of coffee; strategy sessions run past the time insomniacs fall asleep.

But a new computer model may be able to take the play calling load off of the coach and, through fast, real-time analysis of all the offensive and defensive possibilities, dictate the best play to call in any game situation. The program takes the human element out of play calling and instead uses mathematical and statistical techniques.

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Diamonds Are For Softies – Boron Is Harder

Diamonds are famously the hardest natural substance, but they may be about to lose their crown (Image: Salexmccoy, Wikimedia Commons)

From New Scientist:

You don't often break a diamond. So when in 2003 Dave Mao cracked a tooth of his diamond anvil, he knew something extraordinary must have happened. Together with his daughter Wendy and other colleagues at the Geophysical Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington DC, he was using the device to test materials at pressures many millions of times higher than those at the Earth's surface - higher even than in our planet's core - by squeezing them between two tiny diamond jaws.

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The Working Person's Diet: Too Busy to Eat Right

From Time Magazine:

If you've ever gotten so busy at work that you skipped lunch and ended up staring at your hungry reflection in the vending-machine glass in the late afternoon, then you're familiar with this gastro-economic catch-22: losing your job may mean cutting back on food bills, but gainful employment could result in poor eating habits overall.

That's the conclusion of a new nutritional study by researchers at Cornell University. They conducted a survey of 25 working mothers and 25 working fathers in low-to-moderate-income communities and found that more than half of the participants routinely resorted to unhealthy eating options because of their work circumstances.

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Why Washing May Hamper Your Attractiveness

Chris Rout/Alamy

From The Independent:

A natural chemical found in the sweat of men has been shown to act as a primitive love potion that increases their attractiveness in the eyes of women, a study has found.

The substance, which is derived from the male sex hormone testosterone, has a small but significant effect on judgements made by women in a speed-dating situation of a male stranger's attractiveness.

Tamsin Saxton of the University of St Andrews studied the influence of androstadienone by dabbling a drop of it on the upper lip of 50 women who took part in the evening trial before they "dated" a series of men.

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Do Mention The War, Say Scientists

Members of the Post Office Home Guard receiving lessons on how to load the spigot mortar at a summer training camp in Hertfordshire. Photo: Getty Images

From The Telegraph:

Encouraging old people to talk about the war is good for their health, claim scientists.

Researchers have found that when the elderly sat around in groups discussing old times it improved their memory and limited the effects of dementia.

Reminiscence therapy, as it is technically known, could increase the cognitive recall and agility of the mind by up to 12 per cent in as little as six weeks, it was found.

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My Comment: There is some truth to this (in some cases) .... but in some cases this is probably not. My father never liked to talk about his war experience, and the only time he opened up was when he was drunk with men who had also served on the Russian front.

Otherwise .... this was a no man's land for everyone else.