Too Much Radiation For Astronauts To Make It To Mars

A trip to Phobos comes with extras (Image: NASA/JPL)

From New Scientist:

FORGET the risk of exploding rockets or getting sideswiped by a wayward bit of space junk. Radiation may be the biggest hurdle to human exploration beyond low-Earth orbit and could put a damper on a recently proposed mission to Mars orbit.

A panel tasked by the White House with reviewing NASA's human space flight activities (New Scientist, 22 August, p 8) suggests sending astronauts to one of Mars's moons, Phobos or Deimos, among other possibilities raised in its report released last week (http://tinyurl.com/mbajav).

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Firefox Use Reaches Critical Mass; Skype Reigns In IM

From Infoworld:

It finally happened. After years of building momentum -- and more than a few false starts -- Mozilla's Firefox Web browser has finally reached critical mass. There are now more users running some variant of Firefox (50.6 percent) than not running it, according to the latest statistics from the exo.performance.network, which tracks the actual usage and configurations of thousands of PCs globally, providing a real-world snapshot.

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Apollo Moon Rocks Lost In Space? No, Lost On Earth

This photo from the Boerhaave Museum in Leiden, Netherlands shows authentic Dutch moon rocks on display. The detection of a fake moon rock in the Netherlands' Rijksmueum should serve as a wake-up call for more than 130 countries who received gifts of lunar rubble from both the Apollo 11 flight in 1969 and Apollo 17 three years later. Experts say the whereabouts are unknown of hundreds of tiny rocks scooped up by U.S. astronauts and given by the Nixon administration to friendly nations. Photo from AP

From USA Today:

AMSTERDAM — Attention, countries of the world: Do you know where your moon rocks are?

The discovery of a fake moon rock in the Netherlands' national museum should be a wake-up call for more than 130 countries that received gifts of lunar rubble from both the Apollo 11 flight in 1969 and Apollo 17 three years later.

Nearly 270 rocks scooped up by U.S. astronauts were given to foreign countries by the Nixon administration. But according to experts and research by The Associated Press, the whereabouts of some of the small rocks are unknown.

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The Science of Hunger: What 1 Billion People Feel

From Live Science:

Despite a record level of people suffering from hunger, food aid is at a 20-year low due to the poor global economy, United Nations officials said today. The result: More than 1 billion people across the world will face hunger this year.

"For the world's most vulnerable, the perfect storm is hitting with a vengeance," said U.N. World Food Program (WFP) Executive Director Josette Sheeran. So far this year, the agency has received less than half of the $6.7 billion it needs to feed 108 million people in 74 countries, Sheeran said.

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A 360-Degree Virtual Reality Chamber Brings Researchers Face To Face With Their Data

MULTI-DIMENSIONAL: Researchers interact with their data, which can be streamed live, using 3-D glasses, special wireless controllers, and sensors embedded in the bridge's railings. (Gesture control and voice recognition are in the works.) © JOANN KUCHERA-MORIN

From Scientific American:

Scientists can climb inside the University of California, Santa Barbara's three-story-high AlloSphere for a life-size interaction with their research.

Scientists often become immersed in their data, and sometimes even lost. The AlloSphere, a unique virtual reality environment at the University of California, Santa Barbara, makes this easier by turning large data sets into immersive experiences of sight and sound. Inside its three-story metal sphere researchers can interpret and interact with their data in new and intriguing ways, including watching electrons spin from inside an atom or "flying" through an MRI scan of a patient's brain as blood density levels play as music.

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Top 10 Most Dangerous Plants In The World

Giant Pitcher Plant: Nepenthes attenboroughii

From Popular Mechanics:

Over millions of years, plants have developed some crafty ways to fend off hungry animals. Deadly neurotoxins, thorns capable of puncturing car tires, and powerful digestive enzymes are just a few. Following the recent discovery of Nepenthes attenboroughii, a giant pitcher plant large enough to digest rodents, PM tracked down poison-plant aficionado Amy Stewart to discuss some of the world's deadliest plants. Stewart, who is the author of Wicked Plants: A Book of Botanical Atrocities, lives in Eureka, Calif., where she tends a garden that contains more than 30 different species of poisonous plants.

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Space Shuttle Unleashes Magnificent Plume Of Pee

Pee Over Hungary, By the Ruins of Essegvar: Last Wednesday, several skygazers scratched their heads when they saw this mysterious glow in the sky. Tamas Ladanyi

From Popular Science:

To anyone who's ever pondered what urine looks like in space -- c'mon, don't be shy -- we say: wonder no more, because photos of the phenomenon have finally hit the internet.

Last Wednesday, a number of North American skygazers were lucky to sight a mysterious flare in the night sky, that, as it now turns out, was a 150-pound cocktail of astronaut urine and waste water released from the shuttle Discovery.

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Scientists Find Lifesaver For India – Rice That Doesn't Have To Be Cooked

The new strain of rice offers hope for malnourished children in India. Reuters

From The Independent:

It sounds too good to be true. But if Indian scientists are correct, hundreds of millions of people across the subcontinent could benefit from a specially-developed strain of rice that "cooks" simply by being soaked in water.

Experts at the Central Rice Research Institute (CRRI) in Orissa who have developed the grain were inspired by so-called soft rice, or komal saul, that grows in the north-east Indian state of Assam. Traditional recipes call for such rice to be soaked overnight in water, then eaten with mustard oil and onions.

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Working In A Team Increases Human Pain Threshold

Cooperating as a group is thought to boost the rush of endorphins,
a feel-good chemical that also acts as a painkiller.

From The Guardian:

Team players can tolerate twice as much pain as those who work alone, according to research that throws fresh light on some of the most wince-inducing feats in sporting history.

Researchers at Oxford University found that members of its rowing team had a greater pain threshold after training together than when they performed the same exercises individually.

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Smiling Helps Women Feel Better About Their Appearance

A smile can be all it takes to make a woman feel better about her
appearance, research suggests Photo: GETTY

From The Telegraph:

A smile can be all it takes to make a woman feel good about her appearance, according to a new study.

Scientists found that women who are unhappy with the way they look feel significantly better about themselves after being greeted by a smiling face.

The boost in self esteem has led psychologists to think that for many, confidence in their appearance is all about social acceptance.

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At Last! First Real Evidence For A Rocky Exoplanet

From Wired Science:

There’s finally proof that Earth-like planets can exist outside our solar system: Scientists have managed to measure the mass of exoplanet COROT-7b, revealing that it’s the first exoplanet with a confirmed density similar to our own.

“This is a day we’ve been waiting for for a long time,” said exoplanet researcher Sara Seager of the Massachusettes Institute of Technology, who was not involved in the research. “It’s the first definitive rocky world beyond our solar system, and it’s opening a new gate for our research. We’re really, really excited about it.”

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More News On The Discovery Of This Rocky Exoplanet

First rocky planet found outside solar system -- CNN
Scientists say "super-Earth" has rocky surface -- Reuters
Found: Firm place to stand outside solar system -- AP
Distant world 'has rocky surface' -- BBC
Solid evidence for Earthlike world -- Scientific America
COROT-7b: Earth-like planet discovered outside Solar System -- The Telegraph
Earth-like planet Corot-7b found outside solar system -- Times Online
Rock Solid Evidence of a Rocky, Earth-like Exoplanet -- Discover Magazine

Life Was In The Oceans 200m Years Before Oxygen Made Air Fit To Breathe

Life first appeared in our oceans during the Archean eon when the moon was far closer to Earth. The air was too toxic for life on land

From The Daily Mail:

Life existed in the oceans for hundreds of millions of years while the Earth's air was not fit to breathe, research suggested today.

Plant-like bacteria evolved at least 200 million years before oxygen began to build up in the atmosphere, a study has shown.

During this period in its history, known as the Archaean, the Earth was covered by a poisonous smog of methane, ammonia and other toxic gases.

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Scary Music Is Scarier With Your Eyes Shut

The power of the imagination is well-known: it's no surprise that scary music is scarier with your eyes closed. (Credit: iStockphoto/Mirko Pernjakovic)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 16, 2009) — The power of the imagination is well-known: it's no surprise that scary music is scarier with your eyes closed. But now neuroscientist and psychiatrist Prof. Talma Hendler of Tel Aviv University's Functional Brain Center says that this phenomenon may open the door to a new way of treating people with Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and other neurological diseases.

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Direct Evidence Of Role Of Sleep In Memory Formation Is Uncovered

For the first time, researchers have pinpointed the mechanism that takes place during sleep that causes learning and memory formation to occur. (Credit: iStockphoto/Mads Abildgaard)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 16, 2009) — A Rutgers University, Newark and Collége de France, Paris research team has pinpointed for the first time the mechanism that takes place during sleep that causes learning and memory formation to occur.

It’s been known for more than a century that sleep somehow is important for learning and memory. Sigmund Freud further suspected that what we learned during the day was “rehearsed” by the brain during dreaming, allowing memories to form. And while much recent research has focused on the correlative links between the hippocampus and memory consolidation, what had not been identified was the specific processes that cause long-term memories to form.

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British Skeleton Suggests Ancient Murder Mystery

A skeleton from ancient Roman times, found in the buried town of Venta Icenorum in Norfolk, England is buried on its side. Romans laid bodies out properly, however, suggesting this man might have met a murderous end. Credit: University of Nottingham.

From Live Science:

A skeleton found at an ancient Roman site in Britain has researchers wondering if they've stumbled on a murder mystery.

Excavations at the buried town of Venta Icenorum at Caistor St. Edmund in Norfolk, England, found what, for now, archaeologists are terming a "highly unusual" setup.

"This is an abnormal burial," said archaeologist Will Bowden of the University of Nottingham. "The body, which is probably male, was placed in a shallow pit on its side, as opposed to being laid out properly. This is not the care Romans normally accorded to their dead. It could be that the person was murdered or executed, although this is still a matter of speculation."

The skeleton has been removed for further investigation.

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Dreams Of A Lunar Observatory

From Technology Review:

If you could build an observatory on the Moon, what would you look for?

Imagine you could build an observatory on the Moon. What would you look for?

That was essentially the brief given to the Lunar University Network for Astrophysics Research, or LUNAR consortium, when NASA asked it to speculate about the unique astrophysics that could be done on the Moon.

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Ready Or Not, Time To Grapple With E-Memory

MyLifeBits can be used to catalog and search personal archives.
(Credit: Dutton Books)

From CNET:

Just because Gordon Bell and Jim Gemmell are way out there on the nerd spectrum, don't ignore what they have to say in their new book, "Total Recall."

The Microsoft researchers obsessively record e-mails, photos, videos, phone calls, health records, financial transactions, Web site visits, and everything else they can in an attempt to electronically compensate for the fallibility of their own biological memories. Before you recoil at the prospect of letting your own life become this digitally augmented, though, consider that it will be whether you want it or not.

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Mobile App Sees Science Go Global

The interface collates information from many sources and presents statistics

From The BBC:

A mobile phone application will help professional and "citizen" scientists collect and analyse data from "in the field", anywhere in the world.

The EpiCollect software collates data from certain mobiles - on topics such as disease spread or the occurrence of rare species - in a web-based database.

The data is statistically analysed and plotted on maps that are instantly available to those same phones.

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House Panel Resists Changes in NASA Space Program

From New York Times:

WASHINGTON — Members of a key House committee said Tuesday that they were reluctant to change NASA’s current plans for human spaceflight after the space shuttles are retired from service, beyond giving more money to the agency.

“I think that good public policy argues for setting the bar pretty high against making significant changes in direction at this point,” said Representative Bart Gordon, Democrat of Tennessee, who is chairman of the Committee on Science and Technology. “There would need to be a compelling reason to scrap what we’ve invested our time and money in over these past four years.”

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Gorilla King Titus Dies In Rwanda

This photo, provided by the Rwanda Development Board of Tourism and Conservation, shows the silverback gorilla, called Titus, in National Volcano Park in April 2009. Titus the Gorilla King, who became the world's most famous mountain gorilla after starring in Dian Fossey's "Gorillas in the Mist" and a BBC documentary, has died in Rwanda at the ripe old age of 35. (AFP/HO)

From Yahoo News/AFP:

KIGALI (AFP) – Titus the Gorilla King, who became the world's most famous mountain gorilla after starring in Dian Fossey's "Gorillas in the Mist" and a BBC documentary, has died in Rwanda at the ripe old age of 35.

The Rwandan and national parks office said the giant old silverback "succumbed to old age" on Monday after falling ill in the past week.

"He has been sick. He's been weakening. It's in the last week that he started going down," Rosette Rugamba, head of the tourism and national parks office told AFP.

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