Sunday, September 20, 2009
Jupiter Auroras Fed By Largest Moon's Magnetic "Bubble"
From The National Geographic:
A mini-magnetosphere around the largest moon in the solar system leaves a mighty footprint on Jupiter's atmosphere—helping to drive the "hyperauroras" that dance across the planet's poles.
That's one finding in new research that offers unprecedented details on interactions between Jupiter and two of its moons, the giant Ganymede and the volcanically active Io.
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Why Are We The Naked Ape?
No one is sure why Homo sapiens is the only primate to have lost its body hair(Image: Laurent Gillieron / EPA / Corbis)
From New Scientist:
RIGHT from the start of modern evolutionary science, why humans are hairless has been controversial. "No one supposes," wrote Charles Darwin in The Descent of Man, "that the nakedness of the skin is any direct advantage to man: his body, therefore, cannot have been divested of hair through natural selection."
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Diamonds Are A Laser's Best Friend
From Science Daily:
ScienceDaily (Sep. 20, 2009) — Tomorrow's lasers may come with a bit of bling, thanks to a new technology that uses man-made diamonds to enhance the power and capabilities of lasers. Researchers in Australia have now demonstrated the first laser built with diamonds that has comparable efficiency to lasers built with other materials.
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How You Write 'Shows If You're A Liar', Scientists Discover
Psychologists have suggested that handwriting changes when someone is lying because the brain has to work harder to invent facts Photo: GETTY From The Telegraph:
How you write can indicate whether you’re a liar, scientists in Haifa, Israel, have discovered.
Instead of analysing body language or eye movement, to catch out people telling fibs, people’s handwriting can instead give them away.
While stressing the research was in the early stages, scientists say it could one day help validate loan application or even insurance claims.
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Genetics May Explain Why Some Children Have Sex Earlier Than Others
From The Independent:Genetics may explain why children who live in homes without fathers have sex at a younger age than others, according to a report published today.
The study, published in the American journal Child Development, found a genetic theory to challenge "environmental" theories which previously explained the link.
Researchers looked at more than 1,000 cousins aged 14 and older, testing for genetic influences as well as factors such as poverty, education opportunities and religion.
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Can A Daily Pill Really Boost Your Brain Power?
In recent years Adderall and Ritalin, another stimulant, have been adopted as cognitive enhancers.From The Guardian:
In America, university students are taking illegally obtained prescription drugs to make them more intelligent. But would you pop a smart pill to improve your performance? Margaret Talbot investigates the brave new world of neuro enhancement
A young man I'll call Alex recently graduated from Harvard. As a history major, Alex wrote about a dozen papers a term. He also ran a student organisation, for which he often worked more than 40 hours a week; when he wasn't working, he had classes. Weeknights were devoted to all the schoolwork he couldn't finish during the day, and weekend nights were spent drinking with friends and going to parties. "Trite as it sounds," he told me, it seemed important to "maybe appreciate my own youth". Since, in essence, this life was impossible, Alex began taking Adderall to make it possible.
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U.S. Media Ignoring About Face by Leading Global Warming Proponent
From News Busters:
Imagine if the Pope suddenly announced that the Catholic Church had been wrong for centuries about prohibiting priests from marrying. Would that be considered big news?
Of course.
And yet something like that has happened in the field of global warming in which a major scientist has announced that the world, in contrast to his previous belief, is actually cooling.
This was the analogy made by columnist Lorne Gunter in the Calgary Herald:
Impact Of Renewable Energy On Our Oceans Must Be Investigated, Say Scientists
Photo: Dolphin. Scientists are calling for urgent research to understand the impact of renewable energy developments on marine life. (Credit: Dr Matthew Witt, University of Exeter.)From Science Daily:
ScienceDaily (Sep. 20, 2009) — Scientists from the Universities of Exeter and Plymouth are calling for urgent research to understand the impact of renewable energy developments on marine life. The study, now published in the Journal of Applied Ecology, highlights potential environmental benefits and threats resulting from marine renewable energy, such as off-shore wind farms and wave and tidal energy conversion devices.
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Reminder: Dan Brown's 'Lost Symbol' Is Fiction
From Live Science:WASHINGTON — Dan Brown's latest book, "The Lost Symbol," is woven with a maze of secretive plots, conspiracies, symbols and codes. "Symbol" is another thriller by Brown that draws inspiration from a mixture of science and mysticism.
One of the main characters is a researcher at the Smithsonian Institution's vast support center, a location that is off-limits to the public. The real science in "Symbol" takes a turn toward fiction when Brown suggests that noetics — a metaphysical discipline that attempts to examine the connection between human and supernatural intelligence — will revolutionize human knowledge. The "research" is based on the work of institutions that were formed in the late 1970s, during the height of New Age mysticism.
The 'GI' Helmet That Will Help Our Troops To Shoot Straighter
Safer: The new-style Army helmet will allow troops to fire more accurately in the prone position than the older versionFrom The Daily Mail:
New helmets designed to help British troops to target the enemy are being rushed out to Afghanistan this weekend.
The Ministry of Defence is issuing the lighter headgear following soldiers’ complaints that the current helmet is unsuitable for firefights with the Taliban.
Five thousand Mark 7 helmets, along with new Osprey Assault body armour, are being sent to Afghanistan for the troops of 11 Brigade who are starting a six-month operational tour.
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Can You Trust Crowd Wisdom?
Credit: Technology ReviewFrom Technology Review:
Researchers say online recommendation systems can be distorted by a minority of users.
When searching online for a new gadget to buy or a movie to rent, many people pay close attention to the number of stars awarded by customer-reviewers on popular websites. But new research confirms what some may already suspect: those ratings can easily be swayed by a small group of highly active users.
Vassilis Kostakos, an assistant professor at the University of Madeira in Portugal and an adjunct assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), says that rating systems can tap into the "wisdom of the crowd" to offer useful insights, but they can also paint a distorted picture of a product if a small number of users do most of the voting. "It turns out people have very different voting patterns," he says, varying both among individuals and among communities of users.
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Solar System Dwarf Planet "Haumea" Has A Mystery Spot
SEE SPOT SPIN: An impression of what the dwarf planet Haumea's dark,red spot might look like. P. LACERDA
From Scientific American:
A blotch on the distant, football-shaped body could help reveal what the dwarf planet is made of.
Haumea, the mini planet whose detection set off an international and as yet unresolved war of words in 2005 between the two teams claiming its discovery, is back on the astronomy scene with more intrigue.
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Robot Arm To Grab Robotic Ship -- A Space Station First
The International Space Station's robotic arm reaches out to capture the Japanese HTV cargo ship in an artist's rendering. The tricky cosmic catch, slated to happen on September 17, 2009, might affect the orbiting outpost's ultimate lifespan by offering a cheaper way of delivering supplies to space, experts say. Due to budget concerns, the space station is currently slated to be deorbited in 2015. Picture courtesy Canadian Space Agency From National Geographic:
For the first time, a robotic arm attached to the International Space Station (ISS) will capture an unmanned spaceship for docking on Thursday.
The bus-size Japanese H-II Transfer Vehicle, or HTV, was launched on its maiden flight September 10. The remote-control ship is carrying more than four tons of equipment, food, clothes, and other essentials for the six astronauts currently aboard the space station.
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Wind, Not Water, May Explain Red Planet's Hue
Mars is red now (left), but it may have looked charcoal (right) in the past(Image: NASA/ESA/Hubble Team)
From New Scientist:
Mars's distinctive red hue may be the result of thousands of years of wind-borne sand particles colliding with one another – and not rust, a new study argues.
Scientists generally agree that Mars's red colour is caused when a dark form of iron called magnetite oxidises into a reddish-orange form called haematite.
Just how the transformation came about is a matter of debate. Many researchers say water caused the oxidation. But some argue that hydrogen peroxide and ozone, which might be created when ultraviolet light breaks down carbon dioxide and oxygen in the Martian atmosphere, could be to blame.
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Disputed Solar Project In Calif. Desert Dropped
From CNET:
A proposed solar-energy project in the California desert that caused intense friction between environmentalists and the developers of renewable energy has been shelved.
BrightSource Energy had planned a 5,130-acre solar power farm in a remote part of the Mojave Desert, on land previously intended for conservation. The company, based in Oakland, Calif., on Thursday said it was instead seeking an alternative site for the project.
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Whatever Happened to Acid Rain?
From Slate:Why do we never hear about acid rain anymore? Did it just go away?
Back in the 1980s, when the Lantern herself was just a little penlight, acid rain was the environmental scourge of the day. Canada's environmental minister proclaimed it an "insidious malaria of the biosphere"; it menaced the Transformers; it turned Kimberly's hair bright green in an episode of Diff'rent Strokes. Toxic precipitation fell off the radar in 1990, when Congress passed an amendment to the Clean Air Act calling for major reductions in the types of emissions that lead to acid rain. Emissions have dropped significantly since then, but the problem is far from gone.
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When ‘Back To Basics’ Leads To Breakthroughs In Science
(James Kelleher/The Orange County Register) From The Christian Science Monitor:
Two examples of researchers finding amazing things by reconsidering the fundamentals.
Sometimes scientists need to take a fresh look at fundamentals to improve familiar materials. That means getting down to the basic molecular and atomic structures.
When a research group that calls itself “Liquid Stone” recently did that with cement, it found that what scientists thought they knew about the fundamental structure of that ubiquitous material just isn’t so. One team member likens the implications of their new understanding of that structure to the boost biologists got when they discovered the basic structure of the DNA molecule.
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Saturday, September 19, 2009
Secrets Of Insect Flight Revealed: Modeling The Aerodynamic Secrets Of One Of Nature's Most Efficient Flyers
Smoke visualization in Oxford University's wind tunnel showing the airflow over a flying locust's wings. (Credit: Animal Flight Group, Dept. of Zoology, Oxford University and Dr John Young, UNSW@ADFA)From Science Daily:
ScienceDaily (Sep. 18, 2009) — Researchers are one step closer to creating a micro-aircraft that flies with the manoeuvrability and energy efficiency of an insect after decoding the aerodynamic secrets of insect flight.
Dr John Young, from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Australia, and a team of animal flight researchers from Oxford University's Department of Zoology, used high-speed digital video cameras to film locusts in action in a wind tunnel, capturing how the shape of a locust's wing changes in flight. They used that information to create a computer model which recreates the airflow and thrust generated by the complex flapping movement.
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Online Labs Aim to Revolutionize High School Science
Julia Barnathan (standing), curriculum developer for Northwestern's Office of STEM Education Partnerships, assists a student with a lesson in radiation that uses iLabs to access a geiger counter at the University of Queensland, Australia. Credit: Amanda Morris, Office for Research, Northwestern UniversityFrom Live Science:
Fifty years ago, a typical high school science fair featured several exploding volcanoes. Today, one would expect a science fair to look far more advanced. The sad truth, however, is that standard high school science has changed very little.
"There is a growing gap between the practice of science the way researchers at Northwestern and other institutions are conducting it and what science looks like in high school," said Kemi Jona, research associate professor and director of the Office of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math Education Partnerships (OSEP) at Northwestern University. "And that gap keeps getting bigger and bigger."
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Opera Browser Bids For America
From The BBC:The founder of Opera has said despite its 100m worldwide users, they have a big job ahead conquering America.
In the US, the latest figures by Net Applications showed Opera is 5th in the market with a 2% share behind Microsoft, Apple, Google and Firefox.
But Opera claimed in other parts of the globe it is the most popular browser of choice with growth last year of 67%.
"The reality is that in the U.S. we have some work to do," Opera boss Jon von Tetzchner told BBC News.
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