In Search Of Dark Asteroids (And Other Sneaky Things)

Artist's concept of the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer.
Image credit: (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 22, 2009) — Ninjas knew how to be stealthy: Be dark. Emit very little light. Move in the shadows between bright places.

In modern warfare, though, ninjas would be sitting ducks. Their black clothes may be hard to see at night with the naked eye, but their warm bodies would be clearly visible to a soldier wearing infrared goggles.

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Why Autumn Begins Tuesday

From Live Science:

The first day of autumn — Sept. 22 this year — is no guarantee of fall-like weather, but officially the season's start comes around at the same time each year nonetheless.

Well, sort of.

The first day of autumn arrives on varying dates in different years for two reasons: Our year is not exactly an even number of days; and Earth's slightly noncircular orbit, plus the gravitational tug of the other planets, constantly changes our planet's orientation to the sun from year to year.

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Discovery Threads Tricky Path Home

From Florida Today:

Navigating a web of clouds and showers, space shuttle Discovery returned home to Kennedy Space Center just after noon Monday atop a 747 jumbo jet, ending a two-day ferry flight from California.

"If it was any greater of a challenge, we wouldn't have landed here," said Charles Justiz, a pilot on the NASA C-9 aircraft that scouted safe routes ahead of the shuttle.

Up to the last minute, more than two hours after departing Barksdale Air Force Base near Shreveport, La., it was uncertain if Discovery might be diverted to MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa or Orlando International Airport to await calmer skies.

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Naked Mole Rats May Help Cure Cancer

Cancer-free mole rats could help humans in the fight against cancer
(Image: Neil Bromhall/Naturepl)

From New Scientist:

THEY might be bald and ugly, but naked mole rats never get cancer. If their trick can be copied it could help humans resist cancer too.

It's almost impossible to culture naked mole rat cells in the lab, which made Andrei Seluanov and Vera Gorbunova from Rochester University, New York, wonder if this might be linked to their ability to resist cancer.

They found that a dilute solution of naked mole rat skin cells did start to proliferate, but stopped once the cells reached a certain, relatively low density. Such "contact inhibition" is also used by human cells to inhibit growth, but cancer bypasses this mechanism so cells keep growing.

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Exposure To Sun 'May Help People With Cancer Survive'

Experts say protection from the sun is vital but that some
exposure is necessary for good health. Reuters

From the Independent:

Sunbathing warnings may have been too simplistic, say scientists.

Sunbathing is known to cause skin cancer – but it may also help people survive when they get it, scientists are reporting.

Two studies published yesterday showed that vitamin D produced by the action of the sun on the skin may help improve survival for patients with skin and bowel cancer.

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Where Will The E-Reader Revolution Take Publishing?

A commuter uses a Kindle while riding the subway in New York June 1, 2009. The publishing industry is trying to deal with the growing demand for online content and is looking at the music industry for lessons. Lucas Jackson / Reuters

From The Globe And Mail:

Some experts believe the devices will change our reading habits and throw several industries into turmoil -- that is, just as soon as Apple gets into the game.

Will it or won't it?

The Internet is burning up with speculation about Apple Inc.'s plans for an “iPad,” a potential new entrant in the e-reader market of low-power digital devices whose displays approach paper quality.

Amazon's Kindle and the Sony Reader together cracked the million-unit mark last year, but everyone – especially those in troubled publishing industries – is looking to the iPod maker to potentially bring digital reading into the mainstream, and transform their businesses forever.

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Solar System's Coldest Spot May Be On Moon

The coldest spot in our solar system may be on the moon, astronomers claim.

From The Telegraph:

The coldest spot in our solar system may be on the moon, astronomers claim.

In course of producing the first ever temperature map of the moon, Nasa discovered that at its south pole temperatures are lower than on Pluto, despite being far nearer to the sun.

The moon is about 93 million miles from the sun, while Pluto orbits at an average of around 6 billion miles from the centre of the solar system

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3D TV: Now Leaping Out Of The Cinema And Into A Living Room Near You

SPY KIDS 3-D: GAME OVER

From The Daily Mail:

We've only just got used to high-definition TV and now the technology industry is moving the goalposts again - 3D is being trialled by a number of TV makers and the BBC has said it may even broadcast part of the London 2012 Olympics in the format.

Here, Rob Waugh explains the competing home 3D technologies and answers your burning 3D questions.

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New Space Station Tech Maps Earth's Coasts

A satellite view of a coastline on Earth. An extensive imaging project aboard the International Space Station may give scientists their first look at Earth's coasts on a global scale. Getty Image

From Discovery News:

For 20 years, researchers have used light-splitting devices mounted in aircraft to study coastal regions on Earth. This week, the effort expands into space with an instrument arriving at the International Space Station.

From a vantage point 225 miles above the planet and full-time operations for at least a year, the Hyperspectral Imager for the Coastal Ocean (HICO) is expected to give scientists their first detailed look Earth's coasts on a global scale.

"HICO gives us access to repeat imagery worldwide," said lead researcher Mike Corson with the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C.

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Bold Rwanda Takes Broadband Leap

From The BBC:

Landlocked Rwanda is weeks away from completing a link to a new fibre-optic network promising high-speed internet for East Africa, officials say.

Engineers expect the capital, Kigali, to be connected to newly-arrived undersea cables in Kenya by November.

A national fibre-optic ring is due to go online early in 2010.

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New Transient Radiation Belt Discovered Around Saturn

Radiation belt map of the ions with energies between 25-60 MeV, in Saturn's magnetosphere, based on several years of Cassini MIMI/LEMMS data. The structure of this radiation belt is almost perfectly stable for more than 5 years of Cassini observations, despite the intense variability of the radiation belts, outside the location of Tethys. (Credit: Image courtesy of Europlanet Media Centre)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 21, 2009) — Scientists using the Cassini spacecraft's Magnetospheric Imaging instrument (MIMI) have detected a new, temporary radiation belt at Saturn, located around the orbit of its moon Dione at about 377,000 km from the center of the planet.

The discovery will be presented at the European Planetary Science Congress in Potsdam by Dr Elias Roussos on Monday 14 September.

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Sinking River Deltas Threaten Millions

Nile River delta, Red Sea and Sinai Peninsula.
(Photo from Wallpaper Free Review)

From Live Science:

Most of the world's low-lying river deltas are sinking due to human activity, making them increasingly vulnerable to flooding from rivers and ocean storms and putting tens of millions of people at risk, a new study finds.

Researchers have long warned that the mass human migration to coastal areas in recent decades puts more and more people at risk of death from major storms. About 500 million people in the world live on river deltas.

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Probe Gets Clearest Glimpse Yet Of Cosmic Dawn

From New Scientist:

The Planck spacecraft has obtained its first peek at the afterglow of the big bang, revealing it in unprecedented detail. Its first map of the entire sky is set to be complete in about six months.

The European Space Agency spacecraft was launched into space on 14 May. It is observing the glow of hot gas from just 380,000 years after the big bang – about 13.73 billion years ago – called the cosmic microwave background.

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A Robot That Juggles Blind

Pendulum Juggler from Philipp Reist on Vimeo.

From Popular Science:

This machine uses no sensors, no feedback -- just the power of math -- to do its tricks.

In theory, designing a robot that continuously juggles a single ball should not be difficult. Calibrating the machine would be a pain but once you got the thing running, it should continue to juggle the ball until some variable intervenes. In a perfect world, this would occur elegantly, but here on Earth things just don't come off so beautifully. However, through some smart design and precise math, researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich have created the Blind Juggler, so named because it juggles a ball continuously, even when variables are introduced, without the use of sensors.

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Smoking Bans May Reduce Heart Attacks By More Than A Third

Smoking bans were introduced in pubs and other public places in England and Wales in 2007. Photograph: Danny Lawson/PA

From The Guardian

The number of heart attacks has fallen steeply in countries where bans on smoking in public places have been introduced, according to two independent reviews.

The ban on smoking in public places could reduce heart attacks by more than a third in some parts of the world, say researchers.

Two independent health reviews have found that heart attack rates dropped steeply in areas where bans have been introduced, with one reporting 36% fewer cases three years after smoke-free legislation came in.

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3D Rome Created From 150,000 Flickr Photos

From The Telegraph:

Hundreds of thousands of holiday photos posted on Flickr have been used to create 3D models of European cities - including the major sites of Rome.

Scientists from the University of Washington have used advanced photo analysis and modelling techniques to generate fly-though representations of the Colosseum, the Trevi fountain and the Croatian city of Dubrovnik.

The models are created entirely from data taken from images uploaded by members of the public on to the photo-sharing website.

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Think Flying Economy Is Bad Now? New Aircraft Design Puts Passengers Face-To-Face In Rows For Budget Travel

The future of air travel: The new design could see more passengers
on each plane and ticket prices lowered

From The Daily Mail:

Air travel is being overhauled with a new aircraft design which plans to seat passengers facing each other in rows.

The controversial design is intended to save space and money and could see 50 per cent more passengers packed on to each plane.

Howard Guy, director of the UK company Design Q, acknowledges that some people will not be happy with the plan, but says they will be able to pay less for any inconvenience.

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Private Firms Preparing for Moon Flights

Testing, Testing .... Armadillo Aerospace's Super Mod rocket makes the first free-flight landing on a surface designed to mimic a lunar surface. Armadillo Aerospace

From Discovery Magazine:

Sept. 21, 2009 -- Lured by millions of dollars in prize money, teams of private firms aren't waiting for NASA to figure out if, when and how to get back to the moon. They're preparing to go themselves.

The first $1 million prize for demonstrating a lunar landing system is due to be awarded at the end of October. The front-runner is Texas-based Armadillo Aerospace, which this month made back-to-back flights of a vehicle named Scorpius.

Two other contenders plan to enter the NASA-backed competition before this year's cutoff on Oct. 31.

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Russian Billionaire Installs Anti-Photo Shield on Giant Yacht

From Gadget Lab/Wired:

Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich has a rather curious new addition built in to his latest oversized yacht. The 557-foot boat Eclipse, the price tag of which has almost doubled since original plans were drawn to almost $1.2 billion, set sail this week with a slew of show-off features, from two helipads, two swimming pools and six-foot movie screens in all guest cabins, to a mini-submarine and missile-proof windows to combat piracy.

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Recession And Policies Cut Carbon

Photo: Climate protestors in New York are demanding further cuts.

From The BBC:

The global recession and a range of government policies are likely to bring the biggest annual fall in the world's carbon dioxide emissions in 40 years.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that global CO2 emissions will fall by more than 2% during 2009.

Measures such as emissions trading have complemented the drop in emissions as economic activity has declined.

The news comes as leaders gather at the UN for a day of climate talks convened by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

The anticipated fall in emissions is larger than that seen during the recession of the early 1980s.

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