Why It's So Hard To Make Nuclear Weapons

The first nuclear bomb explosion at the Trinity Test Site New Mexico, July 16, 1945, taken from 6 miles away. As Los Alamos director J. Robert Oppenheimer watched the demonstration, he recalled a line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita, "Now I am become Death, the Destroyer of worlds." Credit: Library of Congress

From Live Science:

It took only a matter of hours last week for the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog agency to shoot down a news report that its experts had drafted a secret document warning that Iran has the expertise to build a nuclear bomb.

"With respect to a recent media report, the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] reiterates that it has no concrete proof that there is or has been a nuclear weapon program in Iran," the European-based agency said in statement.

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You Really Can Die Of A Broken Heart

Credit: iStockphoto

From Cosmos:

SYDNEY: People mourning the loss of a loved one are six times more likely to suffer cardiac arrest, potential proof that you can die of a broken heart, say Australian researchers.

According to an Australian Heart Foundation study of the physical changes suffered immediately after a profound loss, grieving people are at significantly higher risk of heart problems.

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Researchers Unravel Brain's Wiring To Understand Memory

From McClatchy News:

WASHINGTON — Using a powerful microscope, Karel Svoboda, a brain scientist at the Janelia Farm Research Campus in Ashburn, Va., peers through a plastic window in the top of a mouse's head to watch its brain's neurons sprout new connections — a vivid display of a living brain in action.

Ryan LaLumiere, a neurologist at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, trains cocaine-addicted rats to suppress their craving — a technique he says may help human addicts.

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Report: NASA To Confirm Presence Of Water On The Moon

From 3News:

According to reports, NASA is set to reveal evidence of water has been discovered on the moon.

Space news website SpaceRef.com says the topic of a press conference to be held on Thursday is a paper appearing in the next issue of Science magazine, which contains results from NASA's Moon Mineralogy Mapper aboard India's Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft.

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Intel Plans Even Tinier Circuits In 2011

From Gadget Lab:

SAN FRANCISCO — Moore’s Law coming to an end? Not if you ask Intel, which announced Tuesday that it plans to offer chips based on a 22 nanometer process technology in the second half of 2011.

The 22nm chip packs in more than 2.9 billion transistors into an area the size of a fingernail. That’s double the density of the 32nm chips that are currently the cutting edge; most of Intel’s CPUs today are still based on a 45nm process.

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Left-Handers Are More Likely To Enjoy School And Be Teachers' Pets

A new study suggests left-handed children have a warmer relationship with teachers

From The Daily Mail:

Left-handed children are more likely to enjoy school and get on with their teachers than those who write with their right hand, a study revealed today.

Researchers found a larger percentage of 'lefties' look forward to getting up for school and heading off to their lessons every morning.

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New Images Show That Rings Around Saturn Are Not Flat

Shadows of Saturn during the Equinox Photo: NASA

From The Telegraph:

The rings around Saturn were once thought to be almost completely flat but new images show that ruffles on their surface rise as high as the Alps.

NASA scientists managed to capture the images revealing the undulations and dust clouds due to unusual lighting effects created during the planet’s equinox last month.

They believe that the breakthrough could allow researchers to better understand how old Saturn’s distinctive rings are and how they are evolving.

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Toward A Universal Flu Vaccine

Image Credit: Technology Review

From Technology Review:

A company is preparing human trials of a DNA-based, universal influenza vaccine.

The first doses of H1N1 flu (swine flu) vaccine are due to be shipped to hospitals around the country in the next few weeks--seven months after the virus strain was first identified. These vaccine doses will use either inactivated or weakened live viruses to prompt immunity--an approach that can fail if any of the live viruses is strong enough to replicate, or if the inactivated viruses have been killed beyond all immune recognition.

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Are Men Or Women More Likely To Be Hit By Lightning?

Lightning Golf iStock

From Popular Science:

The numbers tell the story: Of the 648 people killed by lightning in the U.S. from 1995 to 2008, 82 percent were male. And as much as we were hoping to uncover a biological cause—extra iron in the male cranium, perhaps, or the conductive properties of testosterone—it turns out men are... just kind of stupid. “Men take more risks in lightning storms,” says John Jensenius, a lightning safety expert with the National Weather Service.

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You Can't Trust A Tortured Brain: Neuroscience Discredits Coercive Interrogation

Coercive interrogation techniques used to extract information from terrorist suspects are likely to have been unsuccessful, new research shows. (Credit: iStockphoto)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 22, 2009) — According to a new review of neuroscientific research, coercive interrogation techniques used during the Bush administration to extract information from terrorist suspects are likely to have been unsuccessful and may have had many unintended negative effects on the suspect's memory and brain functions.

A new article, published in the journal, Trends in Cognitive Science, reviews scientific evidence demonstrating that repeated and extreme stress and anxiety have a detrimental influence on brain functions related to memory.

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Why Fall Colors Are Different In U.S. And Europe

While leaves in the United States turn yellow, orange and red in the autumn, those in Europe only turn yellow. Credit: stockxpert

From Live Science:

The riot of color that erupts in forests every autumn looks different depending on which side of the ocean you're on.

While the fall foliage in North America and East Asia takes on a fiery red hue, perplexingly, autumn leaves in Europe are mostly yellow in color.

A team of researchers has a new idea as to why the autumnal colors differ between the continents, one that involved taking a step back 35 million years in time.

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Artificial Cloud Created At The Edge Of Space

A NASA Black Brant XII rocket launches on Saturday evening
carrying the CARE experiment (Image: NASA)

From The New Scientist:

The study of Earth's mysterious noctilucent clouds got a boost on Saturday, when a rocket was launched to create an artificial cloud at the edge of space.

"Noctilucent", or night-shining, clouds float dozens of kilometres higher than other clouds, at an altitude of about 80 kilometres. Because of their height, they can be seen glowing before sunrise or after sunset as the sun illuminates them from below the horizon.

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The Hunt for Extraterrestrial Life Gets Weird

From Wired:

In the search for extraterrestrial life, some scientists say we’re focusing too much on finding signs of existence as we know it, and in the process, we may be missing more strange forms of life that don’t rely on water or carbon metabolism.

Now researchers from Austria have started a systematic study of solvents other than water that might be able to support life outside our planet. They’re hoping their research will lead to a shift in what they call the “geocentric mindset” of our attempts to detect extraterrestrial life.

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‘Non-Discovery’ Of Space-Time Ripples Opens Door To Birth Of The Universe

From Times Online:

Scientists have peered further back in time than ever before using instruments designed to search for a phenomenon predicted by Albert Einstein almost a century ago but not yet proven to exist.

An American observatory hunting for ripples in space and time called gravitational waves has produced its most significant results yet, despite not having directly detected any.

The “non-discovery” offers insights into the state of the Universe just 60 seconds into its existence. Previous research has been unable to look back in time further than about 380,000 years after the big bang.

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Stunning Pictures Of Glaciers From Space Reveal Worrying Signs Earth's Ice Is Melting Away

Grey Glacier in Chile: The ice field covered 104 square miles in 1996. This 2007 picture from the International Space Station revealed it had dramatically receded. Scientists think increased regional temperatures has reduced the amount of ice being replenished each year

From The Daily Mail:

These awe-inspiring images of glaciers are helping scientists to determine just how quickly our planet is heating up. The huge ice fields are thought to be one of the most reliable indicators of climate change and are best studied from space.

The features form when snow accumulates on an area of land over tens to hundreds of years. It eventually becomes so thick and heavy that it forms dense glacial ice. When enough ice is compacted it beings to flow downhill or spread across flat land.

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Immortality Only 20 Years Away Says Scientist

Ray Kurzweil claims we could all be cyborgs in 20 years.

From The Telegraph:

Scientist Ray Kurzweil claims humans could become immortal in as little as 20 years' time through nanotechnology and an increased understanding of how the body works.

The 61-year-old American, who has predicted new technologies arriving before, says our understanding of genes and computer technology is accelerating at an incredible rate.

He says theoretically, at the rate our understanding is increasing, nanotechnologies capable of replacing many of our vital organs could be available in 20 years time.

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How Facebook Copes With 300 Million Users

Photo: Credit: (portrait) Mozilla (background) facebook

From Technology Review:

VP of Engineering Mike Schroepfer reveals the tricks that keep the world's biggest social network going.

Last week, the world's biggest social network, Facebook, announced that it had reached 300 million users and is making enough money to cover its costs.

The challenge of dealing with such a huge number of users has been highlighted by hiccups suffered by some other social-networking sites. Twitter was beleaguered with scaling problems for some time and became infamous for its "Fail Whale"--the image that appears when the microblogging site's services are unavailable.

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Weird Stories of Objects Falling From the Sky—Explained

Hodges Meteorite Strike (Photograph by Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

From Popular Mechanics:

The annals of history are full of tales of strange objects falling from the sky. During biblical and medieval times, people typically perceived events such as rains of rats, dead bats, fish and frogs as signs of plague, ill portents or even manna from the benevolent above. Science eventually won out, bringing explanations for many of these seemingly inexplicable episodes. Still others remain unsolved, leaving the affected locals to theorize, and look expectantly to the clouds, for the next meat shower or golf ball storm. In honor of the release of Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs we present a list of the 10 craziest things to rain down on humanity from the heavens.

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Panasonic's Robotic Bed Transforms into a Mobile Chair, Makes Standing Up Obsolete

Robo-Bed: It will do everything but fix your bed hair. Panasonic

From Popular Science:

Mobility-impaired patients and layabouts alike can rejoice at the debut of Panasonic's robotic bed that transforms into a wheelchair. Human nurses and hospitals may also breathe a tiny sigh of relief.

The bed-shaped bot morphs upon command to sidestep the usual trouble of moving a bedridden person from bed to wheelchair, or vice versa. Yet unlike the Japanese bear bot nurse that carries patients, a self-controlled bed bot allows humans to regain some independence and dignity.

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2009 Arctic Sea Ice Extent Exceeds 2005 For This Date

From Watts Up With That?:

While 2009 minimum on 09/13 of 5,249, 844 was just 65, 312 sq km below 2005 in minimum extent, which occurred on 9/22/2005 with 5,315,156 sq km, it has now rebounded quickly and is higher by 38,438 sq km, just 2 days before the 9/22/05 minimum. On 9/22/2009 it may very well be close to 60-80,000 sq km higher than the minimum on the same date in 2005.

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