Fresh From Skunkworks, Hints of Microsoft's Own Secret Tablet

Microsoft's Courier

From Popular Science:

While drool over Apple's tablet is starting to accumulate in unsightly lakes and ponds across the web, little old Microsoft has been hard at work on Courier--an as-yet conceptual tablet of its own that our friends at Gizmodo unearthed last night. It's a totally different approach from what most are expecting from Apple, and in this concept video, it certainly looks pretty hot.

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Google's Sidewiki Lets People Post Comments About Web Pages

From PC World:

Google has launched a new feature in its Toolbar product that opens up a browser sidebar in Firefox and Internet Explorer to let people post and read comments about Web pages they visit.

Called Sidewiki, the product can be used to express opinions about a Web page's content, suggest links to other online resources or provide additional background information.

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7 Billion And Counting

From New Scientist:

Overpopulation is often singled out as the planet's root problem. If only it were that simple.

Leading thinkers on population can't agree on what the answers – or even the questions – are. In this special feature, New Scientist brings you the best of expert opinion.

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Arctic Ice To Last Decades Longer Than Thought?

A polar bear navigates ice floes in Baffin Bay in the Canadian Arctic on July 10, 2008. This year's cooler summer means that the Arctic probably won't experience ice-free summers until 2030 or 2040, September 2009 research shows—but experts warn the cooling could be just a one-year reprieve. Photograph by Jonathan Hayward/The Canadian Press/AP Photo

From The National Geographic:

This year's cooler-than-expected summer means the Arctic probably won't experience ice-free summers until 2030 or 2040, scientists say.

Some models had previously predicted that the Arctic could be ice free in summer by as soon as 2013, due to rising temperatures from global warming.

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Explaining Why Pruning Encourages Plants To Thrive

New research helps explain why pruning encourages plants to thrive.
(Credit: iStockphoto/Matthew Scherf)

From Science Daily:

Scientists have shown that the main shoot dominates a plant’s growth principally because it was there first, rather than due to its position at the top of the plant.

Collaborating teams from the University of York in the UK and the University of Calgary in Canada combined their expertise in molecular genetics and computational modelling to make a significant discovery that helps explain why pruning encourages plants to thrive.

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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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