Excavating Ardi: A New Piece For The Puzzle Of Human Evolution

Image: A artist's rendering of the probable life appearance and skeleton of Ardipithecus ramidus, aka "Ardi" (c) 2009, J.H. Matternes

From Time Magazine:

Figuring out the story of human origins is like assembling a huge, complicated jigsaw puzzle that has lost most of its pieces. Many will never be found, and those that do turn up are sometimes hard to place. Every so often, though, fossil hunters stumble upon a discovery that fills in a big chunk of the puzzle all at once — and simultaneously reshapes the very picture they thought they were building.

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High-Res Images of New Territory on Mercury

From Wired Science:

Flying within 228 kilometers of the surface of Mercury on Sept. 29, the Messenger spacecraft snapped portraits of a portion of the planet that had never before been imaged close up.

Messenger also examined in greater detail Mercury’s western hemisphere, which had been imaged during a previous passage in October 2008 (SN Online: 10/29/08).

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Will Computer Programs Replace Mozart?

From Discover Magazine:

Meet Emily Howell. She’s a composer who is about to have a CD released of sonatas she composed. So what makes her unique? She’s also a computer program.

Emily was created by University of California-Santa Cruz professor David Cope, who claims to be more of a music teacher than a computer scientist (he’s both). Cope has been working on combining artificial intelligence with music for 30 years—thereby challenging the idea that creating music should be limited to the human mind.

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Asian Quake Could Trigger California's Big One

Influencing the San Andreas fault line at Parkfield. (Image: David Paul Morris/Getty)

From New Scientist:

IT'S a kind of geological butterfly effect. Fenglin Niu of Rice University in Houston, Texas, and colleagues believe they have found two clear cases where remote events weakened the San Andreas fault near Parkfield, California. The finding suggests powerful earthquakes - like the one that has just hit Sumatra - may trigger further quakes worldwide.

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Plutonium Shortage Threatens Future Deep Space Missions

Fuel Shortage Dwindling supplies of plutonium-238, the fuel NASA uses to launch probes into deep space and to power Mars rovers, threaten to set back some missions for a decade. Los Alamos National Laboratory

From Popular Science:

Imagine you’re driving across the Mojave Desert, and somewhere in the middle of absolutely nowhere you realize that the next gas station is further away than your car can travel on its current supply of gasoline. What next? That’s the problem NASA mission planners are facing as the agency's supply of plutonium-238, the fuel used to power deep space probes like Cassini and surface scouts like the upcoming Mars Science Laboratory, are dwindling. Unfortunately, that leaves NASA in a pretty tight spot: we’ve depleted our reserves of plutonium-238, and there isn’t anywhere to refuel ahead on the horizon either.

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How to Make Biodiesel With a Commercial Kit

Senior editor Mike Allen (who used to teach organic chemistry in a previous career) gloves up to pump methanol into the processor.

From Popular Mechanics:

“Make your own diesel for 70 cents a gallon,” the Internet ad claimed. I was tired of paying for 30 gallons of regular diesel each week to fill my pickup, so I downloaded the instructions. It wasn’t long before I was sucking used fry oil out of tanks behind a restaurant, and mixing it with lye and methanol in a 5-gallon bottle before pouring it into an old water heater.

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Microsoft Researcher Converts His Brain Into 'E-Memory'

Photo: Gordon Bell wearing a SenseCam, which automatically records photos throughout the day.

From CNN:

(CNN) -- For the past decade, Microsoft researcher Gordon Bell has been moving the data from his brain onto computers -- where he knows it will be safe.

Sure, you could say all of us do this to some extent. We save digital pictures from family events and keep tons of e-mail.

But Bell, who is 75 years old, takes the idea of digital memory to a sci-fi-esque extreme. He carries around video equipment, cameras and audio recorders to capture his conversations, commutes, trips and experiences.

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First Intelligent Financial Search Engine Developed

Financial search engine image.
(Credit: Image courtesy of Universidad Carlos III de Madrid)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 30, 2009) — Researchers from the Carlos III University of Madrid (UCM3) have completed the development of the first search engine designed to search for information from the financial and stock market sector based on semantic technology, which enables one to make more accurate thematic searches adapted to the needs of each user.

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Spiritual Women Have More Sex

From Live Science:

Is it sexy to be spiritual? New research has found that spirituality has a greater effect on the sex lives of young adults — especially women — than religion, impulsivity, or alcohol.

“I think people have been well aware of the role that religious and spiritual matters play in everyday life for a very long time,” said Jessica Burris, one of the study’s researchers at the University of Kentucky. “But in the research literature, the unique qualities of spirituality — apart from religiousness — are not usually considered.”

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Cleaning Up On Dirty Coal

Photo: Cheap coal: This demonstration plant in Wilsonville, AL, uses a transport gasifier to turn two tons of cheap, low-quality coal per hour into a clean-burning gas. A plant based on similar technology is scheduled for China. Credit: KBR

From Technology Review:

A novel gasification process for low-quality coal heads to China.

The industrial boomtown of Dongguan in southeast China's Pearl River Delta could soon host one of the country's most sophisticated power plants, one that uses an unconventional coal-gasification technology to make the dirtiest coal behave like clean-burning natural gas. Its developers, Atlanta-based utility Southern Company and Houston-based engineering firm KBR, announced the licensing deal with Dongguan Power and Chemical Company this month.

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World Biofuel Use Expected To Double By 2015

From CNET:

Global biofuel use is expected to increase twofold by 2015 and Brazil will remain the world's top exporter of biofuel, according to a report released Wednesday by Hart Energy Consulting.

The U.S. is expected to see the largest increase in biofuel use per country, increasing its current consumption by more than 30 percent, according to data from the "Global Biofuels Outlook: 2009-2015" report.

The overall increased use of biofuel in many countries around the world will make a dent in the world's consumption of traditional gasoline, according to Hart.

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America's 'Most Dangerous Fault'

From The BBC:

It's a big white building on Mission Boulevard. You can't miss it; the Art Deco style is really striking. The grass is trimmed and it all looks perfectly inviting, except this is a lock-out.

The first Hayward City Hall in California has long been off-limits to occupants because its foundations sit right atop an earthquake fault and it's gradually splitting in two.

"Look up at the stairwell," says geologist Russ Graymer, as we peer through a window.

"There are huge cracks, several centimetres broad and many metres long - basically showing the evidence that this building is being torn in half."

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Being Stephen Hawking

Stephen Hawking

From Discovery:

Sir John Maddox, twice the editor of the journal Nature, was one of the most thoughtful voices in science journalism of the past five decades. He died on April 12 of this year, but his spirit lives on in this unique appreciation of Stephen Hawking, appearing in publication for the first time. Also see the related look at Hawking's recent work, "Stephen Hawking Is Making His Comeback."

On November 30 of 2006, in the august premises of the Royal Society of London, I had dinner with professor Stephen Hawking. To boast of having had dinner with Hawking creates a false impression. The circumstances were these. Since the summer I had been badgering the “graduate assistant to Professor Hawking” for an interview. Early in November, word came that Hawking was to receive the Copley Medal, the most venerable of the Royal Society’s gifts. I was invited; the date was plainly a license to join the scrum around the wheelchair after the group photographs had been taken.

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Why The Mafia Study Gangster Movies

From The Guardian:

Life imitates art as mob members avidly watch The Godfather to find out how to do their jobs.

Bada-bing. For some people, The Godfather is no mere movie but a manual – a guide to living the gangster's life. They lap up all that stuff about going to the mattresses and sleeping with the fishes. The famous scene in which a mafia refusenik wakes up next to a horse's head may be macabre make-believe, but in some quarters it's treated like a tutorial.

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Dementia Risk Seen in Players in N.F.L. Study

New England Patriots' linebacker Ted Johnson, left, listens to coach Pepper Johnson during an afternoon training camp in 2001. Charles Krupa/Associated Press

From New York Times:

A study commissioned by the National Football League reports that Alzheimer’s disease or similar memory-related diseases appear to have been diagnosed in the league’s former players vastly more often than in the national population — including a rate of 19 times the normal rate for men ages 30 through 49.

The N.F.L. has long denied the existence of reliable data about cognitive decline among its players. These numbers would become the league’s first public affirmation of any connection, though the league pointed to limitations of this study.

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The Next Generation Of Stealth

A cloaking device is made of copper rings, each surrounded by 10 layers of meta-material. (© Duke Photography www.dukephoto.duke.edu)

Now You See It, Now You Don’t -- Air & Space Smithsonian

Blinding us with science: the next generation of stealth.

Look down a long stretch of highway on a summer afternoon and in the distance a pool of water seems to wait for you, glistening under the hot sun. It’s only an illusion—Mother Nature’s version of a practical joke. The difference in density between the asphalt-heated air near the surface and the cooler air above acts like a lens, bending light waves as they pass from one layer to the next to reflect the blue sky and hide both the blacktop and any vehicles at the far end of the road behind a shimmering curtain.

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My Comment: The technical geek inside of me loves stories like this one .... makes you wonder what the ultimate limits to stealth are.

Clown Blastes Into Space

Rocket Carrying Cirque Du Soleil Founder Guy Laliberté Blasts Off -- Montreal Gazette

BAIKONUR, Kazakhstan — The billionaire founder of Cirque du Soleil Wednesday blasted off on a Russian rocket to bring his trademark humour and acrobatic energy into the ultra-serious world of space flight.

Guy Laliberté, 50, a Canadian citizen, had spent millions from a personal fortune on his two week visit to the International Space Station (ISS) but he could be the last such "space tourist" for several years.

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Canadian space tourist and founder of Cirque du Soleil Guy Laliberte jokes during space suit testing prior to his blast off from a Russian leased Kazakh Baikonur cosmodrome on September 30, 2009 in a Russian Soyuz TMA-16 rocket to the International Space Station (ISS) together with Russian cosmonaut Maxim Surayev and a U.S. astronaut Jeff Williams. Photograph by: Alexander Nemenov, AFP/Getty Images

More News On Today's Space Launch

Cirque de Soleil owner Guy Laliberte becomes first clown in space -- Times Online
Canadian circus billionaire heads to space station -- AP
Clown takes giant leap into space -- AFP
A Billionaire Clowns Around In Space -- Forbes
Cirque de Soleil boss in space -- The Sun
Canadian circus tycoon is 7th pay-for-play space traveler -- USA Today
'Clown' space tourist blasts off -- BBC
Circus tycoon Guy Laliberté becomes first clown in space -- The Guardian

Samoan Tsunami Caused By 'Shallow Quake'

(Click to Enlarge)
A map showing the effects of an 8.3-magnitude earthquake and its resultant tsunami
on Samoa and American Samoa.(Source: Google)

From ABC News (Australia):

Scientists say the tsunami that devastated the islands of Samoa, American Samoa and Tonga was the result of a shallow rupture in the earth's crust.

The earthquake, which was measured as high as 8.3 on the Richter scale, occurred 190 kilometres southwest of American Samoa.

Gary Gibson, a senior seismologist at Environmental Systems and Services in Melbourne, says the region experiences several magnitude 7 earthquakes each year, but a magnitude 8 is quite rare.

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Air Pollutants From Abroad A Growing Concern, Says New Report

The MODIS sensor aboard NASA’s Aqua satellite observed a heavy pall of pollution (gray pixels) over much of eastern China in this image from 2003. Plumes of harmful air pollutants can be transported across oceans and continents -- from Asia to the United States and from the United States to Europe -- and have a negative impact on air quality far from their original sources. (Credit: Jacques Descloitres, MODIS Rapid Response Team, NASA GSFC)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 30, 2009) — Plumes of harmful air pollutants can be transported across oceans and continents -- from Asia to the United States and from the United States to Europe -- and have a negative impact on air quality far from their original sources, says a new report by the National Research Council. Although degraded air quality is nearly always dominated by local emissions, the influence of non-domestic pollution sources may grow as emissions from developing countries increase and become relatively more important as a result of tightening environmental protection standards in industrialized countries.

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Clock Turned Back On Aging Muscles, Researchers Claim

Young, healthy muscle (left column) appears pink and red. In contrast, the old muscle is marked by scarring and inflammation, as evidenced by the yellow and blue areas. This difference between old and young tissue occurs both in the muscle's normal state and after two weeks of immobilization in a cast. Exercise after cast removal did not significantly improve old muscle regeneration; scarring and inflammation persisted, or worsened in many cases. Credit: Morgan E. Carlson and Irina M. Conboy, UC Berkeley

From Live Science:

Scientists have found and manipulated body chemistry linked to the aging of muscles and were able to turn back the clock on old human muscle, restoring its ability to repair and rebuild itself, they said today.

The study involved a small number of participants, however. And the news is not all rosy.

Importantly, the research also found evidence that aging muscles need to be kept in shape, because long periods of atrophy are more challenging to overcome. Older muscles do not respond as well to sudden bouts of exercise, the scientists discovered, and rather than building muscle a person can generate scar tissue upon, say, lifting weights after long periods of inactivity.

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