Light Pollution: Night Skies, Dark No More

(Click Image to Enlarge)

From U.S. News And Report:

The ecological risks and health effects of a bright night are becoming more apparent.

The night is not what it was. Once, the Earth was cast perpetually half in shadow. Man and beast slept beneath inky skies, dotted with glittering stars. Then came fire, the candle, and the light bulb, gradually drawing back the curtain of darkness and giving us unprecedented control over our lives.

But a brighter world, it is becoming increasingly clear, has its drawbacks. A study released last month finding that breast cancer is nearly twice as common in brightly lit communities as in dark ones only added to a growing body of evidence that artificial light threatens not just stargazing but also public health, wildlife, and possibly even safety.

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Gmail, Yahoo And AOL Dragged Into Hotmail Hack Alert

From Times Online:

The theft of thousands of passwords to online email services is now known to include account details for all major e-mail providers, including Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo and AOL.

Full details of over 10,000 e-mail accounts were published on a specialist website for developers on October 1. As reported yesterday, the list was believed to comprise Microsoft Hotmail accounts, but it has since emerged that users of other e-mail services, such as Google’s Gmail, may also have had their passwords stolen.

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Why Nondrinkers May Be More Depressed

Ruediger Knobloch / A.B. / Corbis

From Time Magazine:

Alcohol has a peculiar relationship to happiness. We drink to celebrate, but because alcohol works as a depressant, it ends up deadening feelings. Not surprisingly, there's an observable correlation between alcoholism and depression, and even though it's not always clear which leads to which, everyone knows you can't drink like a Sterling Cooper employee for too long before becoming a perpetual sad sack.

But if alcohol can lead to depression, does that mean abstaining from alcohol will make you happier? A new study suggests that the opposite actually tends to be true. In fact, those who never drink are at significantly higher risk for not only depression but also anxiety disorders, compared with those who consume alcohol regularly.

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New Vaccine May Immunize Addicts from Cocaine's Pleasurable Effects

HIGH HOPES: Vaccines to decrease cocaine use have been in the works for years, but this new trial has had some encouraging results. ISTOCKPHOTO/MILOSJOKIC

From Scientific American:

Clinical trial data suggest that although pharmacotherapy for cocaine may be on the horizon, challenges remain.

Unlike opiates such as heroin or prescription painkillers, there is no medication specifically approved to help curb cocaine consumption. Now, an experimental vaccine offers hope for a new approach, researchers say, that spurs on antibodies, which bind with cocaine molecules and apparently helps some addicts stop feeling the pleasurable effects of the drug—thus deconditioning them out of their dependency.

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Run Silent Run Deep Submarines Of The Future Could Get A Communications Upgrade U.S. Navy

Run Silent Run Deep Submarines of the future could get a communications upgrade
U.S. Navy

From Popular Science:

A physicist claims that the "ghost particles" of our world could help communicate with underwater submariners.

Submariners should brace for some crazy science to match those Crazy Ivan maneuvers. A physicist says that ghost-like neutrinos that pass easily through just about everything could provide a future method of communication with deep sea submarines.

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How Twitter Can Be Used

Hat Tip: Geek Press

Bees Fight Back Against Colony Collapse Disorder: Some Honey Bees Toss Out Varroa Mites

ARS researchers have developed honey bees that more aggressively deal with varroa mites, a parasite that is one of the major problems damaging honey bees today. (Credit: Photo by Stephen Ausmus)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Oct. 5, 2009) — Honey bees are now fighting back aggressively against Varroa mites, thanks to Agricultural Research Service (ARS) efforts to develop bees with a genetic trait that allows them to more easily find the mites and toss them out of the broodnest.

The parasitic Varroa mite attacks the honey bee, Apis mellifera L., by feeding on its hemolymph, which is the combination of blood and fluid inside a bee. Colonies can be weakened or killed, depending on the severity of the infestation. Most colonies eventually die from varroa infestation if left untreated.

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Myths About Diabetes And Diet Persist

From Live Science:

Once upon a time, in the dark ages of the 1960s and '70s, a diabetes diet meant avoiding sugar. Refrigerators of diabetics were filled with Fresca; sugar bowls were filled with Sweet'N Low; and, for the most part, plates were still filled with meat and potatoes.

That diet didn't work so well, and self-administered insulin shots were often needed to keep blood-sugar levels safe.

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Rocket Company Tests World's Most Powerful Ion Engine

In the next few years, the VASIMR ion engine could be used to
boost the space station's orbit (Illustration: Ad Astra Rocket Company)

From New Scientist:

Rockets that would use charged particles to propel super-fast missions to Mars are one step closer, now that a small-scale prototype has been demonstrated at full power.

The ion engine may be used to maintain the orbit of the International Space Station within the next five years, and could lay the groundwork for rockets that could one day travel to Mars in about a month.

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LCROSS Impact Site Picked

From Discover Magazine:

NASA has chosen the final destination for the LCROSS lunar impacting probe: the crater Cabeus A, near the Moon’s south pole.

So why is NASA smacking a probe into the Moon at high speed, and why there?

The idea is that over millions and billions of years, a lot of comets have hit the Moon. The water from these comets hits the surface and sublimates away… but if any settles at the bottoms of deep craters near the Moon’s poles, these permanently shadowed regions can act as a refrigerator, keeping the water from disappearing. It can stay there, locked up as ice, for a long, long time. Some estimates indicate there could be billions of tons of ice near the Moon’s south pole.

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A Brief History Of Climate Change

From The BBC:

As the UN climate summit in Copenhagen approaches, BBC News environment correspondent Richard Black traces key milestones, scientific discoveries, technical innovations and political action.

1712 - British ironmonger Thomas Newcomen invents the first widely used steam engine, paving the way for the Industrial Revolution and industrial scale use of coal.

1800 - world population reaches one billion.

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Nobel Prize For Physics Awarded

Half of this year's Nobel Prize in Physics went to Charles K. Kao, center. The other half of the prize was shared by two researchers at Bell Labs, Willard S. Boyle, left, and George E. Smith. Reuters

Nobel Awarded for Advances in Harnessing Light -- New York Times

The mastery of light through technology was the theme of this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics as the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences honored breakthroughs in fiber optics and digital photography.

Half of the $1.4 million prize went to Charles K. Kao for insights in the mid-1960s about how to get light to travel long distances through glass strands, leading to a revolution in fiber optic cables. The other half of the prize was shared by two researchers at Bell Labs, Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith, for inventing the semiconductor sensor known as a charge-coupled device, or CCD for short. CCDs now fill digital cameras by the millions.

The prize will be awarded in Stockholm on Dec. 10.

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More News On The Awarding Of The Nobel Prize In Physics

Excerpts from 2009 Nobel physics prize -- AP
‘Masters of light’ scoop Nobel physics prize -- Financial Times
3 Scientists Win 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics -- Voice of America
Nobel Prize in Physics -- Scientific American
3 win Nobel in physics for digital devices -- CNN
Nobel honours 'masters of light' -- BBC
Communication pioneers win 2009 physics Nobe -- Reuters
FACTBOX: The Nobel prize for Physics -- Reuters
Recent winners of the Nobel Prize in physics -- AP

Key Cancer Spread Gene Found

From The BBC:

Scientists have pinpointed a gene linked to more than half of all breast cancers.

The gene, NRG1 (neuregulin-1), is also thought to play a role in many bowel, prostate, ovarian and bladder tumours.

The University of Cambridge team said the breakthrough should provide "vital information" about how cancer spreads.

Experts agreed the finding, published in the journal Oncogene, could represent a very significant advance in the fight against cancer.

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Stunning Underwater Shots Captured By World's Top Female Cave Diver And Her Team

A diver swims inside the passages that lay below Peacock Springs State Park in Florida

From The Daily Mail:

Crawling through underwater caves from Antarctica to Mexico and Florida to Bermuda, it is a good thing that Jill Heinerth is not claustrophobic.

It also helps that Ms Heinerth, 44, is acknowledged as the world's top female cave diver.

Holding the world record for distance travelled in underwater caves as well as being the first person to cave dive in an Antarctic iceberg, Ms Heinerth has been at the top of her game for 20 years.

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Roman Coin Hoards Show More War Means Fewer Babies

From Wired Science:

Coins buried by anxious Italians in the first century B.C. can be used to track the ups and downs of the Roman population during periods of civil war and violence.

In times of instability in the ancient world, people stashed their cash and if they got killed or displaced, they didn’t come back for their Geld. Thus, large numbers of coin hoards are a good quantitative indicator of population decline, two researchers argue in in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science Monday.

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Ultrafast DNA Nanosensor

Image: Glowing DNA: A CCD camera sensor captures the glow of hairpin-shaped DNA nanosensors when they bind with a target gene sequence of anthrax bacteria. Credit: Benjamin Miller, University of Rochester Medical Center

From Technology Review:

A new type of sensor makes diagnosing infections quick and easy.

A portable instrument based on an ultrasensitive nanoscale sensor could detect bacteria in minutes, helping to catch infectious diseases early and prevent their spread. The simple, low-cost device should be available within three years, says Benjamin Miller, professor of dermatology and biomedical engineering at the University of Rochester Medical Center, and codeveloper of the sensor.

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Graphite Mimics Iron's Magnetism: New Nanotech Applications

The electron density of states on a grain boundary of defects. The arrows (pointing in the reader's direction) indicate the direction of the magnetic moments. (Credit: Kees Flipse, Eindhoven University of Technology)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Oct. 5, 2009) — Researchers of Eindhoven University of Technology and the Radboud University Nijmegen in The Netherlands show for the first time why ordinary graphite is a permanent magnet at room temperature. The results are promising for new applications in nanotechnology, such as sensors and detectors. In particular graphite could be a promising candidate for a biosensor material. The results will appear online on 4 October in Nature Physics.

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Green Roofs Curb Global Warming, Study Finds

Chicago's City Hall got a green roof in 2001. The project was designed to test various concepts and methods and to test the benefits. Credit: Wikipedia Commons

From Live Science:

Rooftops covered with plants — logically dubbed “green roofs” — could help fight global warming, scientists now suggest.

Green roofs are growing more popular in cities, with the number of green roofs increasing by more than 35 percent from 2007 to 2008 in the United States, representing more than 3.1 million square feet installed last year. In Germany, widely considered the leader in green roofing, some 12 percent of all flat roofs are green, with the German green roof industry growing 10 to 15 percent annually.

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Sports Jocks Are Oh-So Predictable

Another fast ball... how predictable (Image: Rex Features)

From New Scientist:

A clever athlete knows how to keep an opponent guessing, but professionals act more predictably than they should. So says a study based on game theory, which shows that baseball pitchers throw too many fastballs and American football teams don't pass the ball enough. The finding could give savvy teams an extra victory or two over the course of a season.

The game theory concept of "minimax" says that players in a head-to-head match should follow two basic rules: first, play in a way that minimises your opponent's possible gain; second, be unpredictable.

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The Power Loader Is Real

From Popular Science:

Still no word about the xenomorphs, though.

For everyone out there who's been fighting aliens with a flamethrower, but now needs something with a little more kick, you're in luck. Panasonic has taken a break from hawking TVs and camcorder to build the power loader from Aliens.

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