Newly Discovered Magnetic Monopole Particles Flow Like Electric Currents

Dy2Ti2O7: This rare, "spin ice", crystal contains the atomic monopoles needed to create magnetricity. via Muon Science Laboratory

From Popular Science:

They're calling it "magnetricity" -- catchy, eh?

In 1931, physicist Paul Dirac hypothesized that on the quantum level, magnetic charge must exist in discrete packets, or quanta, in the same way that electric energy exists in a photon. This implies the existence of magnetic monopoles: particles that have a single magnetic charge, or polar identity -- north or south.

For 78 years, Dirac's speculation interested only hardcore theorists, because the conjecture failed to find any expression in observed phenomena. All magnets had two poles, one north and one south, inextricably attached to each other.

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Bites Of Passage

From The National:

In the past few decades, the Asian tiger mosquito has travelled from its natural home in Southeast Asia to the ends of the earth, becoming one of the world’s most invasive species. Tom Scocca reports from the frontlines of the battle to halt the winged invasion.

The picnic cooler, resting up against the back side of a row house in Trenton, New Jersey, was an artefact designed solely for the use of human beings. It had been invented to meet a particular and exclusive set of needs, unique to 21st-century Homo sapiens: to allow the transport of cold beverages to locales without refrigeration – and, once there, to allow those humans, while drinking, to free up their opposable thumbs by setting their beverages down in the wilderness without a spill. For this, humans needed more than a picnic cooler; they needed one whose lid was inset with four cup holders.

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There’s No Place Like Home

From Newsweek:

Fewer Americans are relocating than at any time since 1962. That's good news for families, communities ... and even the environment.

On almost any night of the week, Churchill's Restaurant is hopping. The 10-year-old hot spot in Rockville Centre, Long Island, is packed with locals drinking beer and eating burgers, with some customers spilling over onto the street. "We have lots of regulars—people who are recognized when they come in," says co-owner Kevin Culhane. In fact, regulars make up more than 80 percent of the restaurant's customers. "People feel comfortable and safe here," Culhane says. "This is their place."

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A World Redrawn When America Showed Up On A Map, It Was The Universe That Got Transformed

Image: Nicholas Copernicus (Getty Images)

From Boston.com:

NEARLY FIVE CENTURIES ago, the Polish astronomer Nicholas Copernicus went public with one of the most important arguments ever made in the history of ideas. The earth did not sit immobile at the center of the universe, he wrote. It revolved around the sun.

It was the mother of all paradigm shifts, dismantling a model of the universe that had been dogma since antiquity. When he published his theory, in “On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres” (1543), Copernicus provided a wealth of data on the movements of celestial bodies in support of his case. But what’s often overlooked is that he began his argument from the ground up, by focusing not on the heavens but the earth. In particular, he began with a geographical revelation, prompted by something he had recently come across on a new map.

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Bouncing Back: How We Deal With Bereavement

Bouncing back (Image: Michael Blann/Stone)

From New Scientist:

WHAT is the best way of coping with the death of a loved one? Why do some people grieve more intensely than others? Such questions are traditionally left to counsellors and self-help gurus, but George Bonanno, a clinical psychologist at Columbia University in New York, is on a mission to answer them empirically. He has done a good job, interviewing thousands of bereaved people over decades and monitoring how they get through their troubled times.

Yet Bonanno's bottom line - that people are often much more resilient than we're led to believe - is rather unremarkable. Studies of Londoners during the Blitz and New Yorkers after 9/11 showed that few people suffer serious reactions to traumatic events.

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Suppose 21st Century Disasters Like 19th Century

Redoubt Volcano from the east, with a massive eruption plume produced by pyroclastic flows on April 21, 1990(photo by R. Clucas)

From Future Pundit:

We remember the 20th century because we've all lived in some part of it (unless of course a 9 year older is reading this) and seen lots of video about it. The century was well covered by modern media. We know less of the 19th century and some of its major natural events are not widely known.

As compared to the 19th century the 20th century was pretty calm from the standpoint of big natural changes. What I'm going to do with this post: Imagine that the 21st century turns out to be like the 19th century in terms of the severity of climate, volcanic, and other natural events.

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Technology Brings New Insights To One Of The Oldest Middle Eastern Languages Still Spoken

Tablets uncovered at Persepolis in Iran are covered with writing in Aramaic. The archive, being studied at the University of Chicago, provides new insights on the language, which has been written and spoken in the Middle East continuously since ancient times. (Credit: Oriental Institute, University of Chicago)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Oct. 16, 2009) — New technologies and academic collaborations are helping scholars at the University of Chicago analyze hundreds of ancient documents in Aramaic, one of the Middle East’s oldest continuously spoken and written languages.

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Brilliant! Roof Tiles Change Color To Save Energy

A blast from a heat gun has turned most of the black tile in this image white. The prototype tile, developed by recent MIT graduates, is designed to turn dark in cold weather and white in warm weather. Credit: Patrick Gillooly

From Live Science:

On a blazing summer day, a black roof gets miserably hot, while a white roof reflects the sun and keeps a home cooler. In winter, the warmth generated by a solar-radiation-absorbing black roof can save energy.

That's well-known and simple enough. Unfortunately, you can't have it both ways. Well ...

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Quantcast New Technology Aimed At Increasing Oil Production

From US News And World Report/AP:

HOUSTON—Imagine having a nice ripe orange, ready for squeezing, but being able to get out only a small amount of juice. There's got to be more, you just can't get at it.

That's the frustration of the global oil business.

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Merging Video With Maps

Image: Drive-through: New navigation software uses panoramic images to create a video preview of the route. As the video plays, users can also follow the route on the map (shown here in green and on the next page, larger image). Credit: Microsoft

From Technology Review:

A new system uses panoramic images to create navigation videos that highlight turns and landmarks.

A novel navigation system under development at Microsoft aims to tweak users' visual memory with carefully chosen video clips of a route. Developed with researchers from the University of Konstanz in Germany, the software creates video using 360-degree panoramic images of the street that are strung together. Such images have already been gathered by several different mapping companies for many roads around the world. The navigation system, called Videomap, adjusts the speed of the video and the picture to highlight key areas along the route.

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Britain Will Starve Without GM Crops, Says Major Report

Oilseed rape, one of the four main commercial genetically modified crops Photo: EPA

From The Telegraph:

A new row over genetically modified foods being introduced into our shops has broken out after a Royal Society report recommended GM crops should be grown in Britain.

The study concluded that GM crops are needed to prevent a catastrophic food crisis by 2050.

But the report has sparked a backlash from opponents of GM foods who say they present a threat to the livelihood of small farmers.

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Great Ball Of Fire! Video Reveals Explosive Magnetic Power Of The Sun

The solar prominence is viewed in profile from Stereo Ahead (which did not photograph the whole star), while the filament is shown as a dark patch from Stereo Behind

From The Daily Mail:

Dramatic eruptions on the Sun have been captured in rare footage by two Nasa spacecraft.

Filmed over two days, the images show large glowing clouds of gas bursting from the Sun's surface and held aloft by the star's twisted magnetic fields.

These huge solar prominences are several times larger than the Earth and are caused by the solar activity cycle. It is one of the most spectacular events that the twin STEREO (Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory) craft have observed.

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Biggest Obstacle To Global Climate Deal May Be How To Pay For It

China’s president, Hu Jintao, seated at center, at a United Nations climate debate last month. Todd Heisler/The New York Times

From The New York Times:

As world leaders struggle to hash out a new global climate deal by December, they face a hurdle perhaps more formidable than getting big polluters like the United States and China to reduce greenhouse gas emissions: how to pay for the new accord.

The price tag for a new climate agreement will be a staggering $100 billion a year by 2020, many economists estimate; some put the cost at closer to $1 trillion. That money is needed to help fast-developing countries like India and Brazil convert to costly but cleaner technologies as they industrialize, as well as to assist the poorest countries in coping with the consequences of climate change, like droughts and rising seas.

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Climate Change May Mean Slower Winds

Sensitive Scaling: The amount of power a typical wind turbine produces increases exponentially with the speed of the wind. David McNew Getty Images

From Scientific American:

This summer scientists published the first study that comprehensively explored the effect of climate change on wind speeds in the U.S. The report was not encouraging. Three decades’ worth of data seemed to point to a future where global warming lowers wind speeds enough to handicap the nascent wind industry. But the real story, like so much in climate science, is far more complex.

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China Designs Indigenous UAV Stealth Fighter, And Bootlegs Some US Models

China's Dark Sword UAV Stealth Fighter via Defense Professionals

From Popular Science:

When I hear the phrase "knock-off Chinese products", I usually think of either the bootleg DVDs I get on the subway or the cheap electronics I get in Midtown. But a new report in Defense Professionals notes that the Chinese military has channeled that same skill for replication towards closing their UAV technology gap. By simply copying US technology, China has created a stock of advanced drones, and gained the technical knowledge to create some interesting native UAVs as well.

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Sea Levels Rose Two Feet This Summer In U.S. East

High tides lash a Destin, Florida, pavilion—usually on dry land—ahead of tropical storm Claudette on August 17, 2009. Aside from such short-term events as storms, anomalous wind and ocean patterns caused a sustained and unexpected rise in sea levels on the U.S. East Coast through much of summer 2009, according to a September 2009 report. Photograph by Mari Darr-Welch/AP

From National Geographic:

Sea levels rose as much as 2 feet (60 centimeters) higher than predicted this summer along the U.S. East Coast, surprising scientists who forecast such periodic fluctuations.

The immediate cause of the unexpected rise has now been solved, U.S. officials say in a new report (hint: it wasn't global warming). But the underlying reason remains a mystery.

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World's Oldest Submerged Town Dates Back 5,000 Years

Underwater archaeologists at Pavlopetri. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of Nottingham)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Oct. 16, 2009) — Archaeologists surveying the world’s oldest submerged town have found ceramics dating back to the Final Neolithic. Their discovery suggests that Pavlopetri, off the southern Laconia coast of Greece, was occupied some 5,000 years ago — at least 1,200 years earlier than originally thought.

These remarkable findings have been made public by the Greek government after the start of a five year collaborative project involving the Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and The University of Nottingham.

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Speed of Thought-to-Speech Traced in Brain

This is a brain scan showing electrodes that surgeons use to find and remove the source of seizures (to cure epilepsy) while sparing the source of mental functions like language. Credit: Illustration: Ned T. Sahin, Ph.D.. Brain Image Reconstruction: Sean McInerney.

From Live Science:

In just 600 milliseconds, the human brain can think of a word, apply the rules of grammar to it and send it to the mouth to be spoken. For the first time, researchers have traced this lightning-fast sequence and broken it down into distinct steps.

Researchers got this rare glimpse into the fine-tuned workings of the brain from the signals sent by electrodes implanted in the brains of epileptics. The electrodes help surgeons locate the parts of the brain that cause epileptic seizures so they can be removed, and also help keep surgeons from removing critical parts of the brain

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Solving The Crystal Maze: The Secrets Of Structure

What makes graphite like this? (Image: Walden)

From New Scientist:

CRYSTALS are objects of true and profound mystery. That's not because they channel occult energies, or hold misty hints of the future in their limpid depths. Their puzzle is much less esoteric: why are they as they are?

It is an incredibly basic question, yet physicists still struggle with it. Can we say why a given group of atoms prefers one particular arrangement over another? Can we predict how a crystal will be structured, and so deduce what properties it will have?

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Barnacles' Sticky Secret Revealed

Inside out, a cross section of a barnacle

From the BBC:

Barnacles are able to attach themselves to almost anything.

They are found clinging to the hulls of ships, the sides of rock pools and even to the skin of whales.

Just how they stick so steadfastly whilst underwater has remained a biochemical puzzle for scientists for many years.

Now researchers have solved this mystery, showing that barnacle glue binds together exactly the same way as human blood does when it clots.

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