'Stealth' Wind Turbine Deployed

From the BBC:

A wind turbine blade that absorbs radar signals has been demonstrated at a wind farm in eastern England.

Wind turbines confuse aviation radar signals, making aircraft in wind farms' vicinities difficult to track.

Defence firm Qinetiq and turbine manufacturing firm Vestas are developing "stealth turbines", with radar-absorbing materials and coatings.

The five-year effort may help many wind farm projects that are on hold because of so-called "radar clutter" concerns.

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Lasers Simulate Black Hole In The Lab

An artist's impression of the swirling accretion disc surrounding a black hole.
Credit: David A. Aguilar/CfA

From Cosmos:

BRISBANE: The extreme conditions found around black holes and other very dense objects can be recreated in the laboratory with powerful lasers, physicists say.

The technique may allow them to validate the computer models they use to interpret black hole data collected by space-based telescopes, such as the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, according to a study published this week in Nature Physics.

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Ladybugs Swarm Midwest

Swarming Ladies. Ladybugs are seen on cars in Chatham, Ill., Oct. 21, 2009. Around much of the country,legions of Asian lady beetles are making their seasonal appearance. AP Photo/Seth Perlman

From Discovery News:

Pest-control specialist Gene Scholes even gets bugged by them -- legions of ladybugs lately swarming his rural Missouri home and other stretches across the country, exploiting gaps in door and window seals for cozier climes inside.

Bug experts say the Asian lady beetles, considered harbingers of good luck in many cultures, are making their seasonal appearance in droves in search of warmth for the approaching winter.

The beetles are harmless to humans. That doesn't make them any less annoying for folks like Scholes.

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What's The Point Of A Fake 500-Day Mars Mission?

Mars

From New Scientist:

The European Space Agency is seeking six volunteers to spend 520 days inside a sealed isolation facility to study the psychological effects of a journey to Mars.

The 2010 Mars-500 "mission" at the Russian Institute of Biomedical Problems in Moscow will simulate a round trip to the Red Planet – albeit shorter than the real thing – and follows a similar 105-day study that ended in July.

But does spending a year and a half locked inside a tin can on Earth tell us anything about how humans might behave on a high-risk interplanetary odyssey? New Scientist investigates.

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Scientists Find A Precision Clock Logging the Milliseconds Inside Your Brain

Tick Tock Certain neurons in the striatum and prefrontal cortex fire at certain intervals, which MIT researchers have determined to be an internal clock time-stamping sensory experiences for memory just as a digital camera might time-stamp a photo file.

From Popular Science:

Though we do it without thinking, keeping track of time is integral to the brain's function, keeping our senses and our actions ordered in a chronology that we then recall in the form of memory. But important as it is, researchers have never understood the mechanism by which humans index the happenings of everyday life. Now, two macaque monkeys may have helped MIT researchers solve the time tracking puzzle.

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Glacial Melting May Release Pollutants Into The Environment

Glacier-fed Lake Oberaar in the Bernese Alps, Switzerland.
(Credit: iStockphoto/Roland Zihlmann)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Oct. 21, 2009) — Those pristine-looking Alpine glaciers now melting as global warming sets in may explain the mysterious increase in persistent organic pollutants in sediment from certain lakes since the 1990s, despite decreased use of those compounds in pesticides, electric equipment, paints and other products.

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Pollution Turns Leaves Magnetic

This photo, taken with a scanning electron microscope, shows one an iron-oxide sphere of pollution produced by combustion, and collected with a double-sided tape collector. Credit: Rachel Housen, Whatcom Middle School/Bellingham High School

From Live Science:

Tiny particles of pollution that are harmful to human health stick to tree leaves and leave a trace magnetism, a new study finds. More pollution is found stuck to leaves of trees near busy roadways than those in less trafficked areas.

The pollution-trapping leaves could serve as an easy, inexpensive way to monitor pollutant levels, researchers say.

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'Double Food Output To Stop World Starving,' Say Scientists

Photo: International Rice Research Institute via flickr

From The Independent:

Royal Society wants green revolution to deal with global population rise of 3 billion.

Global food production needs to be increased by between 50 and 100 per cent if widespread famine is to be avoided in the coming decades as the human population expands rapidly, leading scientists said.

A second "green revolution" is needed in agriculture to feed the extra 3 billion people who will be added to the existing population of 6 billion by 2050.

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Revealed: The £1m Bullet-Proof SUV (But That's Cheap Compared To The Vodka That Comes With It)

Bulletproof: The £1 million Dartz Prombron Monaco Red Diamond Edition armoured car

From The Daily Mail:

This is the world's most expensive SUV - but with three bottles of the world's most expensive vodka included in the price tag, it actually appears to be a bargain.

The £1million Dartz Prombron Monaco Red Diamond Edition has gold-plated windows, pure tungsten exhausts, and the speed gauges are encrusted in diamonds.

The seats are not for the squeamish. They are made of one of the softest materials around - leather from a whale's penis.

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Microsoft Bets On Windows Success

From BBC:

Microsoft is hoping that its newly-launched operating system will be one that "doesn't let you down".

Speaking at the official launch of Windows 7 in London, Microsoft executives said they had listened to consumers and delivered a more streamlined, feature-packed system.

It follows widespread criticism of predecessor Vista.

Windows 7 faces stiff competition from rival operating systems and new ways of storing applications.

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Earliest Evidence Of Humans Thriving On The Savannah

From New Scientist:

Humans were living and thriving on open grassland in Africa as early as 2 million years ago, making stone tools and using them to butcher zebra and other animals. That's according to powerful evidence from artefacts found at Kanjera South, an archaeological site in south-west Kenya.

"There is no clear evidence of any hominin being associated with or foraging in open grassland prior to this 2-million-year-old site," says Thomas Plummer of Queens College at the City University of New York.

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Massive Gene Database Planned In California

Photo: Spit kit: Genetic data from a diverse group of 100,000 California patients will be gleaned from samples of saliva, captured in kits like this one. Credit: Kaiser Permanente

From Technology Review:

The data will be compared against electronic health records and patients' personal information.

Plans for genetic analyses of 100,000 older Californians--the first time genetic data will be generated for such a large and diverse group--will accelerate research into environmental and genetic causes of disease, researchers say.

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'Eighth Wonder' Ida Is Not Related To Humans, Claim Scientists

The skull of Ida. Photograph: Atlantic Productions

From The Guardian:

US palaeontologists dismiss initial claims about the 47million-year-old fossil found in Germany's Messel Pit.

Her arrival was announced with unrestrained razzmatazz. She was the "eighth wonder of the world", "our Mona Lisa" and an evolutionary "Rosetta Stone", according to the researchers who unveiled her.

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Are Artificial Sweeteners Really That Bad for You?

Richard Levine / Alamy

From Time Magazine:

Too much sugar will make you fat, but too much artificial sweetener will ... do what exactly? Kill you? Make you thinner? Or have absolutely no effect at all? This week marks the 40th anniversary of the Food and Drug Administration's decision to ban cyclamate, the first artificial sweetener prohibited in the U.S., and yet scientists still haven't reached a consensus about how safe (or harmful) artificial sweeteners may be. Shouldn't we have figured this out by now?

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CIA Buys Stake in Firm That Monitors Social Networking Sites

Gathering Intel The web 2.0 and open source intelligence make old intelligence gathering methods look, well, quaint Paramount Pictures

From Popular Science:

U.S. spies hope to glean intelligence nuggets from blog posts and Twitter.

Twitterati and other netizens should already know that their Internet musings are public and could potentially become fodder for intelligence analysts. But now U.S. spy agencies have officially invested in a software firm that monitors social media and half a million web 2.0 sites daily.

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New Method To Help Keep Fruit, Vegetables And Flowers Fresh

Did you know that millions of tons of fruits and vegetables in the United States end up in the trash can before being eaten, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture? (Credit: iStockphoto/Jack Puccio)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Oct. 20, 2009) — Did you know that millions of tons of fruits and vegetables in the United States end up in the trash can before being eaten, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture?

A Georgia State University professor has developed an innovative new way to keep produce and flowers fresh for longer periods of time. Microbiologist George Pierce's method uses a naturally occurring microorganism -- no larger than the width of a human hair -- to induce enzymes that extend the ripening time of fruits and vegetables, and keeps the blooms of flowers fresh.

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Music Benefits Exercise, Studies Show

From Live Science:

With the Fall marathon season in full swing, thousands of runners are gearing up for the big day. Just as important as their broken-in shoes and heart rate monitor is their source of motivation, inspiration and distraction: their tunes.

Running with music has become so common that the two biggest names in both industries, Nike and Apple, have been joined at the hip with the Nike + iPod combination. So, what is it about music and running, or any exercise, that feels so right?

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Fancy Going To Mars? Space Agency Seeks Volunteers For 520-Day Trip... But It's Only A Simulation

A warm-up 105-day mission took place in 2009, with participants from Germany and France and four Russians living together in cramped conditions

From The Daily Mail:

Could you spend 18months with five strangers inside a small confined space? It may sound like a hellish endurance test, but The European Space Agency is calling for volunteers to do just that.

Starting in 2010, an international crew of six will simulate a 520-day round-trip to Mars, including a 30-day stay on the 'Martian surface'.

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Weather 'Shapes Human Body Clock'

From BBC:

Our internal body clocks are shaped by the weather as well as by the seasons, scientists have discovered.

Researchers used computers to model the workings of internal biological clocks.

They found the mechanism had to be so complicated because it was able to deal with varying amounts of light from hour to hour, as well as changing seasons.

It is hoped the research, led by a team from Edinburgh University, could help tackle sleep problems caused by jet lag and shift working.

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Intelligence Explained

Brain map: Software called BrainLab analyzes data collected during a specialized MRI scan of the author’s brain in order to create a neural wiring map. The image shows a cross-section. Specific subsets of wires are highlighted (the color indicates the direction of the wiring going through that slice). The cross-sections are computationally stitched together to create a three-dimensional image. Credit: Andrew Frew/Brainlab

From Technology Review:

Tracking and understanding the complex connections within the brain may finally reveal the neural secret of cognitive ability.

A series of black-and-white snapshots is splayed across the screen, each capturing a thin slice of my brain. The gray-scale pictures would look familiar to anyone who has seen a brain scan, but these images are different. Andrew Frew, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, uses a cursor to select a small square. Thin strands like spaghetti appear, representing the thousands of neural fibers passing through it. A few clicks of the cursor and Frew refines the tract of fibers pictured on the screen, highlighting first my optic nerve, then the fibers passing through a part of the brain that's crucial for language, then the bundles of motor and sensory nerves that head down to the brain stem.

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