Flu-Like Illnesses Now Higher Than At Peak Of Seasonal Flu Season

From the L.A. Times:

Federal officials report 8,200 hospitalizations for infections from the H1N1 virus, and 411 deaths. But reports of 1 in 5 kids being infected are wrong, they add.

Influenza-like illnesses are now higher throughout the country than levels generally seen at the peak of the seasonal flu season, federal health officials said Friday. But they dismissed media reports from a day earlier that 1 in 5 children had contracted swine flu during the first weeks of October.

Pandemic H1N1 influenza activity continues to spread throughout the country, with 46 states reporting widespread activity, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported.

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Ancient Secrets Of Super-Cement May Lead To A Shield Against Bunker Busters

Super-Concrete Let's see if they can break this Air Force Office of Scientific Research

From Popular Science:

Super-cements similar to those used to build the pyramids could harden bunkers against missiles.

Super-cements similar to the ancient concrete used to build the pyramids might defeat even the U.S. Air Force's largest non-nuclear bunker buster to date.

Wired's Danger Room has a rundown on how French researcher Joseph Davidovits uncovered the chemistry of geopolymers, or super-cements. Davidovits also put forth the theory that the Egyptian pyramids were built using a similar type of geopolymer limestone concrete -- an idea supported by X-ray and microscopic study samples.

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The Case Against Magnetic Screwdrivers

Click Image to Enlarge

From Popular Mechanics:

A reader writes in wondering where he can find magnetic screwdrivers like the one his mechanic has. But PM senior automotive editor Mike Allen thinks that tool is unnecessary. Here is his case against magnetic screwdrivers.

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Is Unknown Force In Universe Acting On Dark Matter?

M63: The Sunflower Galaxy. (Credit: Satoshi Miyazaki (NAOJ), Suprime-Cam, Subaru Telescope, NOAJ)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Oct. 23, 2009) — An international team of astronomers have found an unexpected link between mysterious 'dark matter' and the visible stars and gas in galaxies that could revolutionise our current understanding of gravity.

One of the astronomers, Dr Hongsheng Zhao of the SUPA Centre of Gravity, University of St. Andrews, suggests that an unknown force is acting on dark matter. The findings are published this week in the scientific journal Nature.

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What Really Scares People: Top 10 Phobias

From Live Science:

Whether you jump at the sight of a spider or work up a sweat at the mere mention of getting on an airplane, fears and phobias abound. About 19.2 million American adults ages 18 and over, or some 8.7 percent of people in this age group in a given year, have some type of specific phobia, or extreme fear. Here are some of the worst.

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Mars May Have Caves, Scientists Say

Mars colonists could use caves for protection from potentially deadly cosmic rays streaming down from space. (NASA / October 24, 2009)

From The L.A. Times:

Images of ancient lava flows from the Arsia Mons volcano suggest an extensive system near the Red Planet's equator. Caves could one day aid space explorers.

Caves were some of the earliest refuges for human beings on Earth. Could the same be true for future pioneers on Mars?

Glen Cushing, a space scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey, thinks so. He said he has found evidence of an extensive cave system among ancient volcanoes at Mars' equator.

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Controversial Moon Origin Theory Rewrites History

Origin Story. A new study challenges the giant impact hypothesis, which suggested the moon formed from a cosmic collision. NASA

From Discovery:

Oct. 22, 2009 -- The moon may have been adopted by our planet instead of descended from it.

If a new twist on a decades-old theory is right, conditions in the early solar system suggest the moon formed inside Mercury's orbit and migrated out until it was roped into orbit around Earth.

The idea flies in the face of scientific consensus, known as the giant impact hypothesis, which holds that the moon formed from red-hot debris left over after a Mars-sized object collided with Earth around 4.5 billion years ago.

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Obama: U.S. Needs To Lead Clean-Energy Race

President Obama speaking on clean energy at MIT on Friday.
(Credit: Martin LaMonica/CNET)

From CNET:

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--President Barack Obama on Friday called on the U.S. Congress to pass energy-and-climate legislation, a move he said would stimulate technology innovation and improve the economic competitiveness of the United States.

Obama delivered a speech at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology here after touring student laboratories and before attending a fund-raiser for Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick.

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Epic Humpback Whale Battle Filmed

From The BBC:

It is the greatest animal battle on the planet, and it has finally been caught on camera.

A BBC natural history crew has filmed the "humpback whale heat run", where 15m long, 40 tonne male whales fight it out to mate with even larger females.

During the first complete sequence of this behaviour ever captured, the male humpbacks swim at high speed behind the female, violently jostling for access.

The collisions between the males can be violent enough to kill.

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Panel Calls For Big Detour In NASA’s Moon Plans

NASA artwork traces each phase of a future mission to the moon and back.

From MSNBC:

Asteroids, Martian moons suggested as alternate destinations.

WASHINGTON - NASA needs to make a major detour in its effort to return astronauts to the moon, a special independent panel told the White House Thursday.

Under current plans, NASA has picked the wrong destination with the wrong rocket, the panel's chairman said. A test-flight version of the rocket, the new Ares I, is on a launch pad at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, awaiting liftoff next week for its first experimental flight.

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Will The Pill Be Responsible For The Death Of Humanity?

From Blog Critics:

For years, gays have been looking for a gene that would legitimately give them the right to say nature has turned them into the opposite sex. As a result, they believe same-sex marriage should be a natural thing. To gays, same-sex marriage should be something beautiful, natural, and part of God’s big plan. But the reasons may be anything but natural.

A few years ago, right after the sexual revolution of the 1960’s, a large number of chemical ‘cocktails’ that inhibit the function of the male hormone testosterone were found in United Kingdom rivers.

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Did Dryas Comet Really Kill Off Mammoth?

Did a comet impact really kill off megafauna such as the mammoth,
mastodan and sabre-tooth tiger? Credit: Wikimedia

From Cosmos:

PORTLAND, OREGON: Debate on the existence of a Younger Dryas comet impact, 12,900 years ago, and whether it is linked to mass extinctions of large mammals and early humans in North America reopened this week.

The Younger Dryas was a 1,300-year-long cold snap that affected climate in much of the Northern Hemisphere. In 2007, a team led by Richard Firestone of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, in the U.S., argued that it was caused by the impact of a comet.

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Google's Android Allows Soldiers To Put Drones On Buddy List

Phones for Warfighters U.S. Army/Tech. Sgt. Cohen A. Young

From Popular Science:

Defense giant Raytheon has turned Google's mobile operating system into a military application.

Google's Android operating system for cell phones could allow soldiers to track fellow squad members and even unmanned drones in real time on a map -- as long as the humans and robots are on their buddy list.

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Scientists Reveals Secrets Of Drought Resistance

Soybean sprouts struggling in dry conditions. Biologists have now solved the structure of a critical molecule that helps plants survive during droughts. (Credit: iStockphoto/Matt Niebuhr)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Oct. 23, 2009) — A team of biologists in California led by researchers at The Scripps Research Institute and the University of California (UC), San Diego has solved the structure of a critical molecule that helps plants survive during droughts. Understanding the inner workings of this molecule may help scientists design new ways to protect crops against prolonged dry periods, potentially improving crop yields worldwide, aiding biofuels production on marginal lands and mitigating drought's human and economic costs.

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Why Some Men Can't Control Arousal

From Live Science:

Is sex a state of mind? A recent study from the University of British Columbia finds that while most men can regulate their physical and mental sexual arousal to some degree, the men most able to do so are able to control their other emotions as well.

“We suspect that if an individual is good at regulating one type of emotional response, he/she is probably good at regulating other emotional responses,” says Jason Winters, the study’s research head. “This has never been shown before.”

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Tallying The Real Environmental Cost Of Biofuels

William Radcliffe / Science Faction / Corbis

From Time Magazine:

The promise of biofuels like ethanol is that they will someday help the world grow its way out of its addiction to oil. Nine billion gallons of corn ethanol were produced in the U.S. in 2008, while countries like Brazil have already widely replaced gasoline with ethanol from sugar cane and countless start-ups are working to bring cellulosic and other second-generation biofuels to market. The reasoning is that if we use greener biofuels in place of gasoline, it will significantly enhance our effort to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.

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Awakening Paralyzed Limbs

Photo: Monkey think, monkey do: By translating electrical signals from a monkey’s brain into muscle contractions via implanted electrodes, an animal with a paralyzed arm was able to grasp a ball. Credit: Christian Ethier, Lee Miller

From Technology Review:

Brain signals can drive arm movement in a monkey with a paralyzed arm.

A monkey with a paralyzed arm can still grasp a ball, thanks to a novel system designed to translate brain signals into complex muscle movements in real time. The research, presented at the Society for Neuroscience conference in Chicago this week, could one day allow people with spinal cord injury to control their own limbs.

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Space: Most Distant Galaxy Cluster Discovered

The galaxy cluster is a billion light years further from earth than any other discovered.

From The Telegraph:

The youngest and most distant galaxy cluster yet has been discovered by scientists 10.2 billion light years away, a billion further than the previous record.

The JKCS041 galaxy cluster, discovered by combining x-ray data from NASA with optical and infrared telescopes, is viewed as it was when the universe was a quarter of its current age.

Galaxy clusters are the universe's largest collections of items held together by gravity, and scientists hope the discovery of one at such an early stage will help them discover more about how the universe evolved.

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Wildlife Photographer Of The Year 2009 Prize Goes To Leaping Wolf

An Iberian wolf jumps a fence intent on his dinner in this stunning
photo by Jose Luis Rodriguez

From The Daily Mail:

An Iberian wolf strides over a fence, its eyes intent on a tasty meal in the next field.

This stunning image won the Veolia Environement Wildlife Photographer of the Year, organised by the Natural History Museum and BBC Wildlife Magazine.

This year was a bumper year with 43,135 entries from 94 countries – up 33 per cent on 2008. The best 100 images in the competition will go on show from October 23 at the Natural History Museum in London.

The competition manager, Gemma Webster, said: 'While the UK and the US remain our major source of entrants, the greatest growth in entries is happening in China and Russia.'

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Unraveling The Brain's Secrets: Humility Required

From Scientific American:

In early October, the Singularity Summit took place on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, a conference that highlighted the prospects for abolishing the ravages of aging and disease. So you’ll be able to live forever, unless you get hit by a truck.

Living forever is mainly about preserving brain function. That’s why the cryonicists—the ones who freeze themselves until some hypothetical medical miracle emerges to revive them—often just put the part above the neck into deep storage. The head in the cooler, it is assumed, retains the operating system and all of the applications software needed to resurrect the former self, even if it is ported to some new, cybernetic body. Less real estate and a lower electricity bill means a reduced rate at the cryo farm until you are brought back from the “legally dead.” In essence, bleacher seats for the Singularity.

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