Who Killed All Those Honeybees? We Did

iStockphoto

From Discovery:

The great bee die-off is not such a mystery after all: Industrial agriculture has stressed our pollinators to the breaking point.

It was mid-July, and Sam Comfort was teetering at the top of a 20-foot ladder, desperately trying to extract a cluster of furious honeybees from a squirrel house in rural Dutchess County, New York. Four stingers had already landed on his face, leaving welts along the fringe of his thick brown beard. That morning, the owner of the squirrel house had read an article in the local paper about Comfort’s interest in collecting feral honey­bees, so he called and invited him over. Commercial bee colonies, faced with massive mortality rates, are not faring so well these days, and unmanaged hives like this one could be their salvation. Comfort hurried over, eager to capture the hive’s queen and bring her home for monitoring and, if she fares well, breeding.

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For the First Time, Geneticists Diagnose Disease Through Whole-Genome Analysis

DNA Helix ynse

From Popular Science:

For the first time, researchers have made a clinical diagnosis by sequencing the entire protein-coding parts of a person's genome.

"We have shown that one can use whole genome sequencing to make clinically meaningful diagnoses- it is technically feasible . . . and can provide new clinical insight that directs treatment," Richard Lifton, a geneticist at Yale who spearheaded the research, told Popsci.com.

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How Galileo And His Spyglass Turned The World On Its Head

The humble wooden contraption with which Galileo made the astronomical discoveries that would transform science Photo: Florence, Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza

From The Telegraph:

Today it would hardly pass muster as a child's plaything, but the telescope Galileo used 400 years ago this week to peer into the heavens overturned the foundations of knowledge, changing our perception of the universe and our place in it.

Galileo's "optick tube" had a meagre 9x magnification and was not even conceived for astronomy.

Indeed, when the gadget was first demonstrated, Venetian senators were so smitten with its military potential that they doubled Galileo's salary and awarded him a life tenure in the city-state's most prestigious university.

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Time-Keeping Brain Neurons Discovered

Keeping track of time is one of the brain's most important tasks. As the brain processes the flood of sights and sounds it encounters, it must also remember when each event occurred. But how does that happen? How does your brain recall that you brushed your teeth before you took a shower, and not the other way around? (Credit: iStockphoto)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Oct. 23, 2009) — Keeping track of time is one of the brain's most important tasks. As the brain processes the flood of sights and sounds it encounters, it must also remember when each event occurred. But how does that happen? How does your brain recall that you brushed your teeth before you took a shower, and not the other way around?

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Cleanliness May Foster Morality

From Live Science:

A simple spritz of a fresh-smelling window cleaner made people more fair and generous in a new study.

The researchers figure cleanliness fosters morality.

They conducted fairness tests, with subjects completing tasks in a room that was either unscented or one that was sprayed with a common citrus-scented window cleaner.

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Mum's the Word for NASA's Secret Space Plane X-37B

Artist concept of the X-37 advanced technology flight demonstrator
re-entering Earth's atmosphere. NASA

From FOX News:

You would think that an unpiloted space plane built to rocket spaceward from Florida atop an Atlas booster, circle the planet for an extended time, then land on autopilot on a California runway would be big news. But for the U.S. Air Force X-37B project — seemingly, mum's the word.

There is an air of vagueness regarding next year's Atlas Evolved Expendable launch of the unpiloted, reusable military space plane. The X-37B will be cocooned within the Atlas rocket's launch shroud — a ride that's far from cheap.

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Where Will The Next Five Big Earthquakes Be?

Joseph Sohm / Visions of America / Corbis

From Time Magazine:

Earthquakes have always been part of Los Angeles' past — and its future. In 1994 a 6.7-magnitude quake hit the Northridge area of the city, badly damaging freeways, killing more than 70 people and causing $20 billion in damages. But those numbers could be dwarfed by a major quake in the future. The geologic record indicates that huge quakes occur roughly every 150 years in the region — Los Angeles lies along the southern end of the San Andreas Fault — and the last big quake, which registered a magnitude 7.9, happened in 1857. Los Angeles has done a lot to beef up its building codes and emergency response in the 15 years since the Northridge quake and may be better prepared than any other major American city, but the city's sheer size ensures the next Big One will be bloody.

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Europe's Earliest Road Atlas – From 1675

Auctioneer Charles Ashton with the first national road atlas
which is going under the hammer Photo: MASONS

From The Telegraph:

The first road atlas of its kind in western Europe, a 17th century book showing a highway network in England and Wales of just 73 roads, is to be sold at auction for up to £9,000.

The route atlas, published in 1675, includes 100 double pages of black and white maps laid out in continuous strips depicting the major roads and crossroads across England and Wales.

The work by John Ogilby – Britannia Volume the First, or an Illustration of the Kingdom of England and Dominion of Wales – also marks the first time in England that an atlas was prepared on a uniform scale, at one inch to a mile.

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Are Men Smarter Than Women? Global Trivial Pursuit Experiment Reignites Battle Of The Sexes

Men vs women: Who will top the trivia tree?
Answer questions correctly to earn points for your team

From The Daily Mail:

As competitive families around the world will attest, a nice leisurely game of Trivial Pursuit at Christmas can quickly descend into a heated contest.

Now Hasbro, the company behind the popular board game, has pitted men against women in an experiment to see just who is smart in the ultimate battle of the sexes.

'Trivial Pursuit wanted to conduct an experiment to see if trivia can answer the age-old question,' said Senior Brand Manager Hayden West.

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NASA’s Ares 1-X Rocket Is Looking Good For Tuesday Launch

NASA: Next generation. NASA's slender white Ares 1-X towers some 327 feet above its launch pad, with the space shuttle Atlantis in the distance being prepared for a November launch. When (or if) completed, the Ares 1 and its Orion crew capsule will become NASA's newest taxi to low-Earth orbit. (NASA)

From Christian Science Monitor:

NASA’s Ares 1-X rocket is standing tall on the pad, waiting for what NASA managers hope will be its 2 minutes of fame.

That’s about how long Ares 1-X will remain in the sky during its up-and-down test flight, currently scheduled for Oct. 27. The launch is set for 8 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time, so grab a cup of your favorite hot beverage, pull up a chair, and see what happens to the first new rocket NASA’s order up in nearly 30 years.

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Carefully Cleaning Up The Garbage At Los Alamos

Technical Area 21 at Los Alamos National Laboratory, during a brief morning rain and hail storm. Mark Holm for The New York Times

From The New York Times:

LOS ALAMOS, N.M. — No one knows for sure what is buried in the Manhattan Project-era dump here. At the very least, there is probably a truck down there that was contaminated in 1945 at the Trinity test site, where the world’s first nuclear explosion seared the sky and melted the desert sand 200 miles south of here during World War II.

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Spencer: AGW Has Most Of The Characteristics Of An “Urban Legend”

Urban legend? Gators don't really live in the sewer.

From Watts Up With That?

About.com describes an “urban legend” as an apocryphal (of questionable authenticity), secondhand story, told as true and just plausible enough to be believed, about some horrific…series of events….it’s likely to be framed as a cautionary tale. Whether factual or not, an urban legend is meant to be believed. In lieu of evidence, however, the teller of an urban legend is apt to rely on skillful storytelling and reference to putatively trustworthy sources.

I contend that the belief in human-caused global warming as a dangerous event, either now or in the future, has most of the characteristics of an urban legend. Like other urban legends, it is based upon an element of truth. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas whose concentration in the atmosphere is increasing, and since greenhouse gases warm the lower atmosphere, more CO2 can be expected, at least theoretically, to result in some level of warming.

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Okay, How BIG Is Antarctica?

Okay, how BIG is Antarctica? Do you have a mental picture? No? Well, here it is, courtesy NASA.

NASA Ares Rocket Development To Take Too Long

From Future Pundit:

An article in New Scientist about the NASA Ares rocket program reports that a White House advisory panel chaired by former Lockheed Martin CEO Norman Augustine recommends against further development of the Ares rocket because it will take too long to develop.

The rocket is set to make its first test flight on 27 October. But the committee believes the rocket will not be ready to loft crew to orbit until 2017, two years after the ISS is scheduled to be abandoned and hurled into the Pacific Ocean, Augustine said. Extending use of the space station to 2020 would not make much difference, since this would eat up funds available for Ares I and delay its first flight to 2018 or 2019, added committee member Edward Crawley of MIT.

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Color Differences Within And Between Species Have Common Genetic Origin

Body hair difference is more pronounced between chimpanzees and humans than within our own species. Biologists have puzzled over the same genes cause both types of variation, not just with respect to people, chimps and body hair, but for all sorts of traits that differ within and between species. New research shows that, at least for body color in fruit flies, the two kinds of variation have a common genetic basis. (Credit: iStockphoto/Warwick Lister-Kaye)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Oct. 25, 2009) — Spend a little time people-watching at the beach and you're bound to notice differences in the amount, thickness and color of people's body hair. Then head to the zoo and compare people to chimps, our closest living relatives.

The body hair difference is even more pronounced between the two species than within our own species.

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Evidence Alexander The Great Wasn't First At Alexandria

Detail from the Alexander mosaic. From the House of the Faun, Pompeii, c. 80 B.C. Credit: National Archaeologic Museum, Naples, Italy

From Live Science:

Alexander the Great has long been credited with being the first to settle the area along Egypt's coast that became the great port city of Alexandria. But in recent years, evidence has been mounting that other groups of people were there first.

The latest clues that settlements existed in the area for several hundred years before Alexander the Great come from microscopic bits of pollen and charcoal in ancient sediment layers.

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Solar Snafu: The Contractor Finally Installs The Panels, But Goofs

From Scientific American:

Editor's Note: Scientific American's George Musser will be chronicling his experiences installing solar panels in Solar at Home (formerly 60-Second Solar). Read his introduction here and see all posts here.

The first message I got from my wife last week was happy news indeed: “Solar guys are working on our roof!” As readers of this blog know, we’d started the process of installing solar panels back in February, and we had no idea what were getting ourselves into. The red tape for the state and utility subsidies took through the end of May. Then we had to get our roof restored, which added a couple of months. In early July, I told myself, the wait was over. How wrong I was.

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Seven Questions That Keep Physicists Up At Night

From New Scientist:

It's not your average confession show: a panel of leading physicists spilling the beans about what keeps them tossing and turning in the wee hours.

That was the scene a few days ago in front of a packed auditorium at the Perimeter Institute, in Waterloo, Canada, when a panel of physicists was asked to respond to a single question: "What keeps you awake at night?"

The discussion was part of "Quantum to Cosmos", a 10-day physics extravaganza, which ends on Sunday.

While most panelists professed to sleep very soundly, here are seven key conundrums that emerged during the session, which can be viewed here.

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Blood Test Offers More Accurate Picture of Health

From Technology Review:

A Seattle company is developing rapid tests for thousands of proteins.

With $30 million in recent financing, a Seattle-based company has launched operations to develop and market inexpensive tests for thousands of blood proteins, offering a comprehensive picture of the health of all the body's organs. The Seattle startup, called Integrated Diagnostics, is developing cheap diagnostics that work in minutes and could be used to detect diseases at early, more treatable stages. The company's technology has been in development for the past nine years in labs at the University of California, Los Angeles, and at the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle. The company hopes to provide tests for early diagnosis of neurological disorders and other diseases.

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Evan Williams On Twitter's Vision For The Future

'Search is a huge thing for us, I think about it a lot,' says Evan Williams, co-founder and chief executive of Twitter Photo: GETTY

From The Telegraph:

Twitter's co-founder, Evan Williams, talks exclusively to the Daily Telegraph about the future of online search and his plans for improving the micro-blogging platform.

Imagine a world where you were given answers to questions you didn’t know you had. That’s the future of search according to the chief executive of Twitter, the site every tech company wants a piece of.

Evan Williams doesn’t often give interviews. He usually leaves that to Biz Stone, his colleague and Twitter’s co-founder. I found this out the hard way as I chased him down the stairs at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco earlier this week.

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