Volcanic Eruptions Caused Ancient Warming And Cooling

Photo courtesy of US Geological Survey; Hawaiian Volcanoes Observatory, Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, August 10, 2002

From Live Science:

Volcanic eruptions were responsible for a deadly ice age 450 million years ago, as well as — in an ironic twist — a period of global warming that preceded it, a new study finds.

The finding underscores the importance of carbon in Earth's climate today, said study researcher Matthew Saltzman of Ohio State University.

The ancient ice age featured glaciers that covered the South Pole on top of the supercontinent of Gondwana (which would eventually break apart to form the present-day continents of the southern hemisphere). Two-thirds of all species perished in the frigid climate.

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In Germany, A Better Vaccine For Politicians?

Andreas Rentz / Getty

From Time Magazine:

Critics are calling it a two-tier health system — one for the politically well connected, another for the hoi polloi. As Germany launched its mass-vaccination program against the H1N1 flu virus on Monday, the government found itself fending off accusations of favoritism because it was offering one vaccine believed to have fewer side effects to civil servants, politicians and soldiers, and another, potentially riskier vaccine to everyone else. The government had hoped that Germans would rush to health clinics to receive vaccinations against the rapidly spreading disease, but now rising anger over the different drugs may cause many people to shy away.

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Liftoff For NASA's Ares I-X

Ares Test 1

From Popular Science:

Ares I-X roared off its launch pad at 11:30 EST at Cape Canaveral. This marks success for NASA's second launch attempt to get the Ares I-X rocket off the ground after weather delayed the launch on Tuesday.

Update 9:58 EST: NASA now aims for launch around 11 EST. Surveillance aircraft report that weather should be "acceptable" at that time, and NASA pegs the chance of weather interference at just 20 percent.

Update 10:43 EST: Engineering teams are all reporting a "go" for launch, and the launch director reports no constraints to launch. Countdown is set to pick up at 10:56 EST.

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Grandmothers: Good For Girls, Bad For Boys

From The Independent:

The importance of grandmothers in the lives of their grandchildren is underlined in a study published today.

But the research showed that it was only granddaughters who were likely to do better with their paternal grandmothers involved in their early lives. In contrast, the presence of paternal grandmothers had a detrimental effect on the survival of their grandsons.

The discovery supports the idea that grandmothers have played an important role in human evolution and could explain why human females – alone among the animal kingdom – live well beyond their reproductive age.

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How Maths Makes The World Go Round

Maths makes it: genetic breeding yields a better class of carrot

From The Telegraph:

Whether you’re searching for oil, the lost chord or a better kind of carrot, mathematics is the key, says Ian Stewart.

Like many amateur guitarists, I’d always wondered how to play the opening chord of A Hard Day’s Night. Over the years, I spent hours trying to reconstruct it, but there was something very odd about it: no matter how hard I tried, I could never get it quite right.

In the end, the key to the mystery turned out not to be music, but mathematics. Five years ago fellow Beatles fan and mathematician Jason Brown of Dalhousie University analysed the chord using a method called Fourier analysis, which splits sounds into their basic components. It turns out that the Beatles used a piano as well as their guitars.

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Why It Pays To Have A Younger, Smarter Wife

Beyonce Knowles, 28, has had a better education than her husband Jay-Z, 39,
as he did not gain a high school diploma

From The Daily Mail:

Forget impressing her with candlelit dinners, romantic weekends away and endless compliments.

The secret to a happy marriage is as simple as choosing a wife who is smarter than you and at least five years younger.

Scientists have developed a distinctly unromantic formula to predict how compatible a couple are, based on their ages, education and relationship history.

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Industrial Robot Hones Virtual Autopsies

Getting under the skin, virtually (Image: University of Bern)

From New Scientist:

THE small industrial robot that dominates the room is in many ways much like any other. A robotic arm smoothly wields grippers and probes - always accurate and never tired. But rather than working on cars or computers, this robot is processing human corpses.

A team of forensic pathologists at the University of Bern in Switzerland reckon it could make autopsies more accurate and also less distressing for families.

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Climate Pap Shows Human Impacts

From The BBC:

A map designed to show the predicted effects of a 4C rise in global average temperature has been unveiled by the UK government.

It shows a selection of the impacts of climate change on human activity.

These include extreme temperatures, drought, effects on water availability, agricultural productivity, the risk of forest fire and sea level rise.

The map is based on peer-reviewed science from the Met Office's Hadley Centre and other scientific groups.

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A New Royal Maya Tomb Emerges From The Tunnels Beneath Copán's Acropolis

Archaeologists Molly Fierer-Donaldson and Nereyda Alonso perch on a wooden platform as they lift artifacts from the tomb of the early Maya king discovered beneath the Oropéndola temple. (Courtesy Proyecto Oropéndola)

From Archaeology:

A new royal Maya tomb emerges from the tunnels beneath Copán's Acropolis.

The Maya kings of Copán were not interested in moving mountains. They preferred to build their own, like the pyramid now known as Temple 16. Rising 100 feet above the city's Great Plaza, it is the highest point among a group of holy buildings that archaeologists have dubbed "the Acropolis." Inside an excavation tunnel deep beneath the pyramid's surface, the face of the sun-king scowls at me from the wall of his temple. The city's ancient rulers built their temples--one on top of the next--to suit the needs of the moment. The moment I am visiting occurred shortly after A.D. 540 when the first of four temples was built around a small plaza at the top of the Acropolis.

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Volcanoes Played Pivotal Role In Ancient Ice Age, Mass Extinction

Researchers at Ohio State University have discovered that volcanoes played a pivotal role in a deadly ice age that occurred nearly half a billion years ago. This photograph shows volcanic ash beds -- formed around 455 million years ago -- layered in the rock of the Nashville Dome area in central Tennessee. (Credit: Photo by Matthew Saltzman, courtesy of Ohio State University)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Oct. 26, 2009) — Researchers here have discovered the pivotal role that volcanoes played in a deadly ice age 450 million years ago.

Perhaps ironically, these volcanoes first caused global warming -- by releasing massive amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

When they stopped erupting, Earth's climate was thrown off balance, and the ice age began.

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Fighting The Flu: Do Hand Sanitizers Work?

From Live Science:

With the amount of bottles of alcohol-based hand sanitizer available for public use at hospitals, schools, day-care facilities and malls now outnumbering the billions of viruses and bacteria on even the dirtiest of human hands, you may be wondering if this stuff actually works.

Is it better than hand washing? Does it create mutant strains of alcoholic germs? Might my retirement savings have actually increased had I invested in the makers of Purell last year?

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The 10 Best Educational Websites

From Times Online:

Online information has come on leaps and bounds since the days of the CD-ROM encyclopedia. We bring you the top education sites.

If you bought a computer a few years ago, it would invariably come with a free CD-Rom encyclopedia. At the time it seemed like a life-changer, but after an hour or two spent looking at ancient wildlife clips and a timeline about the Romans, the excitement wore off. Today’s internet equivalents are bigger, faster and more interactive, whether you’re helping youngsters with their homework or cramming for the pub quiz.

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Revealed: Why Children Of Older Men Are More Likely To Have Health Problems

Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones. Photo James Fraser

From The Independent:

Oxford study identifies mutant cells affecting sperm.

Scientists may have discovered the reason why older men are at greater risk than younger men of fathering a child who develops serious health problems such as congenital deformities, autism, or schizophrenia.

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Nasa's Ares 1-X Rocket Launch Postponed Due To Bad Weather

Ares 1-X at the launchpad in Florida. The rocket's launch has been delayed by 24 hours
Photo: NASA

From The Telegraph:

The launch of Nasa’s latest rocket, the Ares 1-X, has been postponed for 24 hours due to bad weather.

Nasa announced the news on its website and on Twitter, saying: “Ares I-X has scrubbed for today due to bad weather. :-( More details soon about next attempt.”

The launch was scheduled for between midday and 4pm GMT, but has been delayed by 24 hours, according to another Twitter post saying: “Ares I-X flight test now targeted for tomorrow Oct. 28 at 8 a.m. EDT/noon GMT. 4hr launch window. Weather 60% go”.

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Most Dramatic Internet Shake-Up In 40 Years To Allow Web Addresses In Languages From Arabic To Japanese

A Chinese internet user browses for information on Google. Soon internet addresses will be available in Chinese script along with Arabic and Cyrillic

From The Daily Mail:

International domain names or addresses that can be written in non-English characters are expected to be approved this week.

This will spark one of the biggest changes to the internet in its four-decade history.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN - the non-profit group that oversees domain names - is holding a meeting this week in Seoul.

The ICANN board will decide if will allow entire internet addresses to be in scripts that are not based on Latin letters.

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Monster Supernovae May Explain Galaxy's Mystery Haze

The mysterious WMAP haze (Image: WMAP)

From New Scientist:

WHAT is causing a mysterious "haze" of radiation at the centre of the Milky Way? It may be a load of monster supernovae kicking out radiation which is then amplified by magnetic stellar winds and turbulence near the galaxy's core.

In 2003, the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe found a patch of particularly energetic microwave radiation in the centre of our galaxy - dubbed the "WMAP haze". It was proposed that this could be caused by collisions of a new type of dark-matter particle.

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Colossal 'Sea Monster' Unearthed

From The BBC:

The fossilised skull of a colossal "sea monster" has been unearthed along the UK's Jurassic Coast.

The ferocious predator, which is called a pliosaur, terrorised the oceans 150 million years ago.

The skull is 2.4m long, and experts say it could belong to one of the largest pliosaurs ever found: measuring up to 16m in length.

The fossil, which was found by a local collector, has been purchased by Dorset County Council.

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Asteroid Over Indonesia Triple Hiroshima Bomb Power

Stocktrek Images/Getty Images

From Future Pundit:

An asteroid over Indonesia exploded too high up to cause ground damage but with enormous force.

On 8 October an asteroid detonated high in the atmosphere above South Sulawesi, Indonesia, releasing about as much energy as 50,000 tons of TNT, according to a NASA estimate released on Friday. That's about three times more powerful than the atomic bomb that levelled Hiroshima, making it one of the largest asteroid explosions ever observed.

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Warning Over 'Monster' 20ft Great White Shark Which Bit Another Great White In Half

We're going to need a bigger boat: The remains of a 14ft great white shark that was bitten nearly in half by what authorities - judging from the size of the bite marks - estimated was a 20ft monster

From The Daily Mail:

A 'monster' great white shark measuring up to 20 ft long is on the prowl off a popular Queensland beach, according to officials.

Swimmers were warned to stay out of the water off Stradbroke Island after the shark mauled another smaller great white which had been hooked on a baited drum line.

The 10-foot great white was almost bitten in half.

The fictional shark at the centre of the Steven Spielberg blockbuster Jaws was estimated to be just five feet longer.

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Like Hungry Teen, Life On Earth Had Big Growth Spurts

The Sequoia tree, the largest living thing on Earth, dwarfs humans and our ancient one-celled ancestors. Jane Wooldridge/Miami Herald/MCT

From McClatchy News:

WASHINGTON — Twice in the Earth's history, living creatures underwent astonishing growth spurts, and each time, new organisms emerged that were a million times larger than anything that had existed before.

Scientists say that's the way life on our planet expanded from tiny single-celled microbes billions of years ago to the ponderous whales and lofty sequoia trees that are today's biggest living things.

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