'Breaking' Curveballs Are Just an Illusion

Zhong-Lin Lu, a professor of cognitive neuroscience at USC, who along with USC alumni Emily Knight and Robert Ennis, and Arthur Shapiro, associate professor of psychology at American University, developed a simple visual demo that suggests a curveball's break is, at least in part, a trick of the eye. Credit: USC

From Live Science:

The answer to the question of whose curveball breaks harder — that of the Yankees' A.J. Burnett or the Phillies' Cole Hamels — may be neither. Zhong-Lin Lu, professor of cognitive neuroscience at USC, along with colleagues from USC and American University, developed a simple visual demo that suggests a curveball's break is, at least in part, a trick of the eye. Their demo won the Best Visual Illusion of the Year prize at the Vision Sciences meeting earlier this year. Try it here. A related press release is here. The curveball's effect is due to batters being forced to switch between peripheral vision and central vision during a swing. For more on the research, see Lu's Web page. For more on Lu, read his responses to the ScienceLives 10 Questions below.

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'Fear Detector' Being Developed That Will Be Able To Sniff Out Terrorists

Photo: Security: Checkpoints could one day use 'fear detectors' if a research project is successful.

From The Daily Mail:

A device that smells human fear is being developed by British scientists and could soon be sniffing out anxious terrorists.

The technology relies on recognising a pheromone - or scent signal - produced in sweat when a person is scared.

Researchers hope the 'fear detector' will make it possible to identify individuals at check points who are up to no good.

Terrorists with murder in mind, drug smugglers, or criminals on the run are likely to be very fearful of being discovered.

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Getting Beyond Petroleum Won't Be Easy

Nearly 1,500 cars are added to Beijing’s roads daily. Credit: Xiayang Liu/Corbis

From Technology Review:

Transportation defines our civilization. Where we live and work, the structure of our cities, the flow of global commerce--all have been shaped by transportation technologies. But modern transportation's reliance on fossil fuels cannot be sustained. Passenger planes, trains, and automobiles were responsible for nearly four billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions in 2005--about 14 percent of the carbon dioxide emitted globally that year. If we continue to rely almost exclusively on petroleum to power these vehicles, they will be responsible for 11 billion to 18 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions in 2050. That's because developing nations--which are home to 82 percent of the world's population and will be responsible for 98 percent of population growth in coming years--are on the verge of mass motorization. Auto ownership in the developing world is growing at a rate of 30 percent per year (see "Cleaner Vehicles by the Million").

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Stealth-Mode Wind Turbines

Photo: Stealth mode: This turbine was fitted with a "stealth" blade last month. Credit: QinetiQ

From Technology Review:

Coatings and composites ease the air-traffic worries dogging wind power.

Last month Danish wind turbine company Vestas and U.K. defense contractor QinetiQ demonstrated the first "stealth" wind-turbine blade--their solution to the aviation radar interference problem holding up the installation of gigawatts-worth of proposed wind farms worldwide. Vestas composites specialist Steve Appleton says the firm is eager to test a complete stealth turbine and begin limited production by the end of 2010. "Clearly this technology, if proven fully and then adopted by Vestas, would give us a competitive advantage," says Appleton.

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File-Sharers Are Big Spenders Too

From The BBC:

People who download music illegally also spend an average of £77 a year buying it legitimately, a survey has found.

Those who claimed not to use peer-to-peer filesharing sites such as The Pirate Bay spent a yearly average of just £44.

Almost one in 10 of those questioned aged between 16 and 50 said they downloaded music illegally.

However, eight out of 10 of that group also bought CDs, vinyl and as MP3s.

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Equatorial Volcano Shows Signs Of Imminent Eruption

From Watts Up With That?

Colombia volcano rumbles back to life. The volcano is about 1.2 degrees north of the Equator.

BOGOTA, Colombia — Officials in southern Colombia have issued a code orange alert for the newly-active Galeras volcano which they said could erupt in a matter of days or weeks, according to the state-run Geological and Mining Institute.

Authorities said they are continuing to monitor the nearby Huila volcano, also on orange alert, where sizeable volcanic activity also has been detected in recent weeks.

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ICANN OKs International Domains: The Pros And Cons

From PC World:

ICANN's approval of non-Latin character domains undoubtedly is a game-changing decision in the history of the World Wide Web. With scheduled to start popping up in the middle of next year, many people are debating if this digital support for more distinctly international sites balances with potential security threats and fragmentation of the Internet.

Here are a few pros and cons to consider as we move away from the traditional ASCII based-Web.

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Where Do Ghosts Come From?

There's something scarily magnetic about Muncaster Castle (Image: Lee Stamper)

From New Scientist:

AS MEDIEVAL CASTLE bedrooms go, this one looks the part. Disturbing Flemish tapestries share the walls with stern portraits. On close inspection, the ornate fireplace's iron firedogs turn out to have devils' heads. This place is supposedly haunted by the ghost of Tom Skelton, a 16th-century jester said to have committed murder. The malevolent face of "Tom Fool" stares from a dimly lit oil painting just outside the bedroom.

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Air Force Uses Airborne Lasers to Create High-Speed Data Links

Airborne Laser Link Air Force phone home Brian Rhea, Director, Corporate Communications, AOptix Technologies

From Popular Science:

Researchers have tested the laser links at distances of almost 22 miles during flight.

Manned Air Force jets and drones could soon send high quality video and audio by using ultra-high bandwidth lasers, transmitting critical battlefield data faster than ever. The Air Force Office of Scientific Research has conducted experiments that transmit data without interference across almost 22 miles, both in the air and on the ground.

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Nanoparticle Coating Prevents Freezing Rain Buildup

An aluminum plate glazed with Gao's superhydrophobic coating (left) repelling the supercooled water. For the uncoated plate (right), the water freezes on contact and ice accumulates. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of Pittsburgh)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Oct. 30, 2009) — Preventing the havoc wrought when freezing rain collects on roads, power lines, and aircrafts could be only a few nanometers away. A University of Pittsburgh-led team demonstrates in the Nov. 3 edition of "Langmuir" a nanoparticle-based coating developed in the lab of Di Gao, a chemical and petroleum engineering professor in Pitt's Swanson School of Engineering, that thwarts the buildup of ice on solid surfaces and can be easily applied.

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Recipe for Mass Extinction: Add Algae and Stir Controversy

A new hypothesis claims toxins from algae played a major role in all five mass extinctions. Shown here, an algal bloom of blue-green algae. Credit: Fond du Lac County Wisconsin

From Live Science:

Mass extinctions that wiped entire species off the face of the Earth in a relative blink of the eye are often blamed on catastrophic occurrences, such as an asteroid crash or large volcanic eruption. But a new hypothesis points to a different culprit: lowly algae.

In the past 540 million years, five massive extinctions are thought to have killed off, in each case, some 50 percent to 90 percent of animal species. A new study suggests that toxins from algae played a major role in all five extinctions, including the most recent and most well-known – the death of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. The idea was presented at the annual Geological Society of America meeting Oct. 19.

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How Laptops Took Over The World

Laptops on sale in California. Photograph: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

From The Guardian:

The rise of portable computing has forced companies to rethink how they let staff work – and is shifting the balance of power in the IT industry.

In January 2003, Steve Jobs announced to a slightly surprised Macworld audience that "this is going to be the year of the notebook for Apple". There was a clear ambition to push up the sales of portables – on which margins tend to be better than on desktops.

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Profile Of A 'Spam King'

Sanford Wallace is better known as 'Spamford' or the 'Spam King' on the internet

From the Telegraph:

Facebook has been awarded $711 million in damages after successfully suing Sanford Wallace for sending mail and making posts without the permission of the site or its users. But just who is the so-called 'Spam King'?

Sanford Wallace is better known as "Spamford" on the web. The Las Vegas-based "Spam King" accessed Facebook members' accounts without their permission, and sent out fake Wall posts and spam messages from the compromised accounts.

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The Unromantic Truth About Why We Kiss - To SpreadGgerms

Pucker up: Kissing the same person for about six months provides optimum protection from potentially deadly germs, says Dr Colin Hendrie

From The Daily Mail:

It is an international symbol of love and romance. But the kiss may have evolved for reasons that are far more practical - and less alluring.

British scientists believe it developed to spread germs.

They say that the uniquely human habit allows a bug that is dangerous in pregnancy to be passed from man to woman to give her time to build up immunity.

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Is Hydrogen The Future? This Car Goes 0 To 60 In 12 Seconds.

From Christian Science Monitor:

US Energy Secretary Steven Chu has said that hydrogen-fueled cars will not be pratical for a decade. But researchers at Hyundai-Kia Motors in South Korea say they're on course to make them in six years.

Yongin, South Korea - When the US government cut funding for hydrogen-fueled cars last May, Energy Secretary Steven Chu said such vehicles will not be practical for another decade or two.

Lim Tae-won thinks he can prove Secretary Chu wrong.

Dr. Lim runs the team at Hyundai-Kia Motors that is developing hydrogen fuel cell technology. And they are on course, he says, to mass produce hydrogen cars in six years.

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Sleep Deprivation Cut Mental Function

From Future Pundit:

The brain downshifts to simpler ways of processing information when lacking sleep.

Westchester, Ill. —A study in the Nov.1 issue of the journal Sleep shows that sleep deprivation causes some people to shift from a more automatic, implicit process of information categorization (information-integration) to a more controlled, explicit process (rule-based). This use of rule-based strategies in a task in which information-integration strategies are optimal can lead to potentially devastating errors when quick and accurate categorization is fundamental to survival.

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Autopia Planes, Trains, Automobiles And The Future of Transportation Little X-Plane Pushes Bottom Edge Of The Envelope

From Autopia:

Flight test programs at Edwards Air Force Base and NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center usually are off-limits to outsiders, but we got a peek at one of its coolest programs, the X-48B, when the Air Force recently threw open the gates for an open house.

The X-48B is the latest in a long line of experimental X-planes, and the joint venture between NASA and Boeing’s Phantom Works is unlike most that came before. The blended wing-body aircraft isn’t some sort of sierra hotel fighter jet, it doesn’t have a pilot on board and it’s not even full-size. Despite being an

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Why Three Buses Come At Once, And How To Avoid It

Bused up. Commuters can help keep transport moving (Image: Tony Kyriacou/Rex Features)

From New Scientist:

Anyone who has waited for a bus knows the routine: you wait far longer than you should, then three come along at once. The problem, called "platooning", plagues buses, trains and even elevators.

Now systems complexity researchers Carlos Gershenson and Luis Pineda of the National Autonomous University of Mexico have devised a mathematical model that shows how the problem might be prevented: transport managers need to get a little meaner about boarding times, and passengers should realise that jumping on the first train or bus that arrives won't always help them reach a destination faster.

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California Searchers Scour for Survivors of Midair Crash

From Popular Mechanics:

SAN DIEGO (AP) -- Aircraft and ships are scouring the ocean off San Diego for any signs of survivors of a nighttime collision of a Coast Guard C-130 airplane and a Marine Corps attack helicopter.

A crew of seven was aboard the airplane and two were aboard the helicopter when the aircraft collided Thursday night 50 miles west of the San Diego County coast and 15 miles east of San Clemente Island, a Navy training site.

Coast Guard Petty Officer Levi Read says the search is focused on the area of a debris field.

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Zoooooom via University of Utah

From Popular Science:

One of the most difficult aspects of science is conceptualizing some of the unbelievably large, (and unimaginably small) numbers that routinely pop up. The Universe is 5.5 x 10^23 miles across. A human hair is about 7 x 10^-4 inches across. Hard to imagine how things like cells, proteins and atoms all relate to one another. Now, at least for the very small things, the University of Utah has developed a fun little Flash graphic to make sense of all of it.

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