Human Evolution: Where We Came From

Analyses of a partial skeleton of a female Ardipithecus ramidus nicknamed Ardi, suggest the early human would have stood at just under 4 feet (1.2 meters) tall with both primitive traits, such as a small brains size similar to living chimpanzees and those shared with later hominids, such as bipedal posture. Credit: © 2009, J.H. Matternes.

From Live Science:

The dawn of humanity remains a fascinating mystery. What started our distant ancestors on the evolutionary path that led to us?

Spectacular fossils and a host of other data uncovered in the last decade are revealing key details to solving this riddle. As often than not, however, these clues raise as many questions as they answer.

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How The Ancient Nazca Civilisation Sealed Its Own Fate By Cutting Down Forests C

An ancient geoglyph of a hummingbird (colibri in Spanish) on the edge to the Nazca plains was probably inscribed here as an offering for water/fertility in the fields that lie below

From The Daily Mail:

The mysterious people who etched the strange network of 'Nazca Lines' across deserts in Peru hastened their own demise by clearing forests 1,500 years ago, according to British scientists.

The Nazca people, famed for giant animal drawings most clearly visible from the air, became unable to grow enough food in nearby valleys because the lack of trees made the climate too dry.

Archaeologists examining the remains of the Nazca, who once flourished in the valleys of south coastal Peru, discovered a sequence of human-induced events which led to their 'catastrophic' collapse around 500 AD.

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Petroleum's Long Good-bye

Credit: David Rosenberg/Getty Images

From Technology Review:

For the next few decades at least, liquid hydrocarbons--gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel--will continue to be the mainstays of transportation. They're cheap; refueling is fast; and their energy density, crucial to long-distance travel, is hard to beat.

"Advanced technology is going to happen slowly," says Daniel Sperling, the director of the Institute for Transportation Studies at the University of California at Davis and a member of the California Air Resources Board. "The focus needs to be on making conventional technology more efficient."

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Psychic 'Mind-Reading' Computer Will Show Your Thoughts On Screen

From The Daily Mail:

A mind-reading machine that can produce pictures of what a person is seeing or remembering has been developed by scientists.

The device studies patterns of brainwave activity and turns them into a moving image on a computer screen.

While the idea of a telepathy machine might sound like something from science fiction, the scientists say it could one day be used to solve crimes.

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European Water Mission Lifts Off

From The BBC:

A European satellite is set to provide major new insights into how water is cycled around the Earth.

The Smos spacecraft will make the first global maps of the amount of moisture held in soils and of the quantity of salts dissolved in the oceans.

The data will have wide uses but should improve weather forecasts and warnings of extreme events, such as floods.

A Russian Rokot launcher carrying Smos lifted off from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Russia at 0450 (0150 GMT) on Monday.

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Long-Range Taser Raises Fears Of Shock And Injury

A new, long-range Taser weapon could be launched from standard 40-millimetre grenade launchers (Image: SGT April L. Johnson/US DoD)

From New Scientist:

INCREASING the distance between yourself and a potentially dangerous assailant is always a good idea - even if your ultimate aim is to render them insensible. That appears to be the thinking behind a Pentagon project, now in its final stages, to perfect a projectile capable of delivering an electric shock to incapacitate a person tens of metres away. It will be fired from a standard 40-millimetre grenade launcher.

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My Comment: A useful weapon if your goal is to incapacitate and capture a certain target.

Lions Had A Taste For Human Flesh

Hungry for Humans. In 1898, two man-eating lions terrorized railway workers, claiming 35 lives. The remains of the two lions are now on display at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. Getty Images

From Discovery News:

The nightly attacks by two man-eating lions terrified railway workers and brought construction to a halt in one of east Africa's most notorious onslaughts more than a hundred years ago. But the death toll, scientists now say, wasn't as high as previously thought.

Over nine months the two voracious hunters claimed 35 lives -- no small figure, but much less than some accounts of as many as 135 victims.

It was 1898, when laborers from India and local natives building the Uganda Railroad across Kenya became the prey for the pair, a case that has been the subject of numerous accounts and at least three movies.

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Inside One Of The World's Largest Data Centers

From CNET:

CHICAGO--On the outside, Microsoft's massive new data center resembles the other buildings in the industrial area.

Even the inside of the building doesn't look like that much. The ground floor looks like a large indoor parking lot filled with a few parked trailers.

It's what's inside those trailers, though, that is the key to Microsoft's cloud-computing efforts. Each of the shipping containers in the Chicago data center houses anywhere from 1,800 to 2,500 servers, each of which can be serving up e-mail, managing instant messages, or running applications for Microsoft's soon-to-be-launched cloud-based operating system--Windows Azure.

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Web Could Run Out Of Addresses Next Year, Warn Web Experts

We could run out of web addresses in the next two years, unless businesses and government organisations heed the advice of the European Commission Photo: GETTY

From The Telegraph:

Businesses urgently need to upgrade to IPv6, a new version of the internet's addressing protocol that will hugely increase the number of available addresses.

A survey, conducted by the European Commission, found that few companies are prepared for the switch from the current naming protocol, IPv4, to the new regime, IPv6. Web experts have warned that we could run out of internet addresses within the next two years unless more companies migrate to the new platform.

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This Is One Cool Video Of A Saw And A Finger

Electric Dreams

On the small screen Amazon's Kindle is one of 40 electronic readers using E-Ink technology. (Photograph by Tim Llewellyn)

From Boston.com:

One Cambridge company has built its success on Kindle. But can it stave off competitors and make good on its vision of revolutionizing everything from credit cards to clothing?

The hottest technology company in the Boston area sits in a low-slung 100-year-old converted factory in the West Cambridge Industrial Park, not far from the Concord Avenue rotary. Inside its modest lobby hangs a 2-by-4-foot display. Messages scroll across it: “Welcome to E-Ink . . . the time is now 2:58 p.m. ’’ It’s 30 minutes slow.

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Blue Energy Seems Feasible And Offers Considerable Benefits

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Nov. 2, 2009) — Generating energy on a large scale by mixing salt and fresh water is both technically possible and practical. The worldwide potential for this clean form of energy -- 'blue energy' or 'blue electricity' -- is enormous. However, it will be necessary to work actively on several essential technological developments and to invest heavily in large-scale trials.

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CSN Editor: For more info on Blue Energy, go here.

'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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