Sahara Sun 'To Help Power Europe'

From The BBC:

A sustainable energy initiative that will start with a huge solar project in the Sahara desert has been announced by a consortium of 12 European businesses.

The Desertec Industrial Initiative aims to supply Europe with 15% of its energy needs by 2050.

Companies who signed up to the $400bn (£240bn) venture include Deutsche Bank, Siemens and the energy provider E.On.

The consortium, which will be based in Munich, hopes to start supplying Europe with electricity by 2015.

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10 Neat Facts About Google

From Neatorama:

Sure, everybody knows that Google was created by Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin who became gazillionaires. But did you know that Google's first storage device was cobbled together with LEGO? Or that Google's first investor wrote a $100,000 check even before the company officially existed? Or that it has its own "official" Google dog?

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African Desert Rift Confirmed As New Ocean In The Making

New research confirms that the volcanic processes at work beneath the Ethiopian rift are nearly identical to those at the bottom of the world's oceans, and the rift is indeed likely the beginning of a new sea. (Credit: Imagery (c) 2009 TerraMetrics. Map data (c) 2009 Europa Technologies / Courtesy of Google Maps)

From Live Science:

Science Daily (Nov. 3, 2009) — In 2005, a gigantic, 35-mile-long rift broke open the desert ground in Ethiopia. At the time, some geologists believed the rift was the beginning of a new ocean as two parts of the African continent pulled apart, but the claim was controversial.

Now, scientists from several countries have confirmed that the volcanic processes at work beneath the Ethiopian rift are nearly identical to those at the bottom of the world's oceans, and the rift is indeed likely the beginning of a new sea.

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Caffeine Cuts Into Sleep, Even Hours Later

From Live Science:

Add one more insult to the injury of working the night shift: Drinking coffee during work hours may just keep you awake during the day.

"Caffeine is the most widely used stimulant to counteract sleepiness, yet it has detrimental effects on the sleep of night-shift workers who must slumber during the day, just as their biological clock sends a strong wake-up signal," said Julie Carrier, a University of Montreal psychology professor. "The older you get, the more affected your sleep will be by coffee."

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The Story Behind Our Photo of Grieving Chimps

Cameroon—At the Sanaga-Yong Chimpanzee Rescue Center, more than a dozen residents form a gallery of grief, looking on as Dorothy—a beloved female felled in her late 40s by heart failure—is borne to her burial.

From National Geographic:

The November issue of National Geographic magazine features a moving photograph of chimpanzees watching as one of their own is wheeled to her burial. Since it was published, the picture and story have gone viral, turning up on websites and TV shows and in newspapers around the world. For readers who’d like to know more, here’s what I learned when I interviewed the photographer, Monica Szczupider.

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Oh No, Not This Kilimanjaro Rubbish Again!

Mount Kilimanjaro - Trees put moisture into the air via evapotranspiration, upslope winds precipitate it on Kilimanjaro. Image: Wikimedia

From Watts Up With That?

Gore started this. Note to journalists everywhere: IT’S THE EVAPOTRANSPIRATION STUPID!

See this article to understand why linking snow on Kilimanjaro to small changes in global temperature is just flat wrong. The plains around Kilimanjaro have gone through years of deforestation. Less trees > less evapotranspiration > less snow.

Don’t believe me? Here’s news of a recent study from Portsmouth University Of Mt. Kilimanjaro ice waving us good-bye due to deforestation. Here’s another peer reviewed study from UAH saying the same thing.

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Sniffing Out Swine Flu

From Slate:

Researchers hope to create a better way to diagnose swine flu and other ailments.

Crude methods of detecting swine flu have so far provoked hand-wringing and no small amount of ridicule. Planeloads of travelers to China have had laser beams aimed at their foreheads, landing some under quarantine (and spurring a YouTube minifest of airport videos). This summer, Slate reported on a camp that tried to prescreen kids for flu by checking campers for fevers—and failed to detect a sick child whose physician parent brought his temperature down with Tylenol, fueling an outbreak. Meanwhile, people infected with the virus can pass it on before they develop symptoms; others never develop fever at all.

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San Francisco Bay Bridge Re-Opened

From The Next Big Future:

The San Francisco Bay Bridge was re-opened at 9AM Monday, Nov 2, 2009

An anti-vibration system has been put in place to limit stresses and additional supports installed to prevent any rods – in case they snap off again – from falling on traffic.

Initial daily inspections will be conducted of the repair system. The eyebars will also be inspected every three months. Other future inspections may require full bridge closures.

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Clever Fools: Why A High IQ Doesn't Mean You're Smart

There's more to intelligence than just IQ. (Image: David C Ellis/Getty)

From New Scientist:

IS GEORGE W. BUSH stupid? It's a question that occupied a good many minds of all political persuasions during his turbulent eight-year presidency. The strict answer is no. Bush's IQ score is estimated to be above 120, which suggests an intelligence in the top 10 per cent of the population. But this, surely, does not tell the whole story. Even those sympathetic to the former president have acknowledged that as a thinker and decision-maker he is not all there. Even his loyal speechwriter David Frum called him glib, incurious and "as a result ill-informed". The political pundit and former Republican congressman Joe Scarborough accused him of lacking intellectual depth, claiming that compared with other US presidents whose intellect had been questioned, Bush junior was "in a league by himself". Bush himself has described his thinking style as "not very analytical".

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T. Rex Teens Fought, Disfigured Each Other

Dino Fight. This graphic illustration depicts the moment that "Jane," the T. rex found at Montana's Hell Creek Formation in 2001, was disfigured by another teenage T. rex.
Illustration by Erica Lyn Schmidt

From Discovery:

Tyrannosaurus rex's reputation as a fierce, battle-hungry carnivore can now also apply to teenagers of this Late Cretaceous dinosaur, according to a new study.

The evidence comes from "Jane," who died when she was just a T. rex teen. Her fossils, found at Montana's Hell Creek Formation in 2001, reveal that another T. rex teenager severely bit her in the head, breaking her snout to the point of disfigurement.

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Glaciers Disappearing From Kilimanjaro

Scientists say Mount Kilimanjaro's glaciers, which cap Africa's highest peak,
may be gone within two decades.

From CNN:

(CNN) -- The ice and snow that cap majestic Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania are vanishing before our eyes.

If current conditions persist, climate change experts say, Kilimanjaro's world-renowned glaciers, which have covered Africa's highest peak for centuries, will be gone within the next two decades.

"In a very real sense, these glaciers are being decapitated from the surface down," said Lonnie Thompson, professor of earth sciences at Ohio State University. Thompson is co-author of a study on Kilimanjaro published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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Secure Computers Aren’t So Secure

istockphoto.com

From MIT News:

Even well-defended computers can leak shocking amounts of private data. MIT researchers seek out exotic attacks in order to shut them down.

You may update your antivirus software religiously, immediately download all new Windows security patches, and refuse to click any e-mail links ostensibly sent by your bank, but even if your computer is running exactly the way it’s supposed to, a motivated attacker can still glean a shocking amount of private information from it. The time it takes to store data in memory, fluctuations in power consumption, even the sounds your computer makes can betray its secrets. MIT researchers centered at the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab’s Cryptography and Information Security Group (CIS) study such subtle security holes and how to close them.

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Security Measures Lead To False Sense Of Security: Scientists Dispute Use Of National Security Tools

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Nov. 2, 2009) — Many of the security tools used by national governments lack scientific underpinning. This was posited by a team of thirteen international behavioural scientists, including Bruno Verschuere and Geert Crombez (Ghent University), in a recent publication in the Open Access Journal of Forensic Psychology.

The team denounces the current situation regarding the use of tools and methods to protect national security.

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My Comment: This is a small study, but its conclusions are disturbing and disheartening when one realizes the amount of monies and energies that have gone into making these procedures work in the first place.

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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