In the Mediterranean, Killer Tsunamis From an Ancient Eruption

From The New York Times:

The massive eruption of the Thera volcano in the Aegean Sea more than 3,000 years ago produced killer waves that raced across hundreds of miles of the Eastern Mediterranean to inundate the area that is now Israel and probably other coastal sites, a team of scientists has found.

The team, writing in the October issue of Geology, said the new evidence suggested that giant tsunamis from the catastrophic eruption hit “coastal sites across the Eastern Mediterranean littoral.” Tsunamis are giant waves that can crash into shore, rearrange the seabed, inundate vast areas of land and carry terrestrial material out to sea.

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The New Science of Temptation

Lev Dolgatshjov

From Scientific American:

What happens when Harvard scientists use a brain scanner to look for the devil inside?

The power to resist temptation has been extolled by philosophers, psychologists, teachers, coaches, and mothers. Anyone with advice on how you should live your life has surely spoken to you of its benefits. It is the path to the good life, professional and personal satisfaction, social adjustment and success, performance under pressure, and the best way for any child to avoid a penetrating stare and a cold dinner. Of course, this assumes that our natural urges are a thing to be resisted – that there is a devil inside, luring you to cheat, offend, err, and annoy. New research has begun to question this assumption.

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The World’s 18 Strangest Bridges: Gallery

From Popular Mechanics:

Some bridges are engineered with nothing but utility in mind—for these, aesthetic design is secondary to safety and longevity. And given that San Francisco's Bay Bridge was just closed for six days, this makes sense. But advances in design software and construction materials have given bridge architects opportunities to focus on original, striking and sometimes whimsical designs that impress, while keeping function in mind. Here are some of our favorite unusual bridges'and why they're architecturally striking.

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Object-Detection Software To Enable Search Within Videos

People Detector Where's Elvis? Tony Han/MU

From Popular Science:

Detection algorithms help computers find humans, or anything else, in YouTube videos or surveillance footage.

Imagine running a Google search for basketball videos, and having your computer sift through actual footage of online videos rather than just the text of the descriptions. A new type of software could enable computers to run searches inside videos, and pick out humans and objects alike.

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80 Min Exercise Per Week Prevents Visceral Weight Gain

From Future Pundit:

Fat around your internal organs is thought to be a much bigger risk factor for heart disease than fat near the surface of the skin. Well, if you go on a diet, exercise, get your weight down, and then eventually go off the diet continued exercise will prevent the resulting weight gain from happening where the risk factor is greatest.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - A study conducted by exercise physiologists in the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Department of Human Studies finds that as little as 80 minutes a week of aerobic or resistance training helps not only to prevent weight gain, but also to inhibit a regain of harmful visceral fat one year after weight loss.

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Speed Limit To The Pace Of Evolution, Biologists Say

E. coli growing in a petri dish. (Credit: iStockphoto/Linde Stewart)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Nov. 3, 2009) — Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have developed a theoretical model that informs the understanding of evolution and determines how quickly an organism will evolve using a catalogue of "evolutionary speed limits." The model provides quantitative predictions for the speed of evolution on various "fitness landscapes," the dynamic and varied conditions under which bacteria, viruses and even humans adapt.

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Recent Midwest Quakes Called Aftershocks From 1800s

Each cross marks an earthquake recorded in the New Madrid seismic zone since 1974

From Live Science:

The small earthquakes that sporadically rattle the central United States may actually be aftershocks from a few extremely large quakes that occurred in the region almost 200 years ago, according to a new study

The New Madrid Earthquakes, which struck between December 1811 and February 1812, are some of the strongest seismic events ever to occur in the contiguous United States in recorded history. The largest quake is estimated to have been 8.0 in magnitude and was powerful enough to temporarily make the Mississippi River flow backwards. The heart of the seismic activity was near the town of New Madrid, Missouri, close to the Kentucky and Tennessee borders.

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Taste Test: The Biotechnology Of Wine

One of life's pleasures (Image: Carlos Navajas/Getty)

From The new Scientist:

Wine-making is one of the oldest and most influential forms of biotechnology. People have drunk wine down the millennia for all sorts of reasons: it provides a safer more nutritious alternative to water, a social lubricant, a mind-altering medicinal, a ceremonial drink or even a source of inspiration. Above all else, wine is one of life's great pleasures.

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Implantable Silicon-Silk Electronics

Image: Silicon on silk: This clear silk film, about one centimeter squared, has six silicon transistors on its surface. These flexible devices can be implanted in mice like the one in this image without causing any harm, and the silk degrades over time. The orange liquid on the hair is a disinfectant used during the surgery. Credit: Rogers/Omenetto

From Technology Review:

Biodegradable circuits could enable better neural interfaces and LED tattoos.

By building thin, flexible silicon electronics on silk substrates, researchers have made electronics that almost completely dissolve inside the body. So far the research group has demonstrated arrays of transistors made on thin films of silk. While electronics must usually be encased to protect them from the body, these electronics don't need protection, and the silk means the electronics conform to biological tissue. The silk melts away over time and the thin silicon circuits left behind don't cause irritation because they are just nanometers thick.

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Great White Sharks 'Hang Out' Together

Researchers have found that great white sharks return to the same areas to hold annual meetings
Photo: BARCROFT

From The Telegraph:

Great white sharks, previously thought to be solitary hunters scouring the seas for prey, may also have a sociable side.

Researchers have found that the fearsome predators return to the same areas to hold annual meetings, congregating to forage or mate together in their hundreds if not thousands.

One "hotspot", between Hawaii and Mexico, is so popular that the scientists have named it the "white shark cafe".

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X-ray Voted Most Important Modern Discovery By Public

Photo: X-rays can reveal broken bones and build up more detailed pictures of outer space.

From The Daily Mail:

The X-ray has been voted the most important modern discovery by the British public, in a Science Museum poll.

The antibiotic agent penicillin came second followed by the DNA double helix.

Nearly 50,000 visitors voted for the greatest achievements in science, engineering and technology from a shortlist drawn up by museum curators.

The poll, one of the events marking the museum's centenary year, singled out the X-ray machine as the scientific advance with the greatest impact.

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Space Hotel 'On Schedule To Open In 2012'

An artist's impression of the flight, displayed on Galactic Suite's website. Galactic Suite

From The Independent:

A company behind plans to open the first hotel in space says it is on target to accept its first paying guests in 2012 despite critics questioning the investment and time frame for the multi-billion dollar project.

The Barcelona-based architects of The Galactic Suite Space Resort say it will cost 3 million euro (£2.6 million) for a three-night stay at the hotel, with this price including an eight-week training course on a tropical island.

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India's Space Ambitions Taking Off

Indian Space Research Organisation, via European Pressphoto Agency

From Washington Post:

Nation plans astronaut-training center, manned space mission as it seeks higher profile.

PANNITHITTU, India -- In this seaside village, the children of farmers and fishermen aspire to become something that their impoverished parents never thought possible: astronauts.

Through community-based programs, India's space agency has been partnering with schools in remote areas such as this one, helping to teach students about space exploration and cutting-edge technology. The agency is also training thousands of young scientists and, in 2012, will open the nation's first astronaut-training center in the southern city of Bangalore.

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Gene-Makers Put Forward Security Standards

From Scientific American:

But few companies are willing to sign up yet.

Several gene-synthesis companies yesterday finalized a code of conduct that outlines how to screen orders for synthetic DNA that could be used for terrorist activities.

The code, which has been in the works from the International Association of Synthetic Biology (IASB) in Heidelberg, Germany, for a year and a half, reflects for the most part what has become common practice in gene-synthesis companies. Before filling orders, the firms compare the gene sequences with those from organisms on lists of pathogens, such as the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's select-agents list. Most companies then follow up 'hits' with human investigation of whether the match is valid and the purchaser is legitimate.

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The Hidden Uses of Everyday Explosives

Impact Study The slug and gunpowder have been removed from the cartridge, so it’s only the primer that’s going off when it’s hit from below by the point of a center punch (triggered by pulling a string from a safe distance). Mike Walker

From Popular Science:

When you stop and look, you may be surprised to find yourself surrounded by all kinds of explosives--some that detonate easier than dynamite.

The explosive C4, a favorite for everything from demolition to terrorism to action movies, is in fact one of the safest explosives. How can an explosive be safe? If it’s hard to set off by accident. C4 is so stable that you can light it with a match (it burns but does not explode) or shoot it (it splatters but does not explode). To go bang, it requires a detonator that produces both heat and shock.

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Shedding Light On The Cosmic Skeleton

Astronomers have tracked down a gigantic, previously unknown assembly of galaxies located almost seven billion light-years away from us. The discovery, made possible by combining two of the most powerful ground-based telescopes in the world -- ESO's Very Large Telescope and NAOJ's Subaru Telescope -- is the first observation of such a prominent galaxy structure in the distant Universe, providing further insight into the cosmic web and how it formed. This 3-D illustration shows the position of the galaxies and reveals the extent of this gigantic structure. The galaxies located in the newly discovered structure are shown in red. Galaxies that are either in front or behind the structure are shown in blue. (Credit: ESO/L. Calçada/Subaru/National Astronomical Observatory of Japan/M. Tanaka)

From The Science Daily:

Science Daily (Nov. 4, 2009) — Astronomers have tracked down a gigantic, previously unknown assembly of galaxies located almost seven billion light-years away from us. The discovery, made possible by combining two of the most powerful ground-based telescopes in the world, is the first observation of such a prominent galaxy structure in the distant Universe, providing further insight into the cosmic web and how it formed.

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Frozen, Hard To Reach, And Worth It

This photo was taken out the window of a NASA DC-8 research aircraft from 2,000 feet above the Amundsen Sea in West Antarctica on Oct. 21, 2009. Credit: NASA/Jane Peterson

From Live Science:

A recent photo captured by a NASA research airplane shows a giant iceberg in the Antarctic.

The photo, taken Oct. 21, was part of the space agency's Operation Ice Bridge airborne Earth science mission to study ice sheets, sea ice, and ice shelves at the bottom of the world.

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Fix Climate Change Or Else, Say Military Top Brass

From The New Scientist:

IF THE world fails to act soon on climate change, "preserving security and stability even at current levels will become increasingly difficult". That's the blunt message of a statement released in Washington DC (PDF) last week by 10 high-ranking military officials from Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and the US.

Preserving stability will become increasingly difficult if the world fails to act on climate change

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Software Listens For Hints Of Depression

Image: Signal processing: Researchers at Cogito Health are developing mathematical models to detect vocal cues that may signal depression. The last graph represents the software’s confidence level in determining depression, from the beginning to the end of a vocal recording. In this example, the data shows a very high likelihood of depression. Credit: Cogito Health

From Technology Review:

A large-scale trial will test whether software can identify depressed patients.

It's a common complaint in any communication breakdown: "It's not what you said, it's how you said it." For professor Sandy Pentland and his group at MIT's Media Lab, the tone and pitch of a person's voice, the length and frequency of pauses and speed of speech can reveal much about his or her mood.

While most speech recognition software concentrates on turning words and phrases into text, Pentland's group is developing algorithms that analyze subtle cues in speech to determine whether someone is feeling awkward, anxious, disconnected or depressed.

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Darwinian Evolutionary Theory Will Help Find Alien Life, Says NasaSscientist

Darwin's theory of evolution can help us find life on alien planets, says a Nasa scientist Photo: WIKIMEDIA COMMONS - IVO SHANDOR

From The Telegraph:

Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution may give pointers in the search for alien life, says a Nasa astrobiologist.

In a talk marking the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species, a Nasa scientist said that Darwinian evolution will be the driving force of life anywhere in the universe, and we should use its predictions to decide where to look.

Dr John Baross, a researcher at the Nasa Astrobiology Institute, said: "I really feel that Darwinian evolution is a defining feature of all life.

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