FUTURE HUMANS: Four Ways We May, Or May Not, Evolve

Looking backward, evolutionary theory—popularized by Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, published in 1859—has traced humanity's roots to fossil apes. Now, 150 years later, scientists are looking forward and seeing a range of evolutionary futures for humans. Will our descendants be muscle-bound cyborgs? Electronic immortals? Or is human evolution dead? Photograph by Rebecca Hale, NGS

From National Geographic:

But where is evolution taking us? Will our descendants hurtle through space as relatively unchanged as the humans on the starship Enterprise? Will they be muscle-bound cyborgs? Or will they chose to digitize their consciousnesses—becoming electronic immortals?

And as odd as the possibilities may seem, it's worth remembering that, 150 years ago, the ape-to-human scenario in On the Origin of Species struck many as nothing so much as monkey business.

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Shrink-To-Fit Spacesuit Eases Astronauts' Workload

Made to fit
(Image: Space Systems Laboratory/Department of Aerospace Engineering/University of Maryland)

From New Scientist:

FORGET the complex choreography involved in putting on a spacesuit: astronauts will one day be able to get suited and booted in seconds by stepping through the neck of an overlarge, part-robotic spacesuit.

So say engineers David Akin and Shane Jacobs at the University of Maryland in College Park.

Once you're inside the baggy suit, its upper torso contracts using pneumatic artificial muscles to ensure a perfect fit.

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Cassini Spacecraft Snaps Highest-Res Images of Saturn's Enceladus Moon

'Tiger Stripe' Terrain Cassini/CICLOPS

From Popular Science:

On Saturday, the Cassini spacecraft conducted a flyby of Saturn's sixth-largest moon, Enceladus, snapping some rather breathtaking photos along the way. The flyby, whose purpose was to gather the highest-resolution photos ever of the moon's southern polar region and to thermally map the "tiger stripe" terrain there, gathered some stunning images including some of the geyser-like plumes Cassini discovered on the moon's surface during previous flybys.

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Solar Power Costs 50% Lower Than Last Year

From Scientific American:

New research by leading alternative energy research firm New Energy Finance finds that solar power will cost less by about 50% at the end of 2009 compared to the end of 2008.

The costs are pre-subsidy, so they could be much lower if you take better government subsidies into account.

But it isn’t only solar that’s down in cost. It’s other renewable energy sources, too.
The research company found that equipment costs (in solar, wind, and other sectors) decreased throughout the year but these were offset by increasing financing costs. However, equipment prices are expected to continue falling whereas the financing market is expected to get better.

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Virtopsy: Autopsy Without The Scalpel

A dummy goes into the magnetic resonance scanner Photo: Reuters

From the Telegraph:

A Swiss lab has developed a way of establishing how someone died without damaging the evidence.

A team of Swiss doctors is conducting about 100 autopsies a year without cutting open bodies, instead using devices including an optical 3D scanner that can detect up to 80 per cent of the causes of death.

Michael Thali, a professor at the University of Berne, and his colleagues have developed a system called "virtopsy", which since 2006 has been used to examine all sudden deaths or those of unnatural causes in the Swiss capital.

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Volunteers Wanted for Simulated 520-Day Mars Mission

A special isolation facility hosts the Mars500 study. (Credit: ESA - S. Corvaja)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Nov. 28, 2009) — Starting in 2010, an international crew of six will simulate a 520-day round-trip to Mars, including a 30-day stay on the martian surface. In reality, they will live and work in a sealed facility in Moscow, Russia, to investigate the psychological and medical aspects of a long-duration space mission. ESA is looking for European volunteers to take part.

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Air America

From Discovery News:

This is pretty stunning, and quite beautiful in its own way.

Aaron Koblin, a graphic artist and game designer has produced a remarkable animation, built using real data, of a 24-hour stretch of commercial air travel into, out of, and within the United States. Watch how the lights, and flights, build with the advance of dawn from east to west.

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Pictured: The Moment A Whale Delivers A Deadly 'Karate Chop' Blow To A Killer Shark

Moments before the deadly blow. The raised fin is about to come crashing down like a karate chop on a shark (circled). It has been driven to the surface by the orca before this coup de grace.

From The Daily Mail:

These incredible pictures demonstrate how orca whales use a 'karate chop' to stun and then finish off killer sharks.

In a rare battle of beasts these images show how several populations of skilled killer whales around the world have learned how to overcome huge sharks, that most animals give a wide berth.

Using a combination of superior brain power and brute force, the highly-intelligent orcas are able to catch and eat what many think of as the ocean's top predators.

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Hacker Gary McKinnon To Appeal After Extradition Blow

Photo: Supporters make the point that Gary McKinnon has Asperger's syndrome

From the BBC:

The "devastated" lawyers for computer hacker Gary McKinnon are to challenge the home secretary's decision not to block his extradition to the US.

They said they would make a last-ditch attempt after Alan Johnson said medical grounds could not prevent it.

Glasgow-born Mr McKinnon, 43, who has Asperger's syndrome, is accused of breaking into US military computers. He says he was seeking UFO evidence.

Now of Wood Green, London, he faces up to 60 years in prison if convicted.

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Google Tests Redesigned Search Page

Google’s new look? The search giant is testing a revamped results page.
Click the image for a larger view.

From Web Monkey:

Google appears to be testing a possible redesign of its iconic search page. Whether or not the new prototype will ever become official remains unknown, but thanks to some clever JavaScript you can check out the new look today.

The Google watchers over at Google Blogoscoped have found a snippet of JavaScript you can paste into your browser’s URL field which will activate the new look. Because the JavaScript code sets a new cookie, you’ll most likely need to log out of your Google account before it works.

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Pacific Northwest Earthquakes Could Strike Closer To Home

From Wired Science:

Major earthquakes occurring along the Cascadia subduction zone off the coast of Washington state could strike closer to the state’s urban areas than some models have suggested, a new study notes.

GPS data gathered at dozens of sites throughout western Washington hint that slippage along the interface between the North American and Juan de Fuca tectonic plates could occur as deep as 25 kilometers below the Earth’s surface, says Timothy I. Melbourne, a geodesist at Central Washington University in Ellensburg. That depth, in turn, would place the epicenters of quakes triggered along that portion of the subduction zone — some of which could exceed magnitude 9 —more than 60 kilometers inland, he and CWU colleague James Chapman report online and in the November 28 Geophysical Research Letters.

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A.I. Anchors Replace Human Reporters In Newsroom Of The Future

A.I. Anchors Engineers at Northwestern have created an entire newsroom operation using artificial intelligence, even using avatars to anchor the evening news.

From Popular Science:

In the great media reshuffling ushered in by the Internet Age, print journalists have suffered the most from online journalism’s ascent. Broadcast journalists, however, may be the next group to feel technology’s cruel sting. Engineers at Northwestern University have created virtual newscasts that use artificial intelligence to collect stories, produce graphics and even anchor broadcasts via avatars.

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Researchers Turn To Artificial Intelligence And Real Data to Improve War Games

Image: VIRTUAL WAR IS HELL University of Maryland researchers are developing a virtual world designed to help intelligence analysts simulate the consequences of their antiterrorism policies. IMAGE COURTESY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND

From Scientific American:

University of Maryland researchers have created a virtual world they hope intelligence analysts will use to develop antiterrorism policies.

Virtual worlds such as Second Life and World of Warcraft allow players to adopt virtual personas or engage in combat on digital battlefields, but what if similar technology could let government intelligence analysts play out antiterrorism scenarios that would help with better understandings of the consequences of Middle East policy recommendations? A team of researchers at the University of Maryland in College Park, Md., believe they have created just such a virtual world using computational models that mimic terrorist behavior based a variety of factors, including social, political and religious beliefs.

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My Comment: I guess this will be the closest that we will ever come to mimicking real war/conflict/terrorism scenarios.

Forget Earth - Let's Move To Mars!

A reconstructed landscape showing the Shalbatana lake on Mars as it may have looked roughly 3.4 billion years ago. AFP/Getty

From The Independent:

If planet Earth becomes too crowded, where else in the solar system could humankind live? Space expert Steven Cutts considers our options.

For decades, the most popular destination for migrants the world over has been the United States. It was in America that the downtrodden and the footloose of this world saw their destiny. But America's ability to accommodate such people has always been finite. Billions of poverty-stricken people today crave the comfort and the affluence of a better world and almost none of them can have it. The increase in global population now exceeds the entire population of the US every five years; if migration is the solution to the problems of mankind then we're going to have to find a different planet.

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Bacteria From Mars Found Inside Ancient Meteorite

Mars Photo: GETTY

From The Telegraph:

Martian bacteria arrived on Earth on a meteorite which smashed into the Antarctic 13,000 years ago, Nasa scientists believe.

Their fossilised remains have been found in the rock, which was blasted out of Mars 16 million years ago as the solar system was forming.

The meteorite, called Allen Hills 84001, made headlines in 1996 after fossils were found in it. Scientists believed they were bacteria from Earth that contaminated the rock while it lay in the frozen wastes.

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'Solar Tsunamis' Tower On Surface Of The Sun

A solar tsunami can be seen as a dark wave spreading across the surface of the Sun (small sphere on left). The greyed-out band has been enhanced for contrast. The green shows the solar flare or CME that has caused the tsunami. Credit: NASA

From Cosmos:

SYDNEY: Observations from NASA's STEREO space probes have confirmed that vast 'solar tsunamis', taller than the Earth itself, ripple across the Sun for millions of kilometres.

The technical name is 'fast-mode magneto -hydrodynamical wave (MHD)'. The one the STEREO probes recorded reared up to 100,000 km in height, and raced outward at 900 km/h packing as much energy as 2,400 megatons of TNT.

The findings are reported in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. See a video here of a solar tsunami as seen from different angles by the STEREO spacecraft.

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First 'Genetic Map' of Han Chinese May Aid Search for Disease Susceptibility Genes

DNA on abstract background. Researchers have published the first genetic historical map of the Han Chinese, the largest ethnic population in the world, as they migrated from south to north over evolutionary time. (Credit: iStockphoto/Andrey Prokhorov)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Nov. 26, 2009) — The first genetic historical map of the Han Chinese, the largest ethnic population in the world, as they migrated from south to north over evolutionary time, was published online November 25 in the American Journal of Human Genetics by scientists at the Genome Institute of Singapore (GIS).

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For Football Fans, Almost Losing Is Ideal

From Live Science:

The most exciting football games are those your team almost loses. No big news there. But a new study looked into the complex emotions of being a fan and reached some interesting conclusions.

Researchers studied fans of two college football teams as they watched the teams' annual rivalry game on television. Fans of the winning team who, at some point during the game, were almost certain their team would lose, ended up thinking the game was the most thrilling and suspenseful.

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Da Vinci's 'Last Supper' Gets Digital Makeover

The bright, vivid colors of the original Last Supper appear in
this digital reconstruction. Courtesy of Leonardo3

From Discovery News:

Modern methods are breathing new life into this more than 500-year-old masterpiece.

Bright, vivid colors adorned Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper, according to a digital reconstruction of the masterpiece at the exhibition "Leonardo da Vinci's Workshop" at Discovery Times Square Exposition in New York.

Painted to provide monks at the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan with something to contemplate during meals, the mural is considered one of da Vinci's greatest works.

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Wikipedia Founder Dismisses Claim The Site Is Losing Thousands Of 'Editors'

Photo: Jimmy Wales, the co-founder of the site contested the claim that 49,000 volunteer editors had left in the first three months of 2009

From The Daily Mail:

Wikipedia's co-founder has called into question research which suggests thousands of volunteer editors across the world had left the site thereby undermining its usefulness.

Jimmy Wales contested the claim that 49,000 volunteer editors had left in the first three months of 2009.

'Our internal numbers don’t confirm all the claims made. We do agree that the number of editors has stabilised, as one would expect, since we're already the fifth most popular website on the internet...[however] our own data shows that the number of active editors across all projects is stable – i.e. the new editors are replaced at about the same pace as existing editors are leaving,' he told the Telegraph.

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