A Hot Piece of Hardware: NASA’s New Orbiter Will Map the Entire Sky in Infrared

From Discover Magazine:

Stars and other astronomical phenomena radiate across the electromagnetic spectrum, on both sides of the puny band of visible light that the human eye can pick up. NASA’s newest toy, set for a Friday launch into space, will map the infrared portion of that radiation—and do it across the entire sky.

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Five Ways To Revolutionise Computer Memory

Digital memory is getting smaller and smaller (Image: Chung Sung-Jun/Getty)

From New Scientist:

Once upon a time, not so long ago, the idea that you might store your entire music collection on a single hand-held device would have been greeted with disbelief. Ditto backing up all your essential computer files using a memory stick key ring, or storing thousands of high-resolution holiday snaps in one pocket-sized camera.

What a difference a decade makes. The impossible has become possible thanks to the lightning rise of a memory technology with the snazzy name of "flash".

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Sobering News: Coffee Increases Drunkenness

From The Telegraph:

Drinking coffee does not sober you up – and may actually further impair your judgement, new research suggests.

The combination of alcohol and caffeine produces a potentially lethal mix that just makes it harder to realise you are actually drunk in the first place.

And the study published in Behavioural Neuroscience suggests popular caffeinated energy drinks could also raise risks from intoxication rather than lessen them.

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Google Launches Real-Time Search With Instant Twitter And Facebook Updates

Google real-time: The screen continually updates with new information, without the need to refresh. Users also have the option to pause the scrolling action

From The Daily Mail:

Google has launched 'real-time' search to give users up-to-the-second information.

The search engine will update its information at the same rate as it receives it, which means postings on sites such as Twitter and Facebook will appear immediately at the bottom of the page.

The new data - from more than a billion pages on the web - will scroll past in real-time, without any need to refresh the page. Users can also stop the page from continually scrolling by clicking on the 'stop updating' phrase.

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To Save Soldiers on The Battlefield, Darpa Invests In Suspended Animation

Better Medevac Darpa is investing nearly $10 million in creating a medical cocktail that will suspend soldiers' animation after sustaining wounds in battle, reducing their need for oxygenated blood and keeping them (barely) alive until they can receive proper treatment.

From Popular Science:

An active battlefield is a really inconvenient place to lose a lot of blood. But naturally that's exactly where soldiers sustain the bulk of their life-threatening injuries, so Darpa is committing $9.9 million to finding drugs that can extend the "golden hour" -- the one-hour window that medics generally have to bring a soldier back from severe blood loss -- by as much as six hours.

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Hubble Sees Most Distant Galaxies

Very distant galaxies were spotted in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field

From BBC:

Nasa's Hubble Space Telescope (HST) has captured its deepest view of the Universe, producing images of galaxies that have never been seen before.

The pictures were acquired by the HST's new Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3).

This highly sensitive camera can see starlight from far-off objects - light that has been "stretched" by the expanding Universe.

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Untold Levels Of Oil Sands Pollution On Athabasca River Confirmed

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Dec. 8, 2009) — After an exhaustive study of air and water pollution along the Athabasca River and its tributaries from Fort McMurray to Lake Athabasca, researchers say pollution levels have increased as a direct result of nearby oil sands operations.

University of Alberta biological sciences professor David Schindler was part of the team that conducted a long term air and water study and found high levels of Polycyclic Aromatic Compounds. PACs are a group of organic contaminants containing several known carcinogens, mutagens, and teratogens. The highest levels of PAC's were found within 50 kilometres of two major oil sands up graders.

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Humans Have Hidden Sensory System

From Live Science:

The human body may be equipped with a separate sensory system aside from the nerves that gives us the ability to touch and feel, according to a new study.

Most of us have millions of different types of nerve endings just beneath the skin that let us feel our surroundings. However, the once-hidden and recently discovered skin sense, found in two patients, is located throughout the blood vessels and sweat glands, and most of us don't even notice it's there.

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Rutan And Branson Make A Giant Leap For Space Tourism

From L.A. Times:

The intergalactic entrepreneurs unveil the VSS Enterprise, the world's first commercial passenger spacecraft. Tests are expected to start early next year, and flights could begin in 2011.

On a wind-tossed desert night, the dream of space pioneers Richard Branson and Burt Rutan to bring space flight to everyone -- at least everyone who can afford it -- drew closer to reality when the pair unveiled the world's first commercial passenger spacecraft.

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Using Rust To Capture CO2 From Coal Plants

Photo: Carbon trap: This laboratory device extracts energy from fossil fuels and produces an easy-to-capture stream of carbon dioxide. A larger version will be tested in a new 250-kilowatt power plant. Credit: Fanxing Li

From Technology Review:

Process could capture carbon more cheaply.

Researchers at Ohio State University are developing a novel process for generating electricity from coal that also promises to make capturing carbon-dioxide emissions cheaper. The work is being done with the help of a $5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy's new Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy. The technology has been proven in laboratories; researchers will use the new funds to demonstrate it in a 250-kilowatt, pilot-scale power plant.

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U.S. EPA Moves On Emissions As Congress Stalls

U.S. EPA moves on emissions as Congress stalls A Toyota Prius hybrid car drives past downtown Los Angeles on the 10 freeway, January 27, 2009. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

From Scientific American:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency formally declared that greenhouse gases endanger human health Monday, allowing President Barack Obama to show his commitment to act as a major climate change summit opened in Copenhagen.

The ruling by the EPA, widely expected after it issued a preliminary finding earlier this year, will allow the agency to regulate planet-warming gases even without legislation in the U.S. Congress.

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The Secrets Of Tutankhamun's Decaying Tomb

Scientists examining the flaking King Tut murals.

From The Independent:

Scientists mount inquiry into how millions of visitors to Egyptian boy king's chamber are destroying the wonder they came to see, reports Guy Adams.

Given the peace and quiet Tutankhamun enjoyed for three millennia, it has been a rough 87 years for him since he was discovered by Howard Carter in 1922. He was immediately relieved of his treasures; his tomb became one of the world's best-known tourist attractions, and finally, in 2005, his mummified corpse was hoiked out of its final resting-place to be studied by scientists.

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First Look at Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo

Image: VSS Enterprise stowed under the dual-hulled Virgin Mother Ship (VMS) Eve at the unveiling of the first SpaceShipTwo in the Mojave Desert (Virgin Galactic)

From Discovery News:

After two years of construction, Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo has been shown to the public for the first time. The first of a planned fleet of six SpaceShipTwo's has been named Virgin Space Ship (VSS) Enterprise.

WATCH VIDEO: Kasey-Dee Gardner sits down with one of Virgin Galactic's maiden space travelers and finds out his three biggest fears about this sub-orbital spaceflight.

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MIT Plans To Rebuild Artificial Intelligence From The Ground Up

Artificial Intelligence: It's not what we think.

From Popular Science:

After 50 years and countless dead ends, incremental progress, and modest breakthroughs, artificial intelligence researchers are asking for a do-over. The $5 million Mind Machine Project (MMP), a patchwork team of two dozen academics, students and researchers, intends to go back to the discipline's beginnings, rebuilding the field from the ground up. With 20/20 hindsight, a few generations worth of experience, and better, faster technology, this time researchers in AI -- an ambiguous field to begin with -- plan to get things right.

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Optimism As Artificial Intelligence Pioneers Reunite

INTELLIGENCE John McCarthy, seated center, who ran the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, at a reunion last month with Bruce Buchanan to his left and Vic Scheinman on the right. Standing, from left, are Ralph Gorin, Whit Diffie, Dan Swinehart, Tony Hearn, Larry Tesler, Lynn Quam and Martin Frost. John Markoff

From The New York Times:

STANFORD, Calif. — The personal computer and the technologies that led to the Internet were largely invented in the 1960s and ’70s at three computer research laboratories next to the Stanford University campus.

One laboratory, Douglas Engelbart’s Augmentation Research Center, became known for the mouse; a second, Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center, developed the Alto, the first modern personal computer. But the third, the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, or SAIL, run by the computer scientist John McCarthy, gained less recognition.

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Draft Text Divides Climate Summit

From BBC:

Documents leaked at the UN climate summit reveal divisions between industrialised and developing countries over the shape of a possible new deal.

Campaigners say a draft text proposed by the Danish host government would disadvantage poorer nations.

It also sees everything coming under a single new deal, whereas an alternative text from developing countries wants an extension to the Kyoto Protocol.

Other blocs are expected to release their own texts in the next few days.

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New Project In Scramble To Save Vanishing Internet Links

From Times Online:

The Internet Archive is fighting to preserve shortened web links created by free online services that may be running out of money.

What if, the next time you went on the internet, you clicked on a link and nothing happened?

What if billions of internet links all stopped working at once?

As 2010 approaches, this is exactly the problem that the internet is facing. So great is the concern that the Internet Archive in the United States has already begun what some people are calling one of the most important repair jobs in the web’s history.

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Undocumented Volcano Contributed to Extremely Cold Decade From 1810-1819

SDSU Professor Jihong Cole-Dai and his colleagues studied ice cores from Antarctica and Greenland and found evidence of a previously undocumented volcanic eruption exactly 200 years ago that contributed to the record cold decade of 1810-1819. (Credit: Image courtesy of South Dakota State University)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Dec. 7, 2009) — South Dakota State University researchers and their colleagues elsewhere in America and in France have found compelling evidence of a previously undocumented large volcanic eruption that occurred exactly 200 years ago, in 1809. The discovery helps explain the record cold decade from 1810-1819.

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Killer Petunias And Murderous Potatoes Revealed

Petunias have sticky hairs that trap insects. Credit: Stockxpert

From Live Science:

Petunias and potatoes may actually be carnivorous plants, scientists now suggest.

Indeed, carnivorous behavior may be far more widespread in plants than commonly thought — if we take a closer look, botanists said.

At least six different kinds of killer plants have been recognized since the time of Darwin, such as Venus flytraps, which snares insects between its jaw-like leaves, and pitcher plants, which capture victims in slippery pits. These plants apparently target animals to supplement their growth in harsh, nutrient-poor habitats.

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"Very Likely" The Warmest Decade On Record

Watch CBS News Videos Online

From CBS:

At Copenhagen Climate Summit, U.N. Weather Agency also says 2009 Probably Warmest Year in Some Areas.

(CBS/AP) This decade has very likely been the warmest in the historical record, and 2009 will probably end up as one of the warmest years, the U.N. weather agency announced Tuesday at the second day of the 192-nation climate conference in Copenhagen.

In some areas - parts of Africa, central Asia - this will probably be the warmest year, but overall 2009 "is likely to be about the fifth-warmest year on record," said Michel Jarraud, secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organization.

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