Virgin Galactic's Unveil Is Tip Of The Iceberg For Private Spaceflight

Masten's Xoie flies against a backdrop of Mojave's windmills to the west. (Photograph courtesy of Mike Massee and Masten Space Systems)

From Popular Mechanics:

In the Mojave desert on Monday, strong winds and cold weather swept through Virgin Galactic's unveiling of SpaceShipTwo, an event that brought together the eager, capable and readying private space industry. Attendees heard grand talk of a new day of spaceflight arriving, but how significant, really, was Monday's event? Space analyst Rand Simberg reports from on the scene.

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Nine European Nations Vow to Create Supergrid For Sharing Offshore Wind Power

Offshore Wind Power A European supergrid could enable easier
sharing of offshore wind power. Siemens

From Popular Science:

The Copenhagen announcement would allow nine European countries to share a common renewable energy source.

Offshore wind power may soon cross national boundaries more easily than ever, based on news from the Copenhagen climate summit. Nine European nations announced plans for a "supergrid" in the North Sea that would allow them to connect Irish wind farms to continental Europe, or vice versa.

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Making Diesel From CO2 And Sunlight

Metal eater: Metallosphaera sedula can draw energy from a copper-iron sulfide called chalcopyrite, the black substance shown here. As it feeds, it produces copper ions (green), iron oxide (orange), and sulfur (yellow). The organism uses the energy from the sulfides to produce acetyl-CoA, a fundamental building block in cells. Researchers have been able to engineer organisms to convert acetyl-CoA into butanol and other liquid fuels. Credit: Robert Kelly, North Carolina State

From Technology Review:

A new program will develop novel approaches to renewable fuels.

A new "electrofuels" program announced this week by the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (Arpa-e) will fund research into novel ways to make renewable fuels. The approaches could prove more efficient than using photosynthetic organisms--such as plants and algae--to make biofuels. And instead of making ethanol, they will make fuels such as diesel, which could be easily distributed and sold with existing infrastructure.

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Brain Scan Reveals Who Will Keep Their Promises

Broken promises. The anterior cingulate cortex is one part of the brain that becomes more active when breaking a promise (Image: Indiana University)

From New Scientist:

Promises are made to be broken, so it can be tough to tell which ones will be kept. But new-found patterns in brain activity can reveal whether someone intends to keep their word.

The finding raises the possibility of using brain scans to determine the true intentions of criminals who are up for early release on parole, according to Thomas Baumgartner of the University of Zurich in Switzerland.

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Star Power: Astronomers Recreate Stellar Jet With Laser Blast

The images at top, taken in a few billionths of a second, detail experiments at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics meant to simulate stellar jets and their effects on interstellar materials, as seen in the image above. (Credit: Image courtesy of Rice University)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Dec. 9, 2009) — With the trillions of watts contained in one brief pop of a powerful laser, the universe became a bit less mysterious.

Rice University Professor Patrick Hartigan and a team of laser scientists, physicists, astronomers and technicians used the beams at the University of Rochester's Laboratory for Laser Energetics to recreate, on a small scale, the highly supersonic velocities at work in newborn stars and simulated the fiery jets that burst from their poles.

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Gravestones Hold Secrets To Earth's Climate Past

EarthTrek draws upon the local citizenry to build global information databases. Here, Canadian student Pascal records data from a gravestone in Sydney, Australia, as part of the EarthTrek Gravestone Project. Credit: The Geological Society of America

From Live Science:

Gravestones may hold secrets of how the Earth's atmosphere has changed over the centuries, and scientists are now asking for the public's help to read these stones.

Little by little, atmospheric gases dissolved in raindrops cause the marble in gravestones to erode. As such, headstones can serve as diaries of changes in atmospheric chemistry over the years due to pollution and other factors.

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Copenhagen Climate Summit: Global Warming 'Caused By Sun's Radiation'

Professor Henrik Svensmark argued that the recent warming period
was caused by solar activity. Photo: REUTERS

From The Telegraph:

Global warming is caused by radiation from the sun, according to a leading scientist speaking out at an alternative "sceptics' conference" in Copenhagen.

As the world gathered in the Danish capital for the UN Climate Change Conference, more than 50 scientists, businessmen and lobby groups met to discuss the arguments against man made global warming.

Although the meeting was considerably smaller than the official gathering of 15,000 people meeting down the road, the organisers claimed it could change the course of negotiations.

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Ancient Tablets Decoded; Shed Light On Assyrian Empire

Ancient clay tablets (such as the one pictured) inscribed with cuneiform script, a type of ancient writing once common in the Middle East, have been found in southeastern Turkey, archaeologists announced in October 2009. Photograph courtesy University of Akron

From The National Geographic:

Meticulous ancient notetakers have given archaeologists a glimpse of what life was like 3,000 years ago in the Assyrian Empire, which controlled much of the region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Persian Gulf.

Clay tablets inscribed with cuneiform, an ancient script once common in the Middle East, were unearthed in summer 2009 in an ancient palace in present-day southeastern Turkey.

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Wind Energy Industry Looks To Copenhagen For A Mandate

Denise Bode, chief executive officer of the American Wind Energy Association, says what happens in global climate and global energy politics matters very much to the industry. (Sarah Beth Glicksteen/The Christian Science Monitor)

From The Christian Science Monitor:

In an interview, Denise Bode, CEO of the American Wind Energy Association, says the industry needs a renewable energy mandate from the climate conference in Copenhagen and from Congress.

American wind power is blowing strong despite hard economic times. That’s the message from Denise Bode, chief executive officer of the American Wind Energy Association and she’s sticking to it – despite the dicey economy.

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Work The New Digital Sweatshops

Photo: A call center in India. Brent Stirton / Getty Images for GBC

From Newsweek:

When hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans in 2005, the Red Cross announced a toll-free telephone hotline to help victims and their families find each other. The hotline was quickly swamped. So the Red Cross turned to a little-known firm called -LiveOps, a company that recruits call agents from around the world and directs their tasks entirely through the Internet. Within three hours, it had arranged for 300 people to staff the phones. A few days later, the freelance agents had processed more than 17,000 calls.

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Stem Cells Can be Engineered into Genetic Vaccines Against HIV and More

Killer T-Cells The blue blobs are killer T-cells getting ready to attack a tumor via PNAS

From Popular Science:

While some viruses attack the lungs, and others the blood, HIV attacks the only system that could put up a fight: the immune system itself. The immune system mounts some defense, but after HIV launches its surprise attack, the body simply can't produce enough killer T blood cells to take out the virus.

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Startups Mine The Real-Time Web

Image: Credit: Technology Review

From Technology Review:

There's more to it than microblog posts and social network updates.

The "real-time Web" is a hot concept these days. Both Google and Microsoft are racing to add more real-time information to their search results, and a slew of startups are developing technology to collect and deliver the freshest information from around the Web.

But there's more to the real-time Web than just microblogging posts, social network updates, and up-to-the-minute news stories. Huge volumes of data are generated, behind the scenes, every time a person watches a video, clicks on an ad, or performs just about any other action online. And if this user-generated data can be processed rapidly, it could provide new ways to tailor the content on a website, in close to real time.

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Why Does The Air Force Want Thousands Of PlayStations?

PlayStation 3 (PS3)

From ABC News:

Clusters of High-Performance Gaming Consoles Can Serve as Supercomputers.

Guess what's on the U.S. Air Force's wish list this holiday season.

Sony's popular PlayStation 3 gaming console. Thousands of them.

The Air Force Research Laboratory in Rome, N.Y., recently issued a request for proposal indicating its intention to purchase 2,200 PlayStation 3 (PS3) consoles.

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Clever Folds In A Globe Give New Perspectives On Earth

From New Scientist:

A new technique for unpeeling the Earth's skin and displaying it on a flat surface provides a fresh perspective on geography, making it possible to create maps that string out the continents for easy comparison, or lump together the world's oceans into one huge mass of water surrounded by coastlines.

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Dogs Are Better Than Cats – At Least Scientifically Speaking

Dogs won six categories compared with five for cats Photo: Martin Pope

From The Telegraph:

A dog really is man's best friend claims a new scientific study that shows that canines make better pets than their arch rivals cats.

Researchers concluded that when it comes to a number of criteria including intelligence, bonding and obedience, dogs narrowly beat their feline adversaries.

Out of 11 categories selected by the magazine New Scientist, dogs won six compared with five for cats.

Despite cats deemed overall to have a more powerful brains, dogs showed greater ability to understand commands, problem solve and were generally more helpful, it was said.

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Why King Kong Failed to Impress: Humans, Apes Use Odor-Detecting Receptors Differently

New research shows that humans and other primates use the same receptors for detecting odors related to sex in different ways. (Credit: iStockphoto/Larissa Lognay)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Dec. 9, 2009) — Humans have the same receptors for detecting odors related to sex as do other primates. But each species uses them in different ways, stemming from the way the genes for these receptors have evolved over time, according to Duke University researchers.

Varying sensitivity to these sex-steroid odors may play a role in mate selection -- and perhaps prevent cross-species couplings, the researchers speculate.

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Snow At Highest Elevations No Longer Pure

The toxic pollutants called PCBs have been found in snow on the Aconcagua Mountain, the highest mountain in the Americas. Here, an image of Aconcagua mountain. Credit: Mariordo Mario Roberto Duran Ortiz, Wikimedia Commons

From Live Science:

The pure white snow atop the Andes Mountains may not be so pure after all. Scientists have found traces of toxic pollutants called PCBs in snow samples taken from Aconcagua Mountain, the highest peak in the Americas.

While the overall PCB levels were quite low, the results show that these long-lasting contaminants, notorious for causing myriad health problems, can end up at altitudes as high as 20,340 feet (6,200 meters), making their way through the atmosphere to these remote areas.

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Climate Change Not To Blame For Polar Bear Cannibalism

An adult polar bear with the remains of a cub. Scientists argue that climate change may be causing a spike in the rate of cannibalism among bears. Iain D. Williams/Reuters

From The National Post:

The gory photos of male polar bears devouring cubs, dragging shredded carcasses around and creating a bloody mess on the white snow of Canada's North have caused a stir on the Internet and in reports that link the activity to climate change.

But cannibalism among the species is a natural occurrence, says one expert, disputing what is just the latest story to put the polar bear in the debate over man-made global warming.

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How Do Countries Determine Their Time Zones?

Matthias Kulka / Corbis

From Time Magazine:

Russia wishes it were smaller. No, it isn't about to shed any territory, but President Dmitry Medvedev has suggested that Russia reduce its number of time zones from 11 to four, arguing that the extreme time difference — in which western Russia wakes for breakfast just as eastern Russia climbs into bed — "divides" the country and "makes it harder to manage it effectively." Can Russia just change time zones like that? How are time zones determined anyway?

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Have No Fear – Breakthrough Offers Hope To Phobia Sufferers

12% of Britons fear spiders, whilst 13% fear heights. ALAMY

From The Independent:

Scientists manage to block scary thoughts selectively – without the use of mind-altering drugs

Fear has been eliminated from the human mind for the first time in a series of pioneering experiments that could open the way to treating a range of phobias and anxiety disorders with behavioural therapy rather than drugs.

Scientists have selectively blocked thoughts of fear by interfering with the way memories are "reconsolidated" by the brain. It could lead to new ways of treating the thousands of people whose lives are crippled by fear and anxiety relating to phobias and memories that go back many years.

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