Dams Linked To More Extreme Weather

Influencing the weather (Image: J.C Dahlig/Bereau of Reclamation)

From New Scientist:

DAM-BUILDERS: be careful when you create a reservoir because bigger storms and flooding could be on the way. That's the warning from an analysis of more than 600 dams, many of which have brought more extreme rainfall.

The idea that large bodies of water might influence rainfall is not new. But until now, no one had studied the effect of large dams and their reservoirs.

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Biofuels: Can They Fuel Our Lifestyle Without Taking Food From The Poor?

Green crude from oil processed from algae

From The Guardian:

A consultation by the UK Nuffield Council on Bioethics wants to hear public opinion on the new generation of biofuels.

Just in case you thought it was safe to stop thinking about biofuels, here comes another study – this time into the ethics. Can a new generation of biofuels ensure we don't increase greenhouse gas emissions and take food from the poor to fuel our cars?

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New Pipe Organ Sounds Echo Of Age Of Bach

The organ at Christ Church, Episcopal, in Rochester. Stewart Cairns for The New York Times

From The New York Times:

ROCHESTER — The ceremonial pipe organ of the 18th century was the Formula One racer of its time, a masterpiece of human ingenuity so elegant in its outward appearance that a casual observer could only guess at the complexity that lay within.

Each organ was designed to fit its intended space, ranging in size from local churches where townspeople could worship to vast cathedrals fit for royalty. The builders were precision craftsmen celebrated for their skill in hand-making thousands of moving parts and in shaping and tuning metal and wooden pipes to mimic the sounds of each instrument in an orchestra.

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New Crew Reaches International Space Station

A Soyuz-FG rocket booster with Soyuz TMA-17 space ship, carrying a new crew to the international space station (ISS), lifts off from the Russian leased Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, Monday, Dec. 21, 2009. The Soyuz TMA-17's three astronauts will take the orbiting laboratory's permanent crew to five following the early-hours launch, the first-ever blastoff of a Soyuz rocket on a winter night.(Xinhua/Reuters Photo)

From ABC News:

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - A fresh three-member crew arrived at the International Space Station on Tuesday, bolstering the two-man skeleton crew that has been keeping the outpost operational since December 1.

A Russian Soyuz capsule carrying cosmonaut Oleg Kotov, Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi and NASA rookie flier Timothy Creamer coasted into its berthing port at 5:48 p.m. EST (2248 GMT), as the station sailed 220 miles above Rio de Janeiro. The men were launched into space on Monday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

The trio is expected to remain aboard the station until May.

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Pioneering Stem Cell Treatment Restores Sight

From The Telegraph:

A man blinded in one eye by a chemical attack as he intervened to stop a fight has had his sight restored thanks to pioneering new stem cell treatment.

Russell Turnbull, 38, lost most of the vision in his right eye when he had ammonia sprayed into it as he tried to break up a fight on a late night bus journey home.

The attack, which badly burned and scarred his cornea, left him with permanent blurred sight and pain whenever he blinked.

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U.S. Sets Up World's Largest Face Transplant Programme For Disfigured War Veterans

U.S. soldiers disfigured in combat will now be able to get face transplants

From The Daily Mail:

The world's biggest face transplant programme is being set up in Boston for veterans left severely deformed after surviving horrific war injuries in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The U.S. Department of Defence has given Brigham and Women’s Hospital in the city a $3.4million contract to pay for the first batch of operations.

It is hoped the Boston doctors will carry out face transplants on six to eight patients over the next 18 months - nearly doubling the nine known procedures completed worldwide.

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My Comment: These doctors will have enough work to last them a lifetime.

Modern Behavior of Early Humans Found Half-Million Years Earlier Than Thought

Stone tools from the Benot Ya'aqov arah.
(Credit: Image courtesy of Hebrew University of Jerusalem)

From The Science Daily:

Science Daily (Dec. 22, 2009) — Evidence of sophisticated, human behavior has been discovered by Hebrew University of Jerusalem researchers as early as 750,000 years ago -- some half a million years earlier than has previously been estimated by archaeologists.

The discovery was made in the course of excavations at the prehistoric Gesher Benot Ya'aqov site, located along the Dead Sea rift in the southern Hula Valley of northern Israel, by a team from the Hebrew University Institute of Archaeology. Analysis of the spatial distribution of the findings there reveals a pattern of specific areas in which various activities were carried out.

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Music Linked To Marijuana Use

From Live Science:

Teens who listen to music that mentions marijuana are significantly more likely to use the drug, a new study finds.

The research was based on surveys with 959 ninth-graders.

"Students who listen to music with the most references to marijuana are almost twice as likely to have used the drug than their peers whose musical tastes favor songs less focused on substance use," said University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine researcher Dr. Brian Primack, who led the study.

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Platoon-Level 'Cloud' Lets Soldiers Swap Data, Increases 'Network Lethality'

Better Connectivity A unit-level "cloud" will allow soldiers in the field to communicate vertically up the chain of command, as well as with other ground and air units operating nearby for seamless sharing of intel, orders, and other data. U.S. Army

From Popular Science:

There's no question that the U.S. military is operating at a very high technological capacity, but the tactical edge that commanders have back at HQ doesn't always translate to grunts in the field. That gap is closing however, as the Army recently networked two distant infantry units together in a mobile "cloud," allowing them to trade video imagery, voice commands, text messages and other data between between them as they operated, as well as with far-flung command posts.

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2010 Preview: Genome Sequencing For All

Illuminating the "dark matter" of the genome
(Image: Roz Woodward/Stone/Getty)

From New Scientist:

Fancy having your genome sequenced? It's becoming affordable, and 2010 will see the launch of a wave of genetic discovery that could turn it into a purchase worth making.

In the coming months, plummeting costs will allow gene hunters to start routinely working with complete human genome sequences. These should start to illuminate the "dark matter" of the genome - the as yet unknown genetic influences on our health that are missed by current scans.

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Computers Offer A Faster Way To Cure Humanity's Ills

From The Guardian:

Scientific research and medical breakthroughs increasingly depend on huge computer power.

HOW DO YOU predict whether a given patient is likely to die from a heart attack? Conventional medical wisdom would base a risk assessment on factors such as the person's age, whether they were smokers and/or diabetic plus the results of cardiac ultrasound and various blood tests. It may be that a better predictor is a computer program that analyses the patient's electrocardiogram looking for subtle features within the data provided by the instrument.

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Apple's iPhone Is Most Popular Phone In US - Study

From Apple Insider:

With 4 percent of all mobile device subscribers in the U.S., a new study has found that Apple's iPhone was the single most popular handset model in the country in 2009.

The iPhone edged out Research in Motion's BlackBerry 8300 series, which came in second place with 3.7 percent, according to new data released this week by Nielsen. The rankings measured the top 10 mobile phones in use in the U.S. from January to October 2009.

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The E-Book, The E-Reader, And The Future Of Reading

Members of a suburban Boston book group. Mary Knox Merrill / Staff

From The Christian Science Monitor:

As stone tablets gave way the codex, the future of reading is digital – but will the e-reader and the e-book change the nature of how we read?

Jeremy Manore, an 18-year-old from central New Jersey, subscribes to several magazines and reads books constantly – John Steinbeck and F. Scott Fitzgerald are among his favorite writers. When he came home from his elite Massachusetts boarding school for Thanksgiving, Jeremy brought three books to read, his mother, Sandy Manore, says. But he wasn’t carting heavy volumes in a backpack.

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Thinking Out Loud Helps Solve Problems

From The Telegraph:

Thinking out loud really does help you to solve problems faster, scientists have discovered.

People who talk out loud to think through their maths problems are able to solve them faster and have more chance of getting the right answer, the research has found.

In a finding that flies in the face of the old-fashioned theory of studying in silence, classrooms should be full of the noise of students tackling their problems out loud.

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Scrubby Oak Lauded As Oldest Known Living Organism

Mike Cipra, a desert program manager for the National Parks Conservation Association, examines a burned Joshua tree that shows signs of growth earlier this month. Scientists say the effects of global warming could make Joshuas extinct within a century. Kurt Miller / The Press-Enterprise

From The Independent:

It began life during the last ice age, long before man turned to agriculture and built the first cities in the fertile crescent of the Middle East. It was already thousands of years old when the Egyptians built their pyramids and the ancient Britons erected Stonehenge.

The Jurupa Oak tree first sprouted into life when much of the world was still covered in glaciers. It has stood on its windswept hillside in southern California for at least 13,000 years, making it the oldest known living organism, according to a study published today.

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Mind-Reading Brain Implant Could Allow Paralysed To Turn Their Thoughts Into Instant Speech

The patient had a stroke in the brain, which stopped neural signals from travelling through the body. The electrode bypassed these channels and sent the thought signals to an FM receiver outside the body to a speech synthesizer via a neural decoder

From The Daily Mail:

A revolutionary new device that reads a person's thoughts and turns them into speech could soon change the lives of paralysed patients around the world.

The Neuralynx System is being developed by a team of scientists led by Professor Frank Guenther at Boston University.

Users will simply have to think of what they want to say and a voice synthesizer will translate the thoughts into speech almost immediately.

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Top Science News Stories Of 2009

Predator X: As seen in one of the most popular news stories of 2009, this 45-ton pliosaur crushed its prey with 30-centimetre-long teeth. Credit: Atlantic Productions

From Cosmos:

SYDNEY: From T. rex sized sea monsters to the risk of Africa splitting in two - here are the most read news stories of 2009.

KILOMETRE-HIGH WAVES FLOW IN SATURN'S RINGS
NASA's Cassini probe has uncovered for the first time towering vertical structures in Saturn's seemingly flat rings that are due to the gravitational effects of a small moon.

VOLCANIC ACTIVITY COULD SPLIT AFRICA
Volcanic activity may split the African continent in two, creating a new ocean, say experts. This is due to a recent geological crack which has appeared in northeastern Ethiopia.

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Supernova Remnants Reveal How The Star Exploded

Supernovas that come from thermonuclear explosion on white dwarfs (known as Type Ia) produce very symmetric remnants. Another type, created when a very massive star collapses, results in more asymmetrically shaped remnants. (Credit: NASA/CXC/UCSC/L. Lopez et al.)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Dec. 21, 2009) — At a very early age, children learn how to classify objects according to their shape. Now, new research suggests studying the shape of the aftermath of supernovas may allow astronomers to do the same.

A new study of images from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory on supernova remnants -- the debris from exploded stars -- shows that the symmetry of the remnants, or lack thereof, reveals how the star exploded. This is an important discovery because it shows that the remnants retain information about how the star exploded even though hundreds or thousands of years have passed.

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Surprising Truths About Santa's Reindeer

Reindeer and caribou are two names for the same species called Rangifer tarandus, with reindeer generally referring to the domesticated variety that pull sleds. Credit: Stockxpert.

From Live Science:

Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen were no doubt keeping an eye on the recent climate conference in Copenhagen. Reindeer numbers have dropped nearly 60 percent in the last three decades due to climate change and habitat disturbance caused by humans, a study earlier this year found.

The decline of reindeer is a hot topic to more than just Santa and millions of children around the world.

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War Games: Military Use Of Consumer Technology

Courtesy Vcom 3D

From The Economist:

Consumer products and video-gaming technology are boosting the performance and reducing the price of military equipment.

VIDEO games have become increasingly realistic, especially those involving armed combat. America’s armed forces have even used video games as recruitment and training tools. But the desire to play games is not the reason why the United States Air Force recently issued a procurement request for 2,200 Sony PlayStation 3 (PS3) video-game consoles. It intends to link them up to build a supercomputer that will run Linux, a free, open-source operating system. It will be used for research, including the development of high-definition imaging systems for radar, and will cost around one-tenth as much as a conventional supercomputer. The air force has already built a smaller computer from a cluster of 336 PS3s.

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