The 2010s: Freakin' Awesome-With Lasers

From CBS News:

Scientists Predict Some Uncertainty, Some Unbridled Optimism, and Some Warnings to the World to Make a Course Correction.

(CBS) This article was written by Discover's Andrew Moseman and Brett Israel.

There's nothing like the round number at the start of a new decade to get everyone prognosticating (yes, we know some of you are in the crowd that says the new decade doesn't begin until 2011; OK, fine). To predict what the scientific scene will be like in 2020, the journal Nature brought in experts from 18 fields. Though the collection doesn't encapsulate the "world of tomorrow" feel of, say, the old Omni magazine, it's still packed with sunny (and scary) forecasts. Some show lingering uncertainty, some unbridled optimism, and some give warnings to the world to make a much-needed course correction. Here are five we thought were particularly telling.

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Microsoft Word And Office 'Sales Ban' Begins

From BBC News:

A ban on Microsoft selling certain versions of its flagship products Word and Office has begun.

The software firm was made to change elements of the software by US courts after a patent dispute with Canadian firm i4i.

Microsoft said that it had complied with the court's ruling and would now offer "revised software" in the US.

The court ruling means that Microsoft must also pay i4i damages of $290m (£182m).

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Remembering The First Hydrogen Bomb Test

From Wired Science:

The long-distance scientific recordings of the blast wave from the first hydrogen bomb test have been rediscovered in a formerly classified safe at Columbia University.

On November 1, 1952, physicists created the second fusion explosion the solar system has ever known. The first occurred around 4.5 billion years ago and ignited the ongoing fusion reaction in the sun. The second, the Ivy Mike experiment, was shorter lived and detonated on an atoll in the South Pacific. This 10-megaton blast was five times more powerful than all the explosives used in World War II combined, including the nuclear-fission bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

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Yearlong Star Eclipse May Help Solve Space Mystery

Artist's conception of the dusty disk thought to eclipse the star Epsilon Aurigae. Illustration by Nico Camargo and courtesy www.citizensky.org

From The National Geographic:

While relatively few people were looking, an unusual eclipse darkened New Year's Day.

On January 1 a giant space object blotted out our view of Epsilon Aurigae, a yellow supergiant star about 2,000 light-years from Earth. Based on studies of Epsilon Aurigae's previous eclipses, astronomers expect the star won't fully regain its bright shine until early 2011.

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Overwhelmed With Data Feeds, Military Turns To NFL Broadcast Tricks For Highlighting Drone Targets

Analyzing Targets Keeping watch on imagery intelligence.
U.S. Air Force/Tech. Sgt. Erik Gudmundson

From Popular Science:

War is no game, but it could learn a trick or two from football.

A growing swarm of drones keep watch on the battlefield, but military analysts struggle to watch every second of live surveillance footage so that they can quickly pass on warnings about ambushes or possible targets to warfighters. Now the U.S. military has turned to ESPN and Fox Sports to learn how to quickly identify and transmit the video highlights, the New York Times reports.

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The Coming Water Wars?

"Water: The Epic Struggle For Wealth, Power, And Civilization:" Water As The New Oil -- Seattle Times

Author Steven Solomon's "Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, and Civilization" documents the hunt throughout history to find sources of clean water, a task likely to become more fraught with conflict in the coming age of water scarcity.

There's a slick catchphrase in the air these days — "Water is the new oil" — that author Steven Solomon and others use when referencing water's newfound significance on today's geopolitical stage.

But if Solomon's outstanding survey, "Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, and Civilization," reveals anything, it is that oil, for maybe a century or so, was actually the new water, and now water has simply returned to the primacy it has always held throughout history.

In detailed but highly readable fashion, economics journalist Solomon ("Confidence Game," 1995) works through each major civilization — the Mesopotamians, the Egyptians, the early Romans, China, India, Islam, northern Europe, the New World — and shows the profound water challenges each faced and overcame in advancing human aspirations.

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My Comment: This book is on my "to read" list. For the past few years I have been commenting in this blog on the history of wars over water, and on how future wars may revolve on the scarcity of clean water. From what I have read in the preamble to this book .... author Steven Solomon is hitting all the bases.

'Fossil' Fireballs from Supernovae Discovere By Suzaku Observatory

In the supernova remnant W49B, Suzaku found another fossil fireball. It detected X-rays produced when heavily ionized iron atoms recapture an electron. This view combines infrared images from the ground (red, green) with X-ray data from NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory (blue). (Credit: JAXA/NASA/Suzaku, Tom Bash and John Fox/Adam Block/NOAO/AURA/NSF)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Jan. 11, 2010) — Studies of two supernova remnants using the Japan-U.S. Suzaku observatory have revealed never-before-seen embers of the high-temperature fireballs that immediately followed the explosions. Even after thousands of years, gas within these stellar wrecks retain the imprint of temperatures 10,000 times hotter than the sun's surface.

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Why Bright Light Worsens Migraine Headache Pain

Nearly 85 percent of people who suffer migraine headaches are extremely sensitive to light, a condition known as photophobia. Scientists have now found the nerves involved in this light sensitivity, pointing to future possible migraine treatments. Image credit: stockxpert

From Live Science:

When a migraine hits, many sufferers hide out in a dark room, away from the painful light. Now scientists think they know why light makes migraines worse.

New research on humans and rats has revealed a visual pathway in the brain that underlies this light sensitivity during migraines in blind individuals and in individuals with normal eyesight.

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Google News Puts Experiments On Front Page – And Stops Adding AP Stories

Google integrated two of its news experiments, Fast Flip and Living Stories,
into the US homepage of Google News today.

From The Guardian:

Google gives its visual news experiments greater prominence, while quietly ceasing to update its AP content.

Living Stories, a project developed with the New York Times and the Washington Post, is on the upper right next to Top Stories, while Fast Flip (picture above) is right down at the bottom of the page. Both experiments should now see their audiences widen considerably.

"Encouraged by the positive feedback we've received from users and partners, we decided to expose the service to more potential readers by integrating it with the US English version of Google News," software engineers Jack Hebert, Matthew Watson and Corrie Scalisi wrote about Fast Flip on the Google news blog.

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Our Guide To The Top Ebook Readers

Going digital: The Amazon Kindle (far left), 2Iriver Story (top left), Cool-er eReader, Sony Reader Pocket Edition (top right), Cybook Opus (bottom right), Sony Reader Touch Edition

From The Daily Mail:

They may look newfangled, but ebook readers sold in their millions last year because they are, in effect, hundreds of books, magazines and newspapers in one portable package.

And they're no mere novelty items: on Christmas Day Amazon.com sold more ebooks than physical books. So, which device should you try?

All the models here have broadly similar greyscale screens, and each works in the same way - you go to an ebook website, download ebooks onto the reader, and that's it.

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At The Edge Of Thought

From New Scientist:

I know that the New Year has officially arrived when John Brockman publishes the responses to his Annual Question over at the Edge website.

This year, Brockman asked his crew of intellectual heavy-hitters, "How is the internet changing the way you think?"

The answers range from "It's not" to "Everything's going to hell" to "The internet is making us smarter, more social and more evolved" to "Who the hell knows?", with a dose of everything in between.

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Laminated Linen Protected Alexander The Great

Image: This mosaic of Alexander the Great shows the king wearing linothorax -- an armor made from laminated linen. Martin Beckmann

From Discovery News:

Alexander's men wore linothorax, a highly effective type of body armor created by laminating together layers of linen, research finds.

A Kevlar-like armor might have helped Alexander the Great (356–323 B.C.) conquer nearly the entirety of the known world in little more than two decades, according to new reconstructive archaeology research.

Presented at the annual meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America in Anaheim, Calif., the study suggests that Alexander and his soldiers protected themselves with linothorax, a type of body armor made by laminating together layers of linen.

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How e-Books Are Changing The Printed Word

Photo: The printed word, from Gutenberg's Bible to the Kindle. (CBS/AP)

From CBS News:

As Sales of Physical Books Decline, Digital Books Are Expected to Soon Be a Billion-Dollar Business.

When Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press in the mid-1400s, he built a system - moveable type that worked, and worked very well (with incremental advances) for more than 500 years.

The system STILL works. But in this new decade, the book business is undergoing its biggest change since, well, forever.

When asked about the status of books as we enter 2010, literary agent and former publishing house CEO Larry Kirshbaum says, "We are at the crossroads in terms of this new technology."

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Neanderthal 'Make-Up' Containers Discovered

Photo: The shells were coated with residues of mixed pigments

From The BBC:

Scientists claim to have the first persuasive evidence that Neanderthals wore "body paint" 50,000 years ago.

The team report in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) that shells containing pigment residues were Neanderthal make-up containers.

Scientists unearthed the shells at two archaeological sites in the Murcia province of southern Spain.

The team says its find buries "the view of Neanderthals as half-wits" and shows they were capable of symbolic thinking.

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Egypt Tombs Suggest Pyramids Not Built By Slaves

An Egyptian antiquities worker walks past a newly discovered ancient site in this June 6, 2002 file photo. New tombs found in Giza support the view that the Great Pyramids were built by free workers and not slaves, as widely believed, Egypt's chief archaeologist said on Sunday. REUTERS/Aladin Abdel Naby/Files

From Yahoo News/Reuters:

CAIRO (Reuters) – New tombs found in Giza support the view that the Great Pyramids were built by free workers and not slaves, as widely believed, Egypt's chief archaeologist said on Sunday.

Films and media have long depicted slaves toiling away in the desert to build the mammoth pyramids only to meet a miserable death at the end of their efforts.

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From High School Robotics To The White House

From Geek Dad:

A few months ago, President Obama launched the “Educate to Innovate” campaign to strengthen competency in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. During this event, some students were invited to demonstrate their robot they built as part of the 2009 FIRST Robotics competition. One of those students, Steven Harris, commented on the importance of high school robotics teams and his experience with his own team:

“I have been a part of FIRST Robotics for eight years. My first exposure to FIRST Robotics was in fourth grade. On Saturdays, when my brother was a member of the team at Oakton High School, I got to go to the team meetings because my father was a parent mentor for the team, helping the members of the team build and design the robots…

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The Mini Ice Age Starts Here

From The Daily Mail:

The bitter winter afflicting much of the Northern Hemisphere is only the start of a global trend towards cooler weather that is likely to last for 20 or 30 years, say some of the world’s most eminent climate scientists.

Their predictions – based on an analysis of natural cycles in water temperatures in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans – challenge some of the global warming orthodoxy’s most deeply cherished beliefs, such as the claim that the North Pole will be free of ice in
summer by 2013.

According to the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado, Arctic summer sea ice has increased by 409,000 square miles, or 26 per cent, since 2007 – and even the most committed global warming activists do not dispute this.

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Get Ready For China's Domination Of Science

Science goes east (Image: Guang Niu/Getty)

From The New Scientist:

SINCE its economic reform began in 1978, China has gone from being a poor developing country to the second-largest economy in the world. China has also emerged from isolation to become a political superpower. Its meteoric rise has been one of the most important global changes of recent years: the rise of China was the most-read news story of the decade, surpassing even 9/11 and the Iraq war.

Yet when it comes to science and technology, most people still think of China as being stuck in the past and only visualise a country with massive steelworks and vast smoking factories.

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Most Earth-Like Exoplanet Ever Found Started Out As A Gas Giant

This artist's impression shows sunrise over CoRoT-7b, the smallest-known exoplanet. The world is about 70 percent larger than Earth. Now, a team led by Brian Jackson at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center finds that the planet may be the rocky remains of a gas giant planet whose atmosphere was evaporated by close proximity to the star. (Credit: ESO/L. Calçada)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Jan. 10, 2010) — The most earthlike planet yet found around another star may be the rocky remains of a Saturn-sized gas giant, according to research presented January 6 at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Washington.

"The first planets detected outside our solar system 15 years ago turned out to be enormous gas-giants in very tight orbits around their stars. We call them 'hot Jupiters,' and they weren't what astronomers expected to find," said Brian Jackson at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "Now, we're beginning to see Earth-sized objects in similar orbits. Could there be a connection?"

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Fish Punish Fish For Bad Manners

Male cleaner fish will punish females when the females misbehave at mealtime, a new study finds. Here, the cleaner fish Labroides dimidiatus cleans the larger N. nigrosis. Credit: Richard Smith.

From Live Science:

Fish may dine underwater, but they still need to remember their manners at mealtime.

Males of a certain fish species will punish females when they misbehave while eating, a new study finds.

And the chastisement occurs even though the males are not directly affected by the female's trouble-making, indicating that these fish may exhibit a form of human social behavior known as third-party punishment, the researchers say.

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