Mystery Object On Course To Whiz Past Earth

The near-Earth object known as 2010 AL30 appears as a spot against the background streaks of stars in this image from the Skylive-Grove Creek Observatory in Australia. E. Guido and G. Sostero / AFAM / CARA

From MSNBC/Discovery News:

It will not hit the planet, but scientists aren't sure what it is, exactly.

A near-Earth object that could be human-made has just been discovered hurtling toward us. On Wednesday, the object called 2010 AL30 will fly by Earth at a distance of just 80,000 miles (130,000 kilometers). That's only one-third of the way from here to the moon — that is, very close.

It will miss us, and if it did hit us, it wouldn't do any damage anyway, but I managed to pick up on some chatter between planetary scientists and found out that the "asteroid," or whatever it is, gives us a new standard: A 10-meter-wide (33-foot-wide) asteroid can be detected two days before it potentially hits Earth. A pretty useful warning, if you ask me.

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Tombs Of The Pyramid Builders Discovered In Giza, Egypt

Bones and pottery inside one of the tomb shafts. Images courtesy the SCA
(Supreme Council of Antiquities)

From The Independent:

An archaeological team led by Dr. Zahi Hawass has discovered several new tombs that belong to the workers who built the pyramids of Khufu and Khafre. “This is the first time to uncover tombs like the ones that were found during the 1990s, which belong to the late 4th and 5th Dynasties (2649-2374 BC),” said Dr. Hawass.

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Stonehenge On 'Most Threatened' World Wonders List

Traffic at Stonehenge has put Britain's most famous prehistoric monument on a list of the world's most threatened sites. Photograph: Suzanne Plunkett /Reuters

From The Guardian:

Britain's failure to deal with road traffic around the prehistoric stone circle is condemned as 'a national disgrace'.

The traffic-choked roads still roaring past Stonehenge in Wiltshire have earned the world's most famous prehistoric monument a place on a list of the world's most threatened sites.

The government's decision to abandon, on cost grounds, a plan to bury roads around Stonehenge in a tunnel underground and the consequent collapse of the plans for a new visitor centre, have put the site on the Threatened Wonders list of Wanderlust magazine, along with the 4x4-scarred Wadi Rum in Jordan, and the tourist-eroded paths and steps of the great Inca site at Machu Picchu in Peru.

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Brain 'Entanglement' Could Explain Memories

Mirror image: neurons in the brain begin to clone after reaching a
'tipping point' of activity (Image: Stone/Getty)

From The New Scientist:

Subatomic particles do it. Now the observation that groups of brain cells seem to have their own version of quantum entanglement, or "spooky action at a distance", could help explain how our minds combine experiences from many different senses into one memory.

Previous experiments have shown that the electrical activity of neurons in separate parts of the brain can oscillate simultaneously at the same frequency – a process known as phase locking. The frequency seems to be a signature that marks out neurons working on the same task, allowing them to identify each other.

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Antarctic Sea Water Shows ‘No Sign’ Of Warming

(Click Image to Enlarge)

From Watts Up With That?

From the Australian: SEA water under an East Antarctic ice shelf showed no sign of higher temperatures despite fears of a thaw linked to global warming that could bring higher world ocean levels, first tests showed yesterday.

Sensors lowered through three holes drilled in the Fimbul Ice Shelf showed the sea water is still around freezing and not at higher temperatures widely blamed for the break-up of 10 shelves on the Antarctic Peninsula, the most northerly part of the frozen continent in West Antarctica.

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Ongoing Human Evolution Could Explain Recent Rise In Certain Disorders

New research suggests that certain adaptations that once benefited humans may now be helping such ailments persist in spite of -- or perhaps because of -- advancements in modern culture and medicine. (Credit: iStockphoto/Mads Abildgaard)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Jan. 11, 2010) — The subtle but ongoing pressures of human evolution could explain the seeming rise of disorders such as autism, autoimmune diseases, and reproductive cancers, researchers write in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Certain adaptations that once benefited humans may now be helping such ailments persist in spite of -- or perhaps because of -- advancements in modern culture and medicine.

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Study: Running Shoes Could Cause Joint Strain

Running shoes may put more strain on your joints than running barefoot or even walking in high heels, a recent study suggests. Credit: stockxpert

From Live Science:

Running shoes, decked out with the latest cushioning, motion control and arch support technologies, may not be as beneficial to your feet and joints as you might think.

A new study finds that running shoes, at least the kind currently on the market, may actually put more of a strain on your joints than if you were to run barefoot or even to walk in high-heeled shoes, and the increased pressure could lead to knee, hip and ankle damage. The scientists don’t recommend ditching your high-tech sneaks, however, as going barefoot on man-made surfaces could also prove harmful,

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China's Popular Search Engine Hacked By Iranian Hackers

Image: Visitors to the site were greeted with this message.

Baidu Hacked By 'Iranian Cyber Army' -- The BBC

China's most popular search engine, Baidu, has been targeted by the same hackers that took Twitter offline in December, according to reports.

A group claiming to be the Iranian Cyber Army redirected Baidu users to a site displaying a political message.

The site was down for at least four hours on Tuesday, Chinese media said.

Last year's attack on micro-blogging service Twitter had the same hallmarks, sending users to a page with an Iranian flag and message in Farsi.

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Watching TV Shortens Life Span, Study Finds

From The L.A. Times:

Australian researchers find that each hour a day spent in front of television is linked with an 18% greater risk of dying from cardiovascular disease and an 11% greater risk of all causes of death.

Watching television for hour upon hour obviously isn't the best way to spend leisure time -- inactivity has been linked to obesity and heart disease. But a new study quantifies TV viewing's effect on risk of death.

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Next 40 Years Key For Climate Change

Power from renewable sources such as wind farms will be important to fight climate change. Nevertheless, the study says that even if we do everything possible to reduce emissions between now and 2050, keeping overall temperature increases below 2ºC is "barely feasible". Credit: iStockphoto

From Cosmos/AFP:

WASHINGTON DC: World leaders should focus on reducing greenhouse gas emissions as much as possible over the next 40 years to avoid perilous warming, says a new study.

In the first research of its kind, analysts used a detailed energy system model to analyse the relationship between emissions levels in 2050 and chances of achieving end-of-century targets of 2 to 3ºC above the pre-industrial average.

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Camera Showdown: Nexus One Vs. iPhone 3GS

The Nexus One's 5-megapixel camera also has an LED-powered flash.
(Credit: Josh Lowensohn/CNET)

From CNET:

Rumors cropped up last week that Apple had put down a big order for LED flashes, something useful for one thing, and one thing only: a digital camera. It doesn't take much to figure that the next iteration of the iPhone is likely to be packing one of these, since many of the latest cell phones--including HTC's recently released Nexus One, now have them included.

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Could Extinct Species Make a Comeback?

Watch CBS News Videos Online

From CBS News 60 Minutes:

Lesley Stahl Reports on Research that Could One Day Resurrect Extinct Species and Save Endangered Ones.

(CBS) It's difficult to imagine that 10,000 years ago, right here in North America, there lived giant animals that are now the stuff of legends - mammoths and mastodons, ground sloths and sabretooth cats. They, and thousands of other species, have vanished from the Earth. And today, partly due to the expansion of one species - ours - animals are going extinct faster than ever before.

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A New Theory On Why The Sun Never Swallowed The Earth

Illustration by Denis Scott / Corbis

From Time Magazine:

When astronomers began spotting planets around distant stars in the mid-1990s, they were baffled. Many of these early discoveries involved worlds as big as Jupiter or even bigger — but they orbited their stars so tightly that their "years" were just days long. Nobody could imagine how a Jupiter or anything like it could form in such a hostile location, where the radiation of the parent star would have pushed the light gas — which makes up most of such a planet's mass — out to the farthest reaches of the solar system before it could ever coalesce.

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Breezy Does It: How Wind Turbines Work

The great advantage of wind is that it is a free fuel, unlike gas, coal or oil. Britain is also a windy place, making supply relatively secure. GETTY IMAGES

From The Independent:

Wind farms generate electricity by capturing the kinetic energy of moving air.

The three blades of each turbine turn on a horizontal axis in the wind and the movement of this drive shaft spins an electricity generator, usually via a gearbox, so that power can be fed into the National Grid.

The wind farms being planned for sites off the coast of Britain will include some of the biggest wind generators ever built, with blades up to 60m long. These offshore wind generators will stand in water that is up to 30m deep and will be up to 220m tall from the base of their foundations to the tips of the turbine blades, about 40m taller than the "Gherkin" skyscraper in London.

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Quantum Computer Successfully Calculates Exact Energy Of Molecular Hydrogen

Cepheus B, a Molecular Hydrogen Cloud Try modeling the molecular hydrogen in this cloud with a conventional computer. Go ahead, we'll wait. NASA

From Popular Science:

Researchers at Harvard and the University of Queensland have come up with a novel, just-crazy-enough-to-work method for modeling and simulating quantum systems: use a quantum computer. Employing the superior computing power of a custom-built quantum computing system, the researchers were able to determine the precise energy of molecular hydrogen for the first time, an impossible feat using classical computing methods. By doing so, they've opened the box on what could be a computing breakthrough stretching across disciplines.

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More Evidence That Autism Is a Brain 'Connectivity' Disorder

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Jan. 11, 2010) — Studying a rare disorder known as tuberous sclerosis complex (TSC), researchers at Children's Hospital Boston add to a growing body of evidence suggesting that autism spectrum disorders, which affect 25 to 50 percent of TSC patients, result from a miswiring of connections in the developing brain, leading to improper information flow. The finding may also help explain why many people with TSC have seizures and intellectual disabilities.

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Global Trade Fuels Invasive Species

Rose-ringed Parakeet is currently expanding its range across Western Europe. It can be a serious agricultural pest and competes with native birds for nesting cavities. Credit: Oregon State University

From Live Science:

The expansion of world trade has long been blamed for the rise of invasive species and the environmental havoc such hitchhikers have dealt to delicate ecosystems. Now new evidence may bolster the case for new policies to combat the problem.

A new study found a significant decline in the number of bird species introduced into Eastern Europe during the Cold War, a time when much of the trade and travel between the region and its western counterparts ceased.

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Google 'Censors Its Website So Anti-Islam Searches Fail To Appear'

Google has been accused of censoring offensive searches relating to Islam

From The Daily Mail:

Search engine Google has been accused of censoring its results after users discovered it never suggests search terms when it comes to Islam.

In a time-saving feature the internet phenomenon, whose motto is 'don't be evil', helpfully suggests common searches as people type in what they are looking for.

For example, if you type in 'Christianity is' in the search bar a whole range of options flash up including controversial suggestions such as 'Christianity is fake' and 'Christianity is a cult'.

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Artificial Leaf Could Make Green Hydrogen

Harnessing plant power (Image: Pasieka/SPL)

From New Scientist:

HIDDEN detail in the natural world could hold the key to future sources of clean energy. So say materials scientists who have created an artificial leaf that can harness light to split water and generate hydrogen.

Plant leaves have evolved over millions of years to catch the energy in the sun's rays very efficiently. They use the energy to produce food, and the central step in the process involves splitting water molecules and creating hydrogen ions.

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More Abundance by Owning Less

From Discovery News:

Less is more; let the music show you how. We've witnessed the progression: albums to compact discs to digital files a la iTunes, where each step takes less material and less effort to get the music to the listener. Now, internet radio (places like SOMA FM and Pandora) draws the material piece down to nothing (although maybe there's a greater bandwidth component if you're continuously piping music across the airwaves, instead of just once at purchase, as is the case with digital files).

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