Did Da Vinci Paint Himself As 'Mona Lisa'?

Recreating a virtual and then physical reconstruction of Leonardo's face, researchers can compare it with the smiling face in the painting. Getty Images

From Discovery News:

The skull of one of the world's greatest artists could provide crucial clues into the identity of "Mona Lisa."

The legend of Leonardo da Vinci is shrouded in mystery: How did he die? Are the remains buried in a French chateau really those of the Renaissance master? Was the "Mona Lisa" a self-portrait in disguise?

A group of Italian scientists believes the key to solving those puzzles lies with the remains -- and they say they are seeking permission from French authorities to dig up the body to conduct carbon and DNA testing.

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Scotland 'World Leader' In Scientific Research

From The Telegraph:

Scotland is a world leader in research but needs to start reaping the commercial benefits of its scientific discoveries, Alex Salmond has said.

The First Minister was unveiling a new report showing more research is conducted in Scotland than any other country, relative to wealth per head of population.

Findings from Scottish universities and other institutions have influenced work across the globe, being cited in 1.8 per cent of all scientific publications.

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What To Get The Man Who Has Everything? An Underwater Plane Of Course

The Virgin Necker Nymph will dive up to 130ft under the waves. It is made from carbon fibre and has fighter jet technology

From The Daily Mail:

Billionaire Sir Richard Branson may already own an airline, a record label, a mobile phone company, several luxury restaurants and a Caribbean island. But today the entrepreneur unveiled his latest toy - an underwater plane.

The £415,000 prototype submersible is called the Necker Nymph and can dive to depths of up to 130ft. Sir Richard hopes to one day explore depths of 35,000ft - which is far more than the height of Mount Everest.

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Diamonds Become Stronger When Squeezed Rapidly Under Extreme Conditions

Time-integrated photograph of an OMEGA laser shot (43633) to measure high-pressure diamond strength. The diamond target is at the center, surrounded by various diagnostics. The bright white light is ablated plasma, and radial yellow lines are tracks of hot target fragments very late in time. (Credit: Photo by Eugene Kowaluk/LLE)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Jan. 27, 2010) — Most people know that diamond is one of the hardest solids on Earth, so strong that it can easily cut through glass and steel.

Surprisingly, very little is known about the strength of diamond at extreme conditions. But new research by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientists shows that diamond becomes even stronger during rapid compression.

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Why Men And Women Get Jealous For Different Reasons

From Times Online:

Cheating on a spouse or significant other is sure to cause feelings of jealousy and hurt in the spurned partner.

But men and women differ on what part of cheating they think is the worst: Men tend to be more bothered by sexual infidelity, while most women are bothered more by emotional infidelity.

The prevailing explanation for this difference is the unique evolutionary roles played by men and women, but a new study suggests that it has more to do with the types of attachments people form in relationships.

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Superfast Bullet Trains Are Finally Coming To The U.S.

From Wired Science:

Believe it: Bullet trains are coming. After decades of false starts, planners are finally beginning to make headway on what could become the largest, most complicated infrastructure project ever attempted in the US. The Obama administration got on board with an $8 billion infusion, and more cash is likely en route from Congress. It’s enough for Florida and Texas to dust off some previously abandoned plans and for urban clusters in the Northeast and Midwest to pursue some long-overdue upgrades. The nation’s test bed will almost certainly be California, which already has voter-approved funding and planning under way. But getting up to speed requires more than just seed money. For trains to beat planes and automobiles, the hardware needs to really fly. Officials are pushing to deploy state-of-the-art rail rockets. Next stop: the future.

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New Battlefield Drug May Save Soldiers Dying From Blood Loss

Battlefield Blood Loss Combat medics work through the "blood lab" at the Department of Combat Medic Training at Fort Sam Houston, Texas. U.S. Army

From Popular Science:

People who suffer massive blood loss automatically go into shock as a stopgap measure, but can eventually die if their bodies stay in shock for too long. Now a drug used to treat epilepsy could reverse all that and boost survival rates for horrifically injured people, especially wounded soldiers far from any extra blood supplies. New Scientist reports on a new study of the drug that involved porkers.

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My Comment: Blood loss and the accompanying shock is what kills people in trauma situations. Any advancement in this filed of medicine will be a godsend not only for the soldiers in the battlefield, but also to everyone else in society.

Water Vapour Caused One-Third Of Global Warming In 1990s, Study Reveals

A 10% drop in water vapour, 10 miles up has had an effect on global warming over the last 10 years, scientists say. Photograph: Getty

From The Guardian:

Experts say their research does not undermine the scientific consensus on man-made climate change, but call for 'closer examination' of the way computer models consider water vapour.

Scientists have underestimated the role that water vapour plays in determining global temperature changes, according to a new study that could fuel further attacks on the science of climate change.

The research, led by one of the world's top climate scientists, suggests that almost one-third of the global warming recorded during the 1990s was due to an increase in water vapour in the high atmosphere, not human emissions of greenhouse gases. A subsequent decline in water vapour after 2000 could explain a recent slowdown in global temperature rise, the scientists add.

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Tonight: Year's Biggest Full Moon, Mars Create Sky Show

A full moon hangs over Vancouver Island, British Columbia.
Photograph by Taylor S. Kennedy, National Geographic Stock

From The National Geographic:

Red planet will join supersize "wolf moon".

The biggest full moon of 2010 will rise in the east tonight, and it'll appear with a bright sidekick: Mars will cozy up just to the left of the supersize moon.

January's full moon is also called the wolf moon, according to Native American tradition associating this month's full moon with wolves howling in the cold midwinter. (Take a moon myths and mysteries quiz.)

The 2010 wolf moon will appear 30 percent brighter and 14 percent larger than any other full moon this year, because our cosmic neighbor will actually be closer to Earth than usual.

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Earth's Haunting Craters: Big Pics

Meteor Crater, Arizona -- Photographer Stan Gaz was in Arizona when
he came across a postcard of the Meteor Crater.

From Discovery News:

"The postcard intrigued me, so I went to see it," he said. "My father was a geologist. He would take me on these expeditional trips to go rock hunting when he was alive, when I was a kid. When I saw the crater it made me think of him, what he would have thought, what his reaction would have been. Immediately I thought, 'I'm going to look into this more.'"

In 2003, Gaz launched into a six-year-long global project of tracking down and photographing the planet's cosmic scars, beginning with Meteor Crater. The results speak for themselves: haunting, otherworldly images of craters that are familiar, and yet utterly strange.

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Mars And The Moon To Line Up For Celestial Spectacle

Mars

From The Telegraph:

Mars and the full Moon are expected to pair up and provide a grand celestial spectacle tonight.

The Red Planet, now 62 million miles from Earth, will be at its brightest this year as it lines up opposite the Sun on Friday.

At around 9pm, Mars will be above and to the left of the Moon, about the length of an outstretched fist away.

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How Does The IPad Compare To Netbooks?

Music on the iPad feels more like iTunes than the iPod or iPhone. (Credit: Apple)

From PC World:

In launching the new Apple iPad this week, CEO Steve Jobs took a stand against the popular netbook category, which he dismissed as a poor fit into the space between laptops and smartphones.

"Netbooks aren't better at anything. They are slow, they have low-quality displays and run... PC software," Jobs said. "[The iPad] is so much more intimate than a laptop, and so much more capable than a smartphone with this gorgeous large display."

Netbooks, he said, are just cheap laptops.

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Was The Moon Created By A Nuclear Explosion On Earth?

Similarities: Lunar samples from moon landings have shown that the material
of the moon is nearly identical to Earth's

From The Daily Mail:

How the Moon was created and came to orbit the Earth has long puzzled scientists.

The most commonly held theory is that when the solar system was first formed, an object collided with Earth, knocking off a chunk of rock that fell into orbit around it.

But now two scientists have come up with a new explanation. They believe the Moon did not break away from the Earth because of an impact or an explosion in space, but because of a nuclear explosion on Earth itself.

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Bill Gates Pledges $10bn For A 'Decade Of Vaccine'

Photo: Bill Gates (Seth Wenig/AP)

From Times Online:

Bill Gates, the Microsoft founder and philanthropist, is to make the largest ever single charitable donation with a pledge of $10 billion (£6 billion) for vaccine work over the next decade.

Mr Gates said that he hoped the coming ten years would be the “decade of the vaccine” to reduce dramatically child mortality in the world’s poorest countries. It is calculated that his pledge could save more than 8 million lives.

Announcing the commitment, which far outstrips even the enormous previous donations by his own foundation, Mr Gates called for increased investment by governments and the private sector to help to research, develop and deliver vaccines.

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Language Structure Is Partly Determined By Social Structure

Geographic distribution of the 2,236 languages included in the present study. (Credit: Lupyan G, Dale R (2010), PLoS One, 10.1371/journal.pone.0008559.g001)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Jan. 28, 2010) — Psychologists at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Memphis have released a new study on linguistic evolution that challenges the prominent hypothesis for why languages differ throughout the world.

The study argues that human languages may adapt more like biological organisms than previously thought and that the more common and popular the language, the simpler its construction to facilitate its survival.

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New Tyrannosaur Species Discovered

Scientists have describe a new dinosaur species, Bistahieversor sealeyi, which belongs to the same lineage as Tyrannosaurus Rex. Here, an image of the adult fossil skull. The animal had a deep snout (as seen vertically from the side), like T. rex, but many subtle distinguishing features set it apart as a new species. Credit: David Baccadutre, New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science.

From Live Science:

T. rex's family tree just got one member larger. Scientists unearthed bones from a new dinosaur species, including an adult specimen and bones from a "teenager" that lived some 75 million years ago.

Called Bistahieversor sealeyi, the dinosaur lived about 10 million years before Tyrannosaurus rex appeared on the scene. Even so, B. sealeyi belongs to the same dinosaur linage as the famous T. rex.

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Water Vapour Could Be Behind Warming Slowdown

Image: A loss of water vapour from the Earth's stratosphere may have been behind the last decade being cooler than expected. NASA

From Nature News:

Mysterious changes in the stratosphere may have offset greenhouse effect.

A puzzling drop in the amount of water vapour high in the Earth's atmosphere is now on the list of possible culprits causing average global temperatures to flatten out over the past decade, despite ever-increasing greenhouse-gas emissions.

Although the decade spanning 2000 to 2009 ranks as the warmest on record, average temperatures largely levelled off following two decades of rapid increases. Researchers have previously eyed everything from the Sun and oceans to random variability in order to explain the pause, which sceptics have claimed shows that climate models are unreliable.

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Scientists Suggest Simulated Volcanic Eruptions Could Stem Global Warming

Scientists believe that simulating the effects of a volcanic eruption could help cool the planet, halting global warming. Fenton/AP

From The New York Daily News:

A group of scientists have a plan to save the planet - volcanoes!

Simulated volcanoes, to be precise.

The idea, detailed by a trio of environmental scientists in an editorial for the journal, Nature, would potentially be cheaper than forcing industries to cut carbon emissions.

"Many scientists have argued against research on solar radiation management," write David Keith of the University of Calgary in Canada, Edward Parson of the University of Michigan and Granger Morgan of Carnegie Mellon University.

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Using Biofuel In Cars 'May Accelerate Loss Of Rainforest'

Photo: Harvesting of palm oil, the production of which is leading to loss of rainforest. (Paulo Whitaker/Reuters/Corbis)

From Times Online:

Using biofuel in vehicles may be accelerating the destruction of rainforest and resulting in higher greenhouse gas emissions than burning pure petrol and diesel, a watchdog said yesterday.

The Renewable Fuels Agency also warned that pump prices could rise in April because of the Government’s policy of requiring fuel companies to add biofuel to petrol and diesel. More than 1.3 million hectares of land — twice the area of Devon — was used to grow the 2.7 per cent of Britain’s transport fuel that came from crops last year.

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For Apple, iPad Said More Than Intended

Steven P. Jobs introduced the iPad on Wednesday in San Francisco.
Ryan Anson/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

From The New York Times:

SAN FRANCISCO — Apple has generated a lot of chatter with its new iPad tablet. But it may not be quite the conversation it wanted.

Many women are saying the name evokes awkward associations with feminine hygiene products. People from Boston to Ireland are complaining that “iPad,” in their regional brogue, sounds almost indistinguishable from “iPod,” Apple’s music player. The problem may be worse outside the United States; Japanese does not even have a sound for the “a” in iPad.

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