Paper Linking Vaccine To Autism Retracted

There is no evidence that vaccines cause autism. Credit: iStockphoto

From Cosmos:

PARIS: Medical journal The Lancet has withdrawn a 1998 study linking autism with inoculation against three childhood illnesses, a paper that caused an uproar and an enduring backlash against vaccination.

"We fully retract this paper from the published record," The Lancet's editors said in a statement published online.

The 1998 paper suggested there might be a connection between autism and a triple vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella (MMR).

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"Twitteros" Are Mexico's Latest Outlaws

From CBS News:

GlobalPost: From Drug Cartels to Breathalyzer Tipsters, Twitter Users Are Fast Becoming Public Enemy No. 1.

Mexico has racked up its fair share of menacingly named outlaws in a three-year drug war: the Zetas, Aztecas and even a band of female assassins called the Panthers.

Now, if the government gets its way, another name will also make the wanted list: los Twitteros.

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iPad Rattles The E-Bookshelves

Bestseller: The iPad features iBook, an application for buying and reading books.
Credit: Apple

From Technology Review:

But Amazon's e-book dominance may be hard to change.

Over the weekend, a massive disappearing act took place on the virtual shelves of Amazon.com. In a dispute over e-book pricing, the online retailer blocked customers from buying titles--e-book or print--from Macmillan, a publisher whose imprints include Nature Publishing Group, the literary line of Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, and the science fiction and fantasy line Tor.

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Google Shows Off Chrome OS Tablet Ideas

A mock-up of a Chrome OS tablet from Google's Chromium developer site.
(Credit: Google)

From CNET News:

Who could resist the months of hype that paved the way for Apple's iPad debut last week? Apparently not Google, which has shown its interest in tablet computing with its browser-based Chrome OS.

On Monday, Glen Murphy, a user interface designer for Google's Chrome browser and the Chrome operating system based on it, pointed to image and video concepts of a Chrome OS-based tablet that went live two days before the iPad launch. Apparently nobody noticed initially, because only now did Murphy tweet, "Apparently our tablet mocks have been unearthed."

The site also shows the array of devices Google envisions for Chrome OS.

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The Pursuit Of Intelligence In Computer Science

What actually constitutes an objective pattern of cognition in machines that we will recognize as intelligent is extremely vague and constantly being rewritten. Steve Dunning/Getty Images

From Discovery News:

We can’t give machines intelligence until we can figure out what roles creativity, inspiration and curiosity should play.

Since the dawn of high tech electronics and robotics, we’ve heard an awful lot about artificial intelligence and countless tales about how it may just decide to enslave us all one of these days, or fuse with humanity into an unrecognizable homunculus of men, women, children and machines as in the end of Isaac Asimov’s classic short story The Last Question, which is probably my favorite science fiction tale for it’s amazing scope and it’s bizarre climax. But when we actually drill down to the actual requirements for making machines endowed with the kind of computing abilities we’d call intelligence, we’ll find that the definition of what actually constitutes an objective pattern of cognition we will recognize as intelligent is extremely vague and constantly being rewritten.

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NASA Budget Creates Uncertainty In Clear Lake

From Houston Chronicle:

Change came to Washington a year ago with the election of President Barack Obama, and one year later it is thundering through Houston's space community like a shuttle's sonic boom.

The totality of impacts from Obama's proposed NASA budget for Houston, the Clear Lake community surrounding Johnson Space Center and even for the astronauts themselves is still far from certain.

Space agency officials declined Tuesday to even confirm that NASA's astronaut corps would continue after the space shuttle retires within the next year.

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China's Power Boom Means West May Swap Oil Dependency For Green Tech Dependency

A Wind Power Field Near Xinxiang, China Chris Lim

From Popular Science:

President Obama made it clear in his State of the Union Address last week that he fears the American economy is on the brink of missing out on a green tech boom that could propel us out of our current financial mess and into the coming century, and it appears his concern is well-placed. China leapfrogged Denmark, Germany, Spain and the U.S. to become the world's largest maker of wind turbines last year, and 2010 is shaping up to be another banner year. For China that is, not for the West.

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Apologies Go Down Better Through Right Ear, Study Finds

Saying sorry into someone's right ear offers more chance of getting your message across, research shows Photo: GETTY

From The Telegraph:

Saying sorry isn’t always enough to earn forgiveness but you have more chance of getting your message across if you speak into someone’s right ear, research indicates.

Scientists found that when we are angry, the right ear becomes more receptive to sound than the left.

The discovery has led to the theory that by targeting the right ear, the penitent are more likely to succeed in talking someone round.

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'Broad Spectrum' Antiviral Fights Multitude Of Viruses

Ebola virus. A small-molecule "broad spectrum" antiviral may be able to fight a host of viruses by attacking them through some feature common to an entire class of viruses. (Credit: Frederick Murphy)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Feb. 2, 2010) — The development of antibiotics gave physicians seemingly miraculous weapons against infectious disease. Effective cures for terrible afflictions like pneumonia, syphilis and tuberculosis were suddenly at hand. Moreover, many of the drugs that made them possible were versatile enough to knock out a wide range of deadly bacterial threats.

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Future Soldiers May Get Brain Boosters And Digital Buddies

Caption: The Future Soldier Initiative. Credit: U.S. Army Natick Soldier Research Design and Engineering Center in Massachusetts.

From Live Science:

The soldiers of the future might controversially boost their brains with drugs and prosthetics, augment their strength with mechanical exoskeletons, and have artificially intelligent "digital buddies" at their beck and call, according to the U.S. Army's Future Soldier Initiative.

The project is the latest attempt from the U.S. Army research lab in Natick, Mass., to brainstorm what soldiers might carry into the battlefield of tomorrow. A special emphasis of its concept is augmenting mental performance.

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My Comment: An interesting look at what "super soldiers" may look like in the future.

Neuron Breakthrough Offers Hope On Alzheimer’s And Parkinson’s

From Times Online:

Neurons have been created directly from skin cells for the first time, in a remarkable study that suggests that our biological makeup is far more versatile than previously thought.

If confirmed, the discovery that one tissue type can be genetically reprogrammed to become another, could revolutionise treatments for conditions such as Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s, opening up the possibility of turning a patient’s own skin cells into the neurons that they need.

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Apple iPad May Ship With Webcam

From Wired Science:

Close scrutiny of the iPad which Steve Jobs presented at Apple’s special event last week shows what may be webcam, tucked away in the black screen bezel just like it is on the MacBook Pro.

A screen-grab from the official video of the event shows nothing but a small dot above the screen, opposite the home button. Taken alone, this isn’t much, but compare this with the picture of the iPad leaked just hours before the event (below). If you remember, these showed an iPad locked down in a security frame, and you could clearly see the camera in the bezel. I even pointed out the cutout in the frame that let us see the webcam.

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Save the Ozone Layer, Give Global Warming A Boost?

Image courtesy NASA Earth Observatory

From The National Geographic:

While most of the world has warmed, parts of the southern hemisphere have remained stubbornly cold—oddly enough because of a gaping hole in the ozone layer. Now new research shows that all the efforts made by scientists and environmental advocates to close the hole may actually increase warming throughout the entire southern hemisphere.

That's because, for decades, brighter summertime clouds, created by the hole, have reflected more of the sun's rays, acting as a shield against global warming.

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Digital Doomsday: The End Of Knowledge

Information is stored in many forms, but will it be readable in the future?
(Image:WesternWolf/Flickr/Getty)

From The New Scientist:

"IN MONTH XI, 15th day, Venus in the west disappeared, 3 days in the sky it stayed away. In month XI, 18th day, Venus in the east became visible."

What's remarkable about these observations of Venus is that they were made about 3500 years ago, by Babylonian astrologers. We know about them because a clay tablet bearing a record of these ancient observations, called the Venus Tablet of Ammisaduqa, was made 1000 years later and has survived largely intact. Today, it can be viewed at the British Museum in London.

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DARPA Gives $32 Million For A Bigger Big Dog From Boston Dynamics

LS3- The Bigger Dog via Boston Dynamics

Popular Science:

After years of development and several creepy videos, Boston Dynamics' Big Dog robot is scheduled to get bigger. Working off a $32 million request from DARPA and the Marine Corps, Boston Dynamics has developed a supped-up version of the quadrupedal Big Dog robot called the the Legged Squad Support System (LS3). This new robot will have a longer range, heavier carrying capacity, and more agility than its predecessor.

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Spray-On Miracle Could Revolutionise Manufacturing

Fantasy becomes reality: Alec Guinness starred in the 1951 satire
The Man in the White Suit. GETTY

From The Independent:

Liquid glass sounds like the stuff of sci-fi. But can it really live up to the hype?

It sounds too good to be true: a non-toxic spray invisible to the human eye that protects almost any surface against dirt and bacteria, whether it is hospital equipment and medical bandages or ancient stone monuments and expensive fabrics.

But true it is. The spray is a form of "liquid glass" and is harmless to living things and the wider environment. It is being touted as one of the most important, environmentally-friendly products to emerge from the field of nanotechnology, which deals in objects at the molecular end of the size scale.

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Cat Predicts 50 Deaths In RI Nursing Home

The tortoiseshell and white cat spends its days pacing from room to room, rarely spending any time with patients except those with just hours to live Photo: AP

From The Telegraph:

A cat with an uncanny ability to detect when nursing home patients are about to die has proven itself in around 50 cases by curling up with them in their final hours, according to a new book.

Dr David Dosa, a geriatrician and assistant professor at Brown University, said that five years of records showed Oscar rarely erring, sometimes proving medical staff at the New England nursing home wrong in their predictions over which patients were close to death.

The cat, now five and generally unsociable, was adopted as a kitten at the Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Centre in Providence, Rhode Island, which specialises in caring for people with severe dementia.

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So All These Climate Revelations Were A Dastardly Foreign Plot -- A Commentary

Matt Murphy

From The Independent:

It hasn't occurred to King that the emails might have been leaked by an insider

It was the Russians. Or possibly the Chinese. No, wait, it was the Americans. Yes, our very own version of Inspector Clouseau is on the case of the leaked emails from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit.

Yesterday Sir David King, Tony Blair's former chief scientific advisor, told this newspaper: "It was an extraordinarily sophisticated operation. There are several bodies of people who could do this sort of work. These are national intelligence agencies... there is the possibility that it could be the Russian intelligence agency." However, King goes on to suggest that the expense of such an operation would be too great for the entire Russian state to undertake: "In terms of the expense, there is the American lobby system, which is a very likely source of finance, so the finger must point to them."

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Stratospheric Water Vapor Is A Global Warming Wild Card

Water vapor and radiative processes. (Credit: Image courtesy of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Feb. 1, 2010) — A 10 percent drop in water vapor ten miles above Earth's surface has had a big impact on global warming, say researchers in a study published online January 28 in the journal Science. The findings might help explain why global surface temperatures have not risen as fast in the last ten years as they did in the 1980s and 1990s.

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Trees Growing Faster As Planet Warms

Parker uses diameter tape or 'd-tape' to measure the trees. The tape is calibrated to convert the tree's circumference, the measurement used to determine a tree's biomass. Photo: Kirsten Bauer.

From Live Science:

Trees in the Eastern United States are growing faster than they have in the last two centuries in response to Earth's warming climate, a new study finds.

For more than 20 years forest ecologist Geoffrey Parker, based at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center outside Washington, D.C., has tracked the growth of 55 stands of mixed hardwood forest plots in Maryland.

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