CSI Cairo: How Science Will Solve The Mystery Of Tutankhamun

DNA samples have been taken from Tutankhamun and other mummies from the 18th dynasty of rulers in an attempt to establish his family lineage. Getty Images

From The Independent:

New technology is helping answer the riddles in the life, and death, of the boy pharaoh. And it's cracked other historical puzzles too.

His golden funeral mask with its striped headdress has become the symbol of Egypt's ancient grandeur. Yet for all the fame that surrounds the boy King Tutankhamun, no one really knows who he was.

Now, the mystery of King Tut's lineage has finally been solved. It will be revealed to the world on Wednesday, more than 30 centuries after the pharaoh was sealed in a gold coffin.

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Online Voyeurs Flock to The Random Thrills Of Chatroulette

From The Guardian:

An addictive new website that links strangers' webcams is gaining popularity – and notoriety.

A new website that has been described as "surreal", "addictive" and "frightening" is proving a sensation around the world – and attracting a reputation as a haven for no-holds-barred, explicit material.

Chatroulette, which was launched in November, has rocketed in popularity thanks to its simple premise: internet video chats with ­random strangers.

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There Has Been No Global Warming Since 1995

Click Image to Enlarge

From The Daily Mail:

* Data for vital 'hockey stick graph' has gone missing
* There has been no global warming since 1995
* Warming periods have happened before - but NOT due to man-made changes

The academic at the centre of the ‘Climategate’ affair, whose raw data is crucial to the theory of climate change, has admitted that he has trouble ‘keeping track’ of the information.

Colleagues say that the reason Professor Phil Jones has refused Freedom of Information requests is that he may have actually lost the relevant papers.

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Robot Hand Could Protect Soldiers On The Battlefield

The 'intelligent' substance d3o at the display

From The Telegraph:

A robot hand that could defuse bombs, luminous goo that flows around soldiers’ moving bodies but hardens to protect them if they are hit and a uniform that conducts electricity are among the first fruits of the Ministry of Defence’s version of the Dragons’ Den.

The Centre for Defence Enterprise (CDE) in Harwell, Oxfordshire, is an initiative that aims to harness British scientific innovation for rapid use on the battlefield. Ministers also hope to temper the MoD’s reputation for laborious and costly procurements that arrive in service years after they have ceased to be useful.

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Google Shuts Down Music Blogs Without Warning

Music blog Gorilla Vs Bear was concerned by Google's actions

From The Guardian:

Bloggers told they have violated terms without further explanation, as years of archives are wiped off the internet.

In what critics are calling "musicblogocide 2010", Google has deleted at least six popular music blogs that it claims violated copyright law. These sites, hosted by Google's Blogger and Blogspot services, received notices only after their sites – and years of archives – were wiped from the internet.

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Hubble Telescope Captures Saturn's Eerie Twin Aurorae

Astronomers had a rare chance to view Saturn with its rings edge on. It meant they could study the planet's Northern and Southern lights

From The Daily Mail:

A spectacular light show on Saturn has been captured in unique new photos of the ringed planet.

The aurora images captured by the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) were made possible by a rare chance to see the planet with its rings edge-on and both poles in view.

It takes Saturn almost 30 years to orbit the Sun, and during that time such a picture opportunity occurs only twice.

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How Transformers Can Explode

With a surge of power and corroded wiring, transformers can explode, causing extensive damage. (Photo from Iceman9294/Flicker)

From Popular Mechanics:

On February 12, an underground electrical transformer exploded in front of a Radio Shack on 6th Avenue, in New York City, emitting a fireball seven stories high and damaging nearby buildings. Here's how this could have happened.

A transformer from Consolidated Edison (Con Ed), New York City's sole electricity supplier, exploded from beneath the sidewalk in an underground vault yesterday, creating a fiery blast that shattered windows multiple stories high. Though no injuries were reported, offices and stores at the corner of 20th Street were left smoldering.

Investigators are still trying to answer the question: Just what lead this transformer to explode?

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New Camera System Takes The Guesswork Out Of Baseball Stats

Keeping an Eye on the Ball Up to four cameras mounted on the light towers along each foul line send a live feed to a computer, where object-recognition software identifies each player and the ball and records their every movement as the play unfolds. Here, a sample data stream from a pop fly to left field. Graham Murdoch

From Popular Science:

This could be the year that baseball-stat freaks finally crack the “Derek Jeter enigma.” A panel of coaches has awarded the New York Yankees’ shortstop four of the past six Gold Glove awards for fielding excellence. That drives statisticians nuts, because nearly every statistical model ranks Jeter’s defense below average.

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Study Hints At Dark Matter Action

Image: Some scientists believe dark matter (in pink) is everywhere in the universe

From The BBC:

Researchers in the US say they have detected two signals which could possibly indicate the presence of particles of dark matter.

But the study in Science journal reports the statistical likelihood of a detection of dark matter as 23%.

Deep underground in a lab in Minnesota experiments to detect WIMPS, or Weakly Interacting Massive Particles have been going on since 2003.

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Models of Sea Level Change During Ice-Age Cycles Challenged

Data researchers collected on speleothem encrustations, a type of mineral deposit, in coastal caves on the Mediterranean island of Mallorca indicate that sea level was about one meter above present-day levels around 81,000 years ago. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of Iowa)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Feb. 12, 2010) — Theories about the rates of ice accumulation and melting during the Quaternary Period -- the time interval ranging from 2.6 million years ago to the present -- may need to be revised, thanks to research findings published by a University of Iowa researcher and his colleagues in the Feb. 12 issue of the journal Science.

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4 Myths of Online Dating Photos Revealed

From Live Science:

Guys hoping to get noticed on online dating sites should take off their shirts, at least those with six-pack abs, according to new survey results by one online matchmaker that also provide advice for gals' profile pics.

"We were sitting on a treasure trove of data," said Sam Yagan, co-founder and CEO of OkCupid. ''There are millions of experiments essentially happening on our site every day."

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General Relativity: In Pretty Good Shape

From Discovery Magazine:

If we celebrate provocative new experimental findings, we should also celebrate the careful null results (experiments that agree with existing theories) on which much of science is based. Back in October we pointed to a new analysis that used observations of gravitational lensing by large-scale structure to test Einstein’s general relativity on cosmological scales, with the intriguing result that it didn’t seem to fit. And the caveat that it probably would end up fitting once we understood things better, but it’s always important to follow up on these kinds of clues.

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Astronomers Back Chile To Host World's Biggest Telescope

A view of a telescope, operated by the European Southern Observatory, in Chile. Photo: Reuters/VICTOR RUIZ CABALLERO

From The Telegraph:

For astronomers, it appears that not only does size really matter but so does an eye-opening location.

That is why an international group of four professional star gazers have banded together to back Chile's Atacama desert as home to the world's biggest telescope, to be built in 2018 based on its geographical advantages.

The high-altitude Armazones mountain in the desert in northern Chilean desert is the perfect place for the European Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) to be set up, because of skies that are cloud-free 360 nights a year, they say.

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MoD's Vanguard: A Mix Of Robot Bomb Defusers And Kneepad Goo

Rich Walker of Shadow Robot Company with a robotic hand that could be used by army bomb disposal personnel. Photograph: Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty Images

From The Guardian:

Innovative technology at the Centre for Defence Enterprise

A robotic hand that could defuse bombs remotely, a camera with the ability to detect minute changes in the landscape and a mysterious orange goo that absorbs the impact of bomb blasts are among new battlefield technologies unveiled by the Ministry of Defence.

The innovations, designed to make life safer for frontline troops, are being funded by grants from the MoD's Centre for Defence Enterprise, which encourages private companies to bring their products straight to the government for development.

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'Like Science Fiction': Astronauts Awe-Struck By Gleaming International Space Station

Space shuttle Endeavour docked with the forward docking port of the Harmony module

From The Daily Mail:

Glowing in the sunlight, this is the latest stunning shot of the International Space Station, taken from the shuttle Endeavour as it came in to dock.

Astronaut Stephen Robinson was awe-struck when he drew close to the space station, during Endeavour's approach from below.

'To look up and see what humankind could really accomplish in space was just almost impossible to believe. It seemed like science fiction,' he said.

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The High-Tech Weather Forecasting In The 2010 Winter Olympics

Whistler Resort, Vancouver, British Columbia (Photograph by Julie Bishop/Getty Images)

From Popular Mechanics:

Weather forecasting during the Olympics is always critical, but it will be even harder than usual this time around. Not only is Vancouver the warmest city to host the winter games yet but the Vancouver-Whistler region's weather is incredibly complex because of the region's varied terrain, which spans ocean, islands and fjords and rises to 6500-foot-high mountains.

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U.S. Army In Afghanistan Takes Delivery of New Bacterial Bioreactors To Clean Wastewater

Engineering Wastewater Treatment Sabin Holland is the lead scientist on a waste-water treatment system developed at SHSU which has both military and civilian applications. Sam Houston State University

From Popular Science:

Bacteria have deployed to Afghanistan to help the U.S. Army clean polluted wastewater. The microbes commonly appear in handfuls of dirt, but now form the main component of two new bioreactors made by scientists at Sam Houston State University in Texas.

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Robot Stars In South Korean Plays

EveR-3: the all-singing, all-dancing thespian robot. Credit: Wikimedia

From The Cosmos/AFP:

SEOUL: A South Korean-developed robot played to acclaim in Robot Princess and the Seven Dwarfs and is set to take more leading theatre roles this year.

EveR-3 (Eve Robot 3) starred in various dramas last year including the government-funded Dwarfs which attracted a full house, said Lee Ho-Gil, of the state-run Korea Institute of Industrial Technology.

The lifelike EveR-3 is 157 cm tall, can communicate in Korean and English, and can express a total of 16 facial expressions – without ever forgetting her lines.

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Tigers Evolved With Snow Leopards, Gene Study Reveals

From The BBC:

The tiger may be more ancient and distinct than we thought.

Tigers are less closely related to lions, leopards and jaguars than these other big cats are to each other, according to a new comprehensive study.

The genetic analysis also reveals the tiger began evolving 3.2 million years ago, and its closest living relative is the equally endangered snow leopard.

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Apple Does Its Part To Battle Terrorism

From Concurring Opinions:

Today in my contracts call we were looking at boilerplate and the problems of contracts of adhesion. After class one of my students pointed out to me that buried in the fine print of its iTunes Store Terms and Conditions is a clause where Apple is doing its bit to foster non-proliferation. Clause 34(g) declares in part

You may not use or otherwise export or re-export the Licensed Application except as authorized by United States law and the laws of the jurisdiction in which the Licensed Application was obtained. In particular, but without limitation, the Licensed Application may not be exported or re-exported (a) into any U.S. embargoed countries or (b) to anyone on the U.S. Treasury Department’s list of Specially Designated Nationals or the U.S. Department of Commerce Denied Person’s List or Entity List. By using the Licensed Application, you represent and warrant that you are not located in any such country or on any such list. You also agree that you will not use these products for any purposes prohibited by United States law, including, without limitation, the development, design, manufacture or production of nuclear, missiles, or chemical or biological weapons.

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