The Writing On The Cave Wall

Time to look around the paintings (Image: Dozier Marc/Photolibrary)

From New Scientist:

THE first intrepid explorers to brave the 7-metre crawl through a perilously narrow tunnel leading to the Chauvet caves in southern France were rewarded with magnificent artwork to rival any modern composition. Stretching a full 3 metres in height, the paintings depict a troupe of majestic horses in deep colours, above a pair of boisterous rhinos in the midst of a fight. To the left, they found the beautiful rendering of a herd of prehistoric cows. "The horse heads just seem to leap out of the wall towards you," says Jean Clottes, former director of scientific research at the caves and one of the few people to see the paintings with his own eyes.

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The World's 18 Strangest Airports

(Photograph by Tdk)

From Popular Mechanics:

Engineers tasked with building an airport are faced with countless challenges: The ideal location needs ample space, endless flat ground, favorable winds and great visibility. But spots in the real world are rarely ideal, and engineers are forced to work with what they have, making sure that the end product is the safest possible structure for pilots. A survey of airports around the world turns up a mixed bag, ranging from dangerous and rugged landing strips to mega-size facilities that operate like small cities. Here, PM explores the world's most remarkable airports and why they stand out.

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Robots To Clear Baltic Seabed Of WWII Mines

Retro Sea Mine via Bactec

From Popular Science:

In a dangerous legacy of the world's deadliest conflict, 150,000 World War Two-era sea mines litter the Baltic Sea. The danger these bombs pose to a proposed gas pipeline has prompted Russia to hire the British firm Bactec International to clear the sea of unexploded ordnance. And for Bactec, that means it's time to bring out the robots.

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Google Digital Library Faces Outcry At NYC Hearing

From My Way News:

NEW YORK (AP) - Google's effort to create the world's largest library by scanning millions of books for use on the Internet faces a courtroom fight as authors, foreign governments, corporate rivals and even the U.S. Department of Justice line up to challenge it.

U.S. District Judge Denny Chin already has read more than 500 submissions about a $125 million settlement aimed at ending a pair of 2005 lawsuits brought by authors and publishers and clearing legal obstacles to a gigantic online home for digital books.

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Upside-Down Answer For Deep Mystery: What Caused Earth To Hold Its Last Breath?

Volcano eruption (Reunion island, Indian Ocean).
(Credit: iStockphoto)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Feb. 18, 2010) — When Earth was young, it exhaled the atmosphere. During a period of intense volcanic activity, lava carried light elements from the planet's molten interior and released them into the sky. However, some light elements got trapped inside the planet. In the journal Nature, a Rice University-based team of scientists is offering a new answer to a longstanding mystery: What caused Earth to hold its last breath?

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New Transistors Mimic Human Brain's Synapses

From Live Science:

A new transistor designed to mimic structures in the human brain could pave the way for increasingly efficient computer systems that "think" like humans, scientists say.

The transistor is the first to mimic a crucial process used by brain cells, or neurons, when the cells signal one another.

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Scientists Shed Light On Supernova Origins

Type Ia supernovae are thought to result when a white dwarf star in a binary system accumulates enough matter from its larger companion. When the white dwarf reaches the critical Chandrasekhar mass, about 1.4 times the mass of our Sun, high internal density and temperature ignite a thermonuclear explosion. Because the masses of Type Ia supernovae are similar, their brightnesses are similar. Berkeley Lab

From The L.A. Times:

The so-called Type 1a supernovae are key to measuring celestial distances. Astronomers find evidence that they're formed by the collision of two white dwarfs.

German astronomers using a U.S. telescope have provided scientists with at least a partial answer to a vexing question: What is the origin of the so-called Type 1a supernovae, which are widely used as celestial mileage markers?

Type 1a supernovae are of special significance to astronomers because all are believed to have essentially the same intrinsic brightness, and because they can be observed from great distances. Thus, by comparing the brightness of any one of them to what it is expected to be, researchers can estimate its distance from Earth and thereby judge the distance of objects near it.

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Two Languages In Womb Makes Bilingual Babies

Being bilingual starts in the womb. Credit: iStockphoto

From Cosmos/AFP:

WASHINGTON: Babies who hear two languages regularly when they are in their mother's womb are more open to being bilingual, a study published this week in Psychological Science shows.

Psychological scientists from the University of British Columbia and a researcher from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in France tested two groups of newborns, one of which only heard English in the womb and the others who heard English and Tagalog, which is spoken in the Philippines.

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Fertilizer Overuse Destroying Chinese Soil

From Fabius Maximus:

As usual with cutting edge research, the timing and significance of this is impossible for a layman to accurately access. But this could be bad for China. Yields have already dropped 30-50% in some places.

1. A summary of the research by Reuters
2. More detailed summaries, in ScienceNow and Nature
3. The research, in Science
4. For more information from the FM site, and an Afterword

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DARPA Wants To Build The Ultimate Language Traslator

Darpa Looks to Build Real-Life C3P0 -- The Danger Room

Right now, troops trying to listen in on enemy chatter rely on a convoluted process. They tune into insurgency radio frequencies, then hand the radio over to local interpreters, who translate the dialogues. It’s a sloppy process, prone to garbled words and missed phrases.

What troops really need is a machine that can pick out voices from the noise, understand and translate all kinds of different languages, and then identify the voice from a hit list of “wanted speakers.” In other words, a real-life version of Star Wars protocol droid C3PO, fluent “in over 6 million forms of communication.”

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Northern Hemisphere Snow Extent Second Highest On Record

Source : Rutgers University Global Snow Lab

From Watts Up With That?:

According to Rutgers University Global Snow Lab, last week’s Northern Hemisphere winter snow extent was the second highest on record, at 52,166,840 km2. This was only topped by the second week in February, 1978 at 53,647,305 km2. Rutgers has kept records continuously for the last 2,227 weeks, so being #2 is quite an accomplishment.

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United States' Drought Has 'Extraordinary' Reversal

From USA Today:

What a difference a rain makes. The nationwide drought that had farmers, communities and entire states fighting to conserve water has reversed in the most dramatic turnaround since federal scientists began keeping records.

More than 92% of the country is drought-free — the nation's best showing since 1999.

"The lack of drought is extraordinary," said Douglas Le Comte, a meteorologist with the federal Climate Prediction Center.

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Wind Turbines Make Their Own Clouds (Another Reason You Might Not Want One On Your Doorstep)

The wind farm at Scroby Sands off East Anglia is shrouded in sea fog caused by its spinning blades

From The Daily Mail:

An offshore wind farm has been creating its own 'micro-climate' by stirring up air to create low-level clouds around its giant, spinning blades.

These stunning pictures show the mist caused by the spinning 40 metre blades of the turbines whipping up moisture from the surface of the sea at Scroby Sands near Great Yarmouth, Norfolk.

Holidaymakers often walk around in bright sunshine on the beach while watching the mist envelop the £75m wind farm less than two miles offshore.

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U.S. Wargamers Wrap Up Massive Cyberattack Drill: "We Are Not Prepared"

West Wing Situation Room Planning for a hopefully better tomorrow Christopher Morris/White House Museum

From Popular Science:

Washington insiders recently sweated out a real-time war game where a cyberattack crippled cell phone service, Internet and even electrical grids across the U.S. The unscripted, dynamic simulation allowed former White House officials and the Bipartisan Policy Center to study the problems that might arise during a real cyberattack emergency, according to Aviation Week's Ares Defense Blog.

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The Rhythm of Our Star

An image taken at dusk with TON (Taiwan oscillations of networks). The profile of the house is real. (Credit: Image courtesy of Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Feb. 17, 2010) — When we look at the Sun we cannot penetrate beyond its outer surface, the photosphere, which emits the photons that make up the radiation we can see. So how can we find out what is inside it?

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The Physics Of Figure Skating

Pairs skaters at the Italian overall 2009 Figure Skating Championships. Credit: Dreamstime

From Live Science:

To see physics in action in everyday life, look no further than figure skating.

And as the men hit the ice to show off their spins and combinations Tuesday in the Winter Olympics, here's a perfect chance to watch examples of basic scientific concepts, such as friction, momentum, and the law of equal and opposite reactions.

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Medical Potential Of IPS Stem Cells Exaggerated Says World Authority

IPS cells were named the breakthrough of 2008

From Times Online:

The medical potential of reprogrammed stem cells that do not require the destruction of embryos has been exaggerated, according to the head of one of the world’s leading regenerative medicine companies.

Thomas Okarma, the chief executive of Geron Corporation, told The Times that while so-called induced pluripotent stem (IPS) cells will be extremely useful in research, they are unlikely to be suitable for transplanting to patients to treat disease.

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Tutankhamun: Now We Know Who The Mummy's Mummy Was

The Viscera Coffin of Tutankhamun, one of four made for the Egyptian king. Getty images

From The Independent:

Secrets of Egyptian boy king's lineage and cause of death unearthed.

His autopsy took some time to complete – more than 3,000 years, in fact – but scientists now believe they know why the Egyptian boy king Tutankhamun died, as well as who his parents and grandmother were.

After conducting an extensive analysis of the ancient pharaoh's DNA, which they gathered from his mummified remains, the researchers concluded that a combination of malaria and bone abnormalities contributed to his premature death at the age of 19 in 1324 BC.

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British Scientists Discover 'Secret To Ageing' Bringing New Hope To Old-Age Sufferers

Scientists said the discovery would unlikely provide an elixir of eternal life in the near future.

From The Telegraph:

The secret to ageing appears to have been solved by British scientists, bringing new hope to sufferers of old age-related illnesses such as heart disease.

The international team of researchers based Newcastle University have reportedly unlocked the secret as to how and why living cells grow old by discovering the biochemical pathway involved in ageing.

The study, together with German experts from the University of Ulm, could lead to a “much better chance of making a successful attack on age-related diseases”.

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Only In Vegas: The Magic Carpets Designed To Keep You Awake And Gambling

The outrageous carpets do nothing to distract gamblers at Las Vegas's most popular casinos

From The Daily Mail:

Las Vegas is well-known for being the city that never sleeps as gamblers are encouraged to spend their money around the clock.

Now a new set of photographs has revealed that even the garish carpets that line the hotels and casinos have an important part to play.

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