How Scientific Are Superheroes?

From CNN:

You've probably had moments watching science fiction films when you thought, "Naw, that couldn't happen." And it's true - sci-fi movies often contain elements that don't conform to the laws of physics.

But modern science can say a lot about the plausibility of such things as stopping an asteroid from destroying the planet, and these are teachable moments, experts said today at the annual meeting of the American Association of the Advancement of Science in San Diego, California.

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Makeshift Shelter Of Future: Sewer Pipes, Balloons?

Michael DiTullo submitted a shelter design based on a giant umbrella. "It could ship easily in planes, trucks, or trains," he says. Click on the above image to see more contest submissions. (Credit: Michael DiTullo)

From CNET:

Picture a tent that could be dropped from a helicopter and kept aloft by balloons with computer-controlled rotors attached. It might sound like some kind of offbeat interactive media installation, but Canadian designer Richard Kuchinsky imagines his structure more practically: as a cheap, easy-to-deploy emergency shelter.

Kuchinksy's "balloon tent pop-up shelter" is just one submission to a contest by design site Core 77, which, in light of last month's Haiti earthquake, has tasked designers with creating innovative short-term shelters. Submissions for the site's latest "one-hour design challenge" will be accepted through February 28, but the Core 77 online submission forum is already hopping with some highly creative solutions to a pressing problem.

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Microsoft Offers Web Browser Choice To IE Users

From The BBC News:

Millions of European Internet Explorer (IE) users will have the option to choose an alternative browser from 1 March, Microsoft has announced.

It follows a legal agreement between Microsoft and Europe's Competition Commission in December 2009.

Microsoft committed to letting Windows PC users across Europe install the web browser of their choice, rather than having Microsoft IE as a default.

Figures suggest that over half the world's internet users have IE.

Testing for the update is already underway in the UK, Belgium and France.

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1st Medical Studies on Pot in 20 Years Find It Does Relieve Pain

From Discover Magazine:

Even as California sinks under a massive budget crisis, the $8.7 million the state used to research the use of marijuana for medical purposes now seems money well spent. The state-funded Center for Medical Cannabis Research at the University of California, San Diego has confirmed that pot is effective in reducing muscle spasms associated with multiple sclerosis and pain caused by certain neurological injuries or illnesses, according to a report issued Wednesday [The New York Times].

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Even In The Virtual World, Men Judge Women On Looks

Pleading for empathy (Image: Indianna University School of Informatics)

From New Scientist:

HOW is a female avatar supposed to get a fair treatment in the virtual world? They should rely on human females - men can't help but be swayed by looks.

Thanks to video games and blockbuster movies, people are increasingly engaging with avatars and robots. So Karl MacDorman of Indiana University in Indianapolis, Indiana, decided to find out how people treated avatars when faced with an ethical dilemma. Does an avatar's lack of humanity mean people fail to empathise with them? The answer seems to depend on gender.

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Stray Hydrogen Atoms Become Deadly For Starships Traveling At Light Speed

USS Enterprise Watch out for stray hydrogen atoms Paramount Pictures

From Popular Science:

Science fiction writers may have to rethink how their starship crews survive travel near or beyond the speed of light. Even the occasional hydrogen atom floating in the interstellar void would become a lethal radiation beam that would kill human crews in mere seconds and destroy a spacecraft's electronics, New Scientist reports.

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America’s Wind Energy Potential Triples In New Estimate

From Wired Science:

The amount of wind power that theoretically could be generated in the United States tripled in the newest assessment of the nation’s wind resources.

Current wind technology deployed in nonenvironmentally protected areas could generate 37,000,000 gigawatt-hours of electricity per year, according to the new analysis conducted by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and consulting firm AWS Truewind. The last comprehensive estimate came out in 1993, when Pacific Northwest National Laboratory pegged the wind energy potential of the United States at 10,777,000 gigawatt-hours.

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Great White Sharks Now More Endangered Than Tigers ith Just 3,500 Left In The Oceas

Great White Sharks were made infamous by the film Jaws,
but they rarely attack people and usually do by accident.

From The Daily Mail:

They are known as one of the deadliest creatures on Earth.

But according to a shocking new study, great white sharks are also one of the most endangered.

Wildlife experts say there are now fewer than 3,500 great whites left in the oceans, making them rarer than tigers.

Yesterday, marine biologists called for an end to mankind's long battle with sharks and demanded urgent action to prevent them going extinct.

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Dolphins Can Turn Diabetes On … And Off

Bottlenose dolphins may gives scientists clues into how to shut off diabetes type II, and provide an insight into a range of other human ailments. Credit: U.S. National Parks Service

From Cosmos:

SAN DIEGO: Healthy bottlenose dolphins appear to turn on and off a diabetes-like state: a trick that may open to door to a treatment for the disease in humans.

The ‘switch’ mechanism, discovered by researchers at the non-profit National Marine Mammal Foundation, is likely driven by the dolphins’ high-protein, low-carbohydrate fish diet.

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Scientists Unlock Mystery In Important Photosynthesis Step

This is Kevin Redding in his lab at Arizona State University. Together with coworkers from the Max Plank Institute, he has taken a significant step closer to unlocking the secrets of photosynthesis. (Credit: Mary Zhu)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Feb. 20, 2010) — An international team of scientists, including two from Arizona State University, has taken a significant step closer to unlocking the secrets of photosynthesis, and possibly to cleaner fuels.

Plants and algae, as well as cyanobacteria, use photosynthesis to produce oxygen and "fuels," the latter being oxidizable substances like carbohydrates and hydrogen. There are two pigment-protein complexes that orchestrate the primary reactions of light in oxygenic photosynthesis: photosystem I (PSI) and photosystem II (PSII). Understanding how these photosystems work their magic is one of the long-sought goals of biochemistry.

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U.S. Bobsled Team Gets High-Tech Edge

Computer simulations of airflow and turbulence helped scientists redesign the U.S. bobsled.
Credit: Exa Corp.

From Live Science:

In Olympic bobsledding, hundredths of a second can mean the difference between winning and losing.

For the Vancouver Winter Olympics, the U.S. team might be just that much faster thanks to new sled designs based on complex models of airflow and turbulence.

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Shuttle Leaves Station As NASA Plans Last Flights

British born astronaut Nicholas Patrick, who is a former Harrow school boy, waves as he works on the Cupola far above Earth. Photo from the Daily Mail

From Reuters:

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - The space shuttle Endeavour sailed away from the International Space Station on Friday after delivering a final connecting hub and an observation deck, completing U.S. assembly of the orbital complex.

Four more shuttle missions remain to stock the station and deliver science experiments before NASA retires its three-ship fleet later this year. The station, a $100 billion project of 16 nations, has been under construction 220 miles above Earth since 1998.

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Cashing In On Internet Censorship

Photo: Scaling the wall: Firewall-breaching tools are booming in countries that are clamping down on Internet freedom.

From CNN:

(CNN) -- A growing number of software companies are capitalizing on an unexpected business opportunity: Internet censorship.

In countries where governments continue to ramp up Web filtering systems, more people are searching for tools that will allow them to access inaccessible information -- and they are willing to pay for them.

Such tools include virtual private networks (VPN), proxy servers and other workarounds that enable users to breach barriers to blocked information online.

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Pay For Hulu On The iPad? It May Be Your Only Choice

(Credit: All Things Digital)

From CNET:

Will Hulu come to the iPad? Probably. One day. But you had better get ready to pay for it.

Hulu and its owners, three of the big broadcast TV networks, want to bring some version of the Web video service to Apple's device.

But the most likely scenario is one in which access to Hulu on the iPad comes as part of a subscription package, multiple people familiar with the company tell me.

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Science Damaged By Climate Row Says NAS Chief Cicerone

Photo: NAS chief Ralph Cicerone says crisis is a 'wake-up call' for researchers

From The BBC:

Leading scientists say that the recent controversies surrounding climate research have damaged the image of science as a whole.

President of the US National Academy of Sciences, Ralph Cicerone, said scandals including the "climategate" e-mail row had eroded public trust in scientists.

His comment came at the annual American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in San Diego.

Dr Cicerone joined other renowned scientists on a panel at the event.

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Olympic Tech: Bobsled Aerodynamics, Curling Science, and More

From Discover Magazine:

We’re a week into the Vancouver Olympics, and if you haven’t had your fill of world-class athletes frolicking on the ice in frilly clothing, playing ice shuffleboard with 4o-plus-pound stones, or hurtling downhill at terrifying speed, don’t worry: There’s more than a week left to go. And there will be feats of dizzying daring and velocity, since Olympians don’t settle for just terrifying speed when there’s a chance to attain ridiculous speed, or even ludicrous speed. Thankfully, the Olympics are a bastion of technology, not just sport.

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Long-Promised Cancer Revolution Begins

From New Scientist:

A personalised blood test that can identify tumour DNA could be the first step towards a long-promised revolution in the way cancer is treated.

In the short term, the test - reported by Victor Velculescu of Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center in Baltimore, Maryland, and his colleagues in Science Translational Medicine - could be used to spot cancer recurrence before tumour growth shows up on scans, meaning that treatment could be started earlier.

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Video: Half-Kilometer-Long Explosive Whip Clears IEDs The Explode-y Way

From Popular Science:

Clearing battlefield obstacles has pitted trapper against sapper since Roman times. But whereas the minefields and dragon teeth of previous conflicts merely slowed advancing armies, the IEDs favored by today's insurgents have become the number one killer in the Long War. Now, to ensure safe passage through trap laden Afghan paths, the British Army is fighting fire with even bigger fire in the form of their newly developed Python explosive whip.

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My Comment: Expect more "boom-booms" when this mine clearing platform is used.

Did Apple Just Undercut Amazon On E-Books?

From PC World:

The $10 bestseller e-book might not be dead yet: Apple reportedly can sell e-books on the iPad for the same prices Amazon once offered.

The New York Times reports that Apple worked a provision into its agreement with publishers, requiring them to occasionally sell bestselling books at a discount, possibly as low as $10 per book.

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Photosynthesis: A New Source of Electrical Energy? Biofuel Cell Works in Cactus

Photo: Biofuel cell inserted in a cactus and graph showing the course of electrical current as a function of illumination of the cactus (black: glucose, red: O2).

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Feb. 18, 2010) — Scientists in France have transformed the chemical energy generated by photosynthesis into electrical energy by developing a novel biofuel cell. The advance offers a new strategy to convert solar energy into electrical energy in an environmentally-friendly and renewable manner. In addition, the biofuel cell could have important medical applications.

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