A Science News Aggregator That Covers Stories in the World Of Science And Technology.
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Singing 'Rewires' Damaged Brain
Teaching stroke patients to sing "rewires" their brains, helping them recover their speech, say scientists.
By singing, patients use a different area of the brain from the area involved in speech.
If a person's "speech centre" is damaged by a stroke, they can learn to use their "singing centre" instead.
Researchers presented these findings at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in San Diego.
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PleaseRobMe Website Highlights Dangers Of Telling World Your Location
A website called PleaseRobMe has been launched to highlight the dangers of sharing too much information on the internet about your location.
The site pulls together updates on Twitter from people who publicly broadcast where they are at any given time, making the point that if they are in the pub, for instance, they are not at home and could be burgled.
Saliva DNA Test Could Determine Future Health
prone to developing a life-threatening illness.
From The Guardian:
Quick, low-cost test being developed at Edinburgh University could determine whether a person is prone to disease.
A fast, low-cost DNA test which can determine a person's chances of developing certain inherited diseases could soon be a reality, scientists said today.
A drop of saliva will be enough to allow medics to pinpoint variations in patients' genetic code in a test being formulated by scientists at Edinburgh University.
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Chocolate Bar That Can Be Eaten During Lent
From The Telegraph:
A "healthy" chocolate bar which can be eaten during Lent has been invented by scientists who replaced the fat with water.
The low-fat chocolate containing almost two thirds water is said to taste identical to regular bars and could pave the way for a new generation of “healthy” foods.
Researchers are also developing a low-fat mayonnaise and porridge which prevents people from feeling hungry by staying in their stomach longer.
Visionary Who Designed World's Biggest Radio Telescope, Dies Aged 92
From The Daily Mail:
An engineer who designed the telescope that discovered the first planets beyond our solar system has died aged 92.
William Gordon was a visionary whose atmospheric work laid the foundation for current studies of satellite communication, space weather, and GPS.
He is probably best known for his role in getting the Arecibo Observatory up and running in the late 1950s.
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Saturday, February 20, 2010
Scientists Image Brain At Point When Vocal Learning Begins
From Science Daily:
Science Daily (Feb. 19, 2010) — Duke University Medical Center scientists crowded around a laser-powered microscope in a darkened room to peer into the brain of an anesthetized juvenile songbird right after he heard an adult tutors' song for the first time.
Specifically, they wanted to see what happened to the connections between nerve cells, or synapses, in a part of the brain where the motor commands for song are thought to originate.
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Altitude Could Limit Some Olympic Performances
For the athletes competing now in the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, altitude can be an important factor in making it to the medal stand, but not for the reasons you might think.
And the impact of altitude in the Vancouver Olympics could mean we won't see many records set in sports such as speed skating.
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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?
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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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