Top 10 Spooky Sleep Disorders

From Live Science:

Sleep is supposed to be a time of peace and relaxation. Most of us drift from our waking lives into predictable cycles of deep, non-REM sleep, followed by dream-filled rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep. But when the boundaries of these three phases of arousal get fuzzy, sleep can be downright scary. In fact, some sleep disorders seem more at home in horror films than in your bedroom.

Read more ....

British Library To Offer Free Ebook Downloads

Jane Austen: Originals cost £250

From Times Online:

MORE than 65,000 19th-century works of fiction from the British Library’s collection are to be made available for free downloads by the public from this spring.

Owners of the Amazon Kindle, an ebook reader device, will be able to view well known works by writers such as Charles Dickens, Jane Austen and Thomas Hardy, as well as works by thousands of less famous authors.

The library’s ebook publishing project, funded by Microsoft, the computer giant, is the latest move in the mounting online battle over the future of books.

Read more ....

Microsoft Urges Antitrust Complaints About Google

Image from Onecomics

From Times Online:

Microsoft has encouraged other companies to complain about Google to antitrust regulators in its most outspoken attack on its rival.

The software group, which for years has been the prime target of competition regulators in the US and Europe over the way it handled its near-monopoly of computer operating systems, wants to turn the spotlight on to Google's position as the world's biggest internet search and advertising company.

Read more ....

Colossal Head Statue Of King Tut's Grandfather Dug Out In Luxor

The colossal head, after its excavation.
Courtesy: Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA)

From Discovery News:

A colossal head statue of King Tut's grandfather has been dug out in Luxor, Farouk Hosni, Egypt's Culture Minister, said Sunday.

Smoothly polished and perfectly preserved, the 2.5-meter (8-foot) head belonged to Amenhotep III, the pharaoh who was King Tutankhamun's grandfather, according to DNA tests revealed last week.

The ninth ruler of the Eighteenth Dynasty, Amenhotep III (1390-1352 B.C.), reigned for 38 year during a time when Egypt was at the height of prosperity and cultural development.

Read more ....

Suborbital Safety: Will Commercial Spaceflight Ramp Up the Risk?

From Popular Mechanics:

At the first-ever Next-Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference, high-level officials from NASA and the FAA addressed the risks that new private and commercial suborbital vehicles will carry when transporting NASA-sponsored payloads and personnel.

Ever since the loss of the space shuttle Challenger, almost a quarter of a century ago, the watchword above all others at NASA has been "safety." Unfortunately, watchwords don't necessarily create actual safety, as we learned a little over seven years ago, with the loss of her sister ship Columbia.

Read more ....

Video: A Silent Rotor Blade Paves The Way For Super-Stealth Choppers

From Popular Science:

For all the government conspiracy militia nuts out there, I've got some good news and some bad news. The good news is that there is no such thing as silent, stealth black helicopters. The bad news is that, thanks to Eurocopter's noise-canceling Blue Edge rotor blades, there soon will be.

Read more ....

Stonehenge "Hedge" Found, Shielded Secret Rituals?

Stonehenge (seen in an aerial view taken in the late 1990s) may have been protected by a green barrier, archaeologists say. Photograph by Jason Hawkes, Corbis

From The National Geographic:

Stonehenge may have been surrounded by a "Stonehedge" that blocked onlookers from seeing secret rituals, according to a new study.

Evidence for two encircling hedges—possibly thorn bushes—planted some 3,600 years ago was uncovered during a survey of the site by English Heritage, the government agency responsible for maintaining the monument in southern England.

Read more ....

By Tracking Water Molecules, Physicists Hope To Unlock Secrets Of Life

Supercool. As individual water molecules fluctuate, breaking and forming bonds with their nearest neighbors, the result is slightly imperfect tetrahedral structures that are constantly in flux. Research suggests that these fluctuations give rise to some of water's most unusual and life-sustaining features. (Credit: Image courtesy of Rockefeller University)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Mar. 1, 2010) — The key to life as we know it is water, a tiny molecule with some highly unusual properties, such as the ability to retain large amounts of heat and to lose, instead of gain, density as it solidifies. It behaves so differently from other liquids, in fact, that by some measures it shouldn't even exist. Now scientists have made a batch of new discoveries about the ubiquitous liquid, suggesting that an individual water molecule's interactions with its neighbors could someday be manipulated to solve some of the world's thorniest problems -- from agriculture to cancer.

Read more ....

How Bad Is Second-Hand Smoke?

From Live Science:

This Week’s Question: I live with my 40-year-old son and he smokes like the proverbial chimney around the house. I’m afraid of what it’s doing to his health. What can I do to get him to quit?

Tell him he may be killing you with his secondhand smoke.

Secondhand smoke—also called environmental tobacco smoke (ETS)—is made up of the “sidestream” smoke from the end of a cigarette, pipe, or cigar, and the “mainstream” smoke that is exhaled.

Read more ....

Clean Tech: A New Way To Hasten Energy Solutions

Solar panels cover the rooftop of the STAPLES Center sports complex in Los Angeles.
David McNew / Getty Images

From Time Magazine:

If we're going to find a way to fix our long-term energy woes — whether it's through biofuels made from algae or through the rise of miniature nuclear-power plants, — the solution is likely to come from northern California. Yes, in Silicon Valley, the same entrepreneurs who brought us the Internet — and, O.K., Pets.com — are exploring new ways to make and use energy. And we'll need them, as much for our economy's well-being as for our planet's.

Read more ....

British Library Launches UK Internet Archive

From Times Online:

The UK's national library has created a fascinating snapshot of the way Britons have been using the web since 2004.

So, the internet of today's not big enough for you?

Then have a look at the 6,000 or so vintage sites that have been newly collected by the British Library for the UK Web Archive, which launched today.

The Library, which collects every periodical and book published in English, decided to extend its reach to cover the internet in 2004, when it was clear that the web's evolution would inevitably mean that some sites would disappear.

Read more ....

Giant Antarctic Iceberg Could Affect Global Ocean Circulation

Satellite image showing 97km (60 mile) long iceberg, right, about to crash into the Mertz glacier tongue, left, in the Australian Antarctic Territory. The collision created a new 78km-long iceberg. Photograph: AP

From The Guardian:

Ice broken off from Mertz glacier is size of Luxembourg and may decrease oxygen supply for marine life in the area.

An iceberg the size of Luxembourg that contains enough fresh water to supply a third of the world's population for a year has broken off in the Antarctic continent, with possible implications for global ocean circulation, scientists said today.

Read more ....

Happiness Ain't All It's Cracked Up To Be

From New Scientist:

The Founding Fathers liked happiness so much they considered pursuing it an inalienable right – but maybe that wasn't such a good idea. Happiness seems to make people more selfish, the latest in a series of revelations suggesting it changes how you think – and not in a good way.

Psychologist Joe Forgas at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, who has led many of these studies, suggests that happiness's negative effects all stem from a cheery mood's tendency to lull you into feeling secure. This makes you look inwards and behave both more selfishly and more carelessly.

Read more ....

Happily Married Men 'Much Less Likely To Suffer Stroke' Than Single Or Unhappily Married Friends

Scientists say an unhappy marriage or being left on the shelf was as big a risk to your chances of having a stroke as having diabetes Photo: ALAMY

From The Telegraph:

Happily married men are much less likely to suffer a stroke than their single or unhappily married friends, according to new research.

Single men and those in unsuccessful marriages were 64 per cent more likely to have a stroke than men in successful marriages.

Scientists say an unhappy marriage or being left on the shelf was as big a risk to your chances of having a stroke as having diabetes.

Read more ....

Apple: Underage Workers May Have Built Your iPhone

From PC World:

That iPhone you adore may have been built by a child.

Nearly a dozen underage teens were working for Apple-contracted facilities in 2009, the company has revealed. The news was posted to Apple's Web site under a section labeled "Supplier Responsibility."

Read more ....

Climate Group Plans Review

From The Wall Street Journal:

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's announcement over the weekend that it will seek independent experts to investigate how factual errors were published in its latest report is a key aspect of the organization's effort to understand and divulge its institutional problems, officials there say.

The announcement by the United Nations-sponsored organization Saturday comes as it gears up to produce another big report on global warming.

Read more ....

The Fiancee Formula: Academics Work Out The Best Time To Propose

From The Daily Mail:

Worried your boyfriend is never going to propose? Then buy him a calculator.

Mathematicians have come up with a 'fiancee formula' that allows men to work out the perfect time to pop the question.

All he needs is the age he would first consider marrying and his cut-off point - and the equation does the rest.

Maths professor Anthony Dooley said: 'Applying maths to matters of the heart is always dangerous. In life you are dealing with emotions and have to think much harder.

But if you want to work out the right moment to start getting serious, this gives you a mathematical framework.'

Read more ....

Threat to Monkey Numbers from Forest Decline

An Udzungwa red colobus monkey. (Credit: Andrew Marshall / University of York)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Feb. 27, 2010) — Monkey populations in threatened forests are far more sensitive to damage to their habitat than previously thought, according to new research.

An analysis of monkeys living in Tanzania's Udzungwa Mountains suggests that the impact of external factors, such as human activity, on species numbers is felt in forests as large as 40 square kilometres.

Read more ....

Chile Earthquake: Is Mother Nature Out of Control?

From Live Science:

Chile is on a hotspot of sorts for earthquake activity. And so the 8.8-magnitude temblor that shook the capital region overnight was not a surprise, historically speaking. Nor was it outside the realm of normal, scientists say, even though it comes on the heels of other major earthquakes.

One scientist, however, says that relative to a time period in the past, the Earth has been more active over the past 15 years or so.

Read more ....

Why Tsunamis Were Smaller Than Expected

Debris in Pelluhue, Chile, after high waves hit. VICTOR RUIZ CABALLERO/REUTERS

From The Independent:

It is fortunate that one of the biggest earthquakes in recent history has generated only relatively small tsunamis that crossed the Pacific Ocean from Chile to Japan. This is almost certainly because the rupture that generated the earthquake occurred quite deep in the Earth's crust.

The size of a tsunami, which means "harbour wave" in Japanese, is directly related to the volume of water that is displaced during the movement of the seabed during an earthquake. The bigger the amount of water that is moved up or down, the bigger the tsunami that is likely to be created.

Read more ....