Shields Down! Earth's Mag Field May Drop In A Flash

There'll be little warning if Earth's magnetic field flips (Image: NASA/SPL)

From New Scientist:

EVEN if we knew precise details of Earth's core, we would not be able to predict a catastrophic flip in the polarity of its magnetic field more than a decade or two ahead.

Our planet's magnetic field has reversed polarity from time to time throughout its history. Some models suggest that a flip would be completed in a year or two, but if, as others predict, it lasted decades or longer we would be left exposed to space radiation. This could short-circuit satellites, pose a risk to aircraft passengers and play havoc with electrical equipment on the ground.

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Artificial Intelligence Brings Musicians Back From The Dead, Allowing All-Stars Of All Time To Jam

Rachmaninoff, Back at the Piano Where He Belongs Zenph

From Popular Science:

Want to know what a jam session between Jack White and Stevie Ray Vaughan might have sounded like, or how Billie Holliday would interpret the latest dreck from Avril Lavigne? Advances in artificial intelligence are resurrecting musical legends of the past, tapping into old recordings to establish a musician's style and personality, then applying those attributes to newer recordings of old songs, or even to songs the musician never played before.

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Money Sharing Comes To Facebook

Photo: 16,000 online traders accept payments via Buxter's parent company.

From The BBC:

Friends on social networking site Facebook can now send small payments directly to each other via an application called Buxter.

Buxter handles transactions in Euros or US dollars, with plans to launch in Sterling in the next four weeks.

Other currencies are subject to a 5% conversion fee at the point of upload to a Buxter account.

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Early Cannabis Use Linked To Psychosis

From Cosmos/AFP:

WASHINGTON: The longer people use cannabis or marijuana, the more likely they are to experience hallucinations or delusions or to suffer psychosis, according to a study released Saturday.

The study found that people who first used cannabis when they were aged 15 or younger were twice as likely to develop a "non-affective psychosis" - which can include schizophrenia - than those who had never used the drug.

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Why Beer Needs Watering Down

From Times Online:

Brewers are teaming up with environmentalists to help to conserve water supplies — and ensure the pints keep flowing.

It’s enough to make beer drinkers cry into their pints. A combination of factors, including rapid population growth, expanding food needs and unpredictable weather patterns, is heralding a global water crisis. Chronic water shortages are already hitting many regions, particularly in developing countries. Industry, which accounts for about 22 per cent of global fresh water consumption, is increasingly concerned about what will happen when the taps run dry. Brewers are among the most vulnerable: a pint of beer is up to 95 per cent water. Drinkers have been warned that, as water supplies dry up, prices could rise and supplies could be threatened. The battle is on to keep the pumps open.

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Canine Morphology: Hunting For Genes And Tracking Mutations

Researchers studying the dog genome have a new understanding of why domestic dogs vary so much in size, shape, coat texture, color and patterning. (Credit: iStockphoto/Nataliya Kuznetsova)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Mar. 3, 2010) — Why do domestic dogs vary so much in size, shape, coat texture, color and patterning? Study of the dog genome has reached a point where the molecular mechanisms governing such variation across mammalian species are becoming understood.

In an essay published in the March 2, 2010 issue of PLoS Biology, National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) researchers discuss advances in understanding the genomic mechanisms controlling canine morphology.

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Dog-Sized Creature Was Almost A Dinosaur

The newly identified dinosaur relative, called Asilisaurus kongwe, was about the size of a large dog. Here a skeletal reconstruction of the animal is compared with a 5'6" human for scale. Credit: Sterling Nesbitt.

From Live Science:

A four-legged animal about the size of a large dog with a long tail is now the oldest known relative of dinosaurs, dating back some 240 million years. Paleontologists recently examined the bones from at least 14 individuals of this proto-dinosaur that were discovered in southern Tanzania.

The dino-like animal was small, weighing about that of a young child, and likely munched on plants.

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Tracing King Tut's Family Tree In London

A colossal statue of Amenhotep III - King Tut's only grandfather - can
be found at the British Museum, Room 4.

From The Independent:

Tutankhamun has always captured popular imagination, and been a major draw for museums.

The British Museum's 1972 exhibition of artefacts from his tomb smashed all expectations in the box office, drawing over 1.6 million visitors over its nine month duration. The pharaoh nicknamed 'King Tut' has been the source of more speculation, satire and popular culture references than any other male king of Egypt. Last week pathologists announced the results from their studies into the genetic relationship of eleven mummies from the Egyptian New Kingdom (mid 16th to early 11th centuries BC), including those of the legendary pharaoh Tutankhamun.

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Plans To Fight Cyberwar Are A 'Recipe For Disaster'

Michael Chertoff, former Secretary at the US Department of Homeland Security

From The Guardian:

Senior security experts have criticised the west's approach to online threats, suggesting that not enough is being done to stem the growing tide of cyberattacks.

Michael Chertoff, a former secretary at the US Department of Homeland Security, said on Wednesday that current cybersecurity policies were a "recipe for disaster" that could inadvertently encourage a virtual attack equivalent to "the next Pearl Harbour".

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More News On Cyberwar

A New Age for US Cybersecurity -- Tech News World
Former Intelligence Chief: U.S. Would Lose Cyberwar -- Information Week
U.S. would lose a cyber war, former intell chief warns -- Government Computer News
Cyberwar Hype Intended to Destroy the Open Internet -- Threat Level
US cyber defense strategy details hit the Internet -- France 24
China's Hacker Army -- Foreign Policy
Is Iran's Cyberwar Sustainable? -- National Journal
The Real Meaning Of Cyberwarfare -- Forbes
Cyberwar hype was cooked up to sell Internet-breaking garbage to the military -- Boing Boing

A Measure For The Multiverse

Touching the multiverse (Image: Eoin Ryan)

From The New Scientist:

WHEN cosmologist George Ellis turned 70 last year, his friends held a party to celebrate. There were speeches and drinks and canapés aplenty to honour the theorist from the University of Cape Town, South Africa, who is regarded as one of the world's leading experts on general relativity. But there the similarity to most parties ends.

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Japan's New Hovering Hummingbird Bot Has Four Wings, Weighs Under 3 Grams

Chiba University's Latest Hummingbird 'Bot Chiba University

From Popular Science:

Biomimicry isn't new, nor are robotic hummingbirds, but the latest 'bot to come out of Chiba University in Japan makes even the DARPA-inspired Nano Air Vehicle -- which is very cool, needless to say -- look like last year's robotics.

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Dinosaur Extinction Link To Crater Confirmed

From The BBC:

An international panel of experts has strongly endorsed evidence that a space impact was behind the mass extinction event that killed off the dinosaurs.

They reached the consensus after conducting the most wide-ranging analysis yet of the evidence.

Writing in Science journal, they rule out alternative theories such as large-scale volcanism.

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Shuttle Flights Would Continue Under New Proposal

From The Orlando Sentinel:

WASHINGTON — The space shuttle era could get a new lease on life under a bill filed today by U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas.

The measure would delay the shuttle’s planned retirement in 2010 until NASA is confident that a replacement spacecraft is ready or that the shuttle and its massive payload bay is no longer needed to keep the International Space Station afloat through 2020.

The 37-page bill also authorizes an additional $1.3 billion in NASA spending next year above President Barack Obama’s request of $19 billion. The extra money would help prepare NASA for as many as two additional shuttle flights per year after 2010, as well as fund new spacecraft development.

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Google vs. Apple: An Epic Battle

By David Goldman, staff writer

From CNN:

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Let the smartphone smackdown begin.

In the blue corner, wearing black, weighing in at 4.8 ounces, the 31-month champion of the touch screen phones: Apple's iPhone!

In the red corner is the challenger, appearing on every carrier, a new entrant to the heavy-weight battle: Google's Android!

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Millions Of YouTube Videos To Get Subtitles With 'Auto-Captioning'

From Times Online:

YouTube introduced a system today that will automatically create subtitles for all its English language videos.

The technology, called “auto-captioning”, uses complex algorithms to work out what is being said in a video and convert it into text. Once the feature is turned on, the words will appear on the bottom of the video screen just like subtitles in a film.

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Volcano-Chaser Braves Some Of Earth's Most Dangerous SituationsTo Capture Amazing Photos Of Violent Eruptions

From The Daily Mail:

Most people would think themselves unlucky if they passed a volcano as it erupted, but this counts as a good day at the office for one photographer.

Martin Rietze is part of a select group of volcano-chasers who seek out the exploding phenomena, and braves huge electric storms and boiling lava to get the perfect shots.

The 45-year-old travels around the world's volcano hotspots, from Costa Rica to Italy, in his pursuit of Earth's greatest fiery spectacle.

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'Missing Link' Fossil Was Not Human Ancestor As Claimed, Anthropologists Say

Radiographs of the type specimen of Darwinius masillae, new genus and species, from Messel in Germany. (Credit: Franzen JL, Gingerich PD, Habersetzer J, Hurum JH, von Koenigswald W, et al. Complete Primate Skeleton from the Middle Eocene of Messel in Germany: Morphology and Paleobiology. PLoS ONE, 2009; 4(5): e5723 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0005723)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Mar. 3, 2010) — A fossil that was celebrated last year as a possible "missing link" between humans and early primates is actually a forebearer of modern-day lemurs and lorises, according to two papers by scientists at The University of Texas at Austin, Duke University and the University of Chicago.

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Is Antarctica Falling Apart?

Antarctica's Ross Ice Shelf, like many of the fringes of the Antarctic continent, floats. That makes it fragile compared to ice on the continent, and this is where icebergs break off in a process called calving. Credit: Michael Van Woert, NOAA NESDIS, ORA

From Live Science:

Recent news of mammoth icebergs the size of small U.S. states breaking off Antarctica may sound dire. But those events mostly represent business as usual at the world's southernmost continent, scientists say.

A massive iceberg the size of the state of Rhode Island collided with Antarctica's Mertz Glacier in mid-February, and caused a huge new iceberg with an estimated mass of 860 billion metric tons to break off the glacial tongue. Scientists note that such dramatic examples have not been uncommon over the past decade.

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Health Checkup: How to Live 100 Years

Six of the eight Hurlburt siblings live in New England, including Peggy (79), Helen (88), Millie (93), Peter (80), Agnes (96) and Muriel (89). Jason Grow for TIME

From Time Magazine:

A century of life was once a rare thing, but that is changing. Science is slowly unraveling the secrets of the centenarians
Don't write that down! Put your pencil away!" Agnes Buckley is trying in vain to head off an entertaining story her sisters are telling me about how she used to sneak out of the house as a teenager. (She favored boys with motorcycles.) When their father hid her shoes to keep her at home, Agnes simply bypassed the front door and leaped out the window.

"Everyone is going to think I was a troublemaker," she laments.

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Ancient Queen's Burial Chamber Discovered At Saqqara

The Pyramid of Behenu at Saqqara. SCA

From The Independent:

A French archaeological team digging at Saqqara has discovered the burial chamber of 6th Dynasty Queen Behenu, wife of either Pepi I or Pepi II. The burial chamber was revealed while the team was cleaning the sand from Behenu's pyramid in the area of el-Shawaf in South Saqqara, west of the pyramid of King Pepi I.

The burial chamber uncovered by the French mission is badly damaged, apart from two inner walls which contain engraved Pyramid Texts. Those texts were widely used in royal tombs – carved on walls as well as sarcophagi - during the 5th and 6th Dynasties (circa 2465-2150BC).

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