Astronomers To Detect Alien Volcanoes

This artist's conception shows an extremely volcanic moon orbiting a gas giant planet in another star system. Credit: Wade Henning

From Cosmos:

SYDNEY: Astronomers may soon be able to detect volcanic activity on planets outside our Solar System, providing further insight into ‘Earth-like’ alien worlds, according to a recent paper.

When large, explosive volcanic eruptions occur, they emit high quantities of sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere. Without an eruption, however, sulphur dioxide only occurs in an Earth-like stratosphere in very small amounts.

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WSJ : GoDaddy Internet Registrar For Sale

From CBS News:

World's Largest Internet Domain Name Registrar Could Fetch More Than $1 Billion.

(CBS) Citing "people familiar with the matter," The Wall Street Journal is reporting that GoDaddy.com, the private company that registers Internet domain names, has put itself on the block and could fetch upward of $1 billion.

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What Do White People Really Like?

From ABC News:

Dating Site OkCupid Analyzes Profiles to Uncover Interests of Different Races.

What do Tom Clancy, Van Halen and golfing have in common?

According to the dating website OkCupid, they're all stuff white people really like.

The popular blog (and now book) Stuff White People Like may have been the first to plumb the world of white people online. But, this week, OkCupid took the next step and analyzed profiles of online daters to figure out the tastes and interests of members by race.

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Mars Lander May Have Detected, Then Destroyed Organics

This is the first photograph ever taken on the surface of the planet Mars. It was obtained by Viking 1 just minutes after the spacecraft landed successfully on July 20, 1976. Click to enlarge this image. NASA

From Discovery News:

The Viking mission on Mars may have destroyed compounds that make biology possible while trying to detect them.

Martian soil could contain the building blocks of carbon-based life after all, a new study suggests, despite the negative results of an analysis performed by the Viking missions 34 years ago.

When the Viking landers touched down on Mars in 1976 and scooped up soil samples, scientists were surprised that the two craft failed to unearth evidence that the Red Planet contained any organic compounds. The apparent lack of organic molecules -- a basic requirement for carbon-based organisms -- helped to cement the notion of Mars as an entity that would not easily support life.

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The Math Behind the Physics Behind the Universe

Discover Interview: The Math Behind the Physics Behind the Universe -- Discover Magazine

Shing-Tung Yau explains how he discovered the hidden dimensions of string theory.

Shing-Tung Yau is a force of nature. He is best known for conceiving the math behind string theory—which holds that, at the deepest level of reality, our universe is built out of 10-dimensional, subatomic vibrating strings. But Yau’s genius runs much deeper and wider: He has also spawned the modern synergy between geometry and physics, championed unprecedented teamwork in mathematics, and helped foster an intellectual rebirth in China.

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Civil War In Africa Has No Link To Climate Change

Temperature is not the issue (Image: Daniel Pepper/Getty)

From The New Scientist:

THE idea that global warming will increase the incidence of civil conflict in Africa is wrong, according to a new study. What's more, the researchers who previously made the claim now concede that civil conflict has been on the wane in Africa since 2002, as prosperity has increased. If the trend continues, a more peaceful future may be in store.

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E-Books Are Still Waiting for Their Avant-Garde

From Gadget Lab/Wired Science:

E-readers have tried to make reading as smooth, natural and comfortable as possible so that the device fades away and immerses you in the imaginative experience of reading. This is a worthy goal, but it also may be a profound mistake.

This is what worries Wired’s Jonah Lehrer about the future of reading. He notes that when “the act of reading seems effortless and easy … [w]e don’t have to think about the words on the page.” If every act of reading becomes divorced from thinking, then the worst fears of “bookservatives” have come true, and we could have an anti-intellectual dystopia ahead of us.

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'Mind-Reading Machine' Can Convert Thoughts Into Speech

Photo: GETTY IMAGES

From The Telegraph:

A mind reading machine is a step closer to reality after scientists discovered a way of translating people's thoughts into words.

Researchers have been able to translate brain signals into speech using sensors attached to the surface of the brain for the first time.

The breakthrough, which is up to 90 per cent accurate, offers a way to communicate for paralysed patients who cannot speak and could eventually lead to being able to read anyone thoughts.

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Researchers Give Robots the Capability for Deceptive Behavior

The black robot intentionally knocked down the red marker to deceive the red robot into thinking it was hiding down the left corridor. Instead, the black robot is hiding inside the box in the center pathway. (Credit: Georgia Tech Photo: Gary Meek)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 9, 2010) — A robot deceives an enemy soldier by creating a false trail and hiding so that it will not be caught. While this sounds like a scene from one of the Terminator movies, it's actually the scenario of an experiment conducted by researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology as part of what is believed to be the first detailed examination of robot deception.

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Quantum Jumps Could Help Image Cancer Cells

An animation showing the fluorescence process when the quantum dot is in the so-called "on" state. Credit: Ovidiu Toader, Vancouver BA, Canada

From Live Science:

New research by Boldizsár Jankó, a professor of theoretical physics at The University of Notre Dame, and his colleagues offers an important breakthrough in understanding an enduring mystery in physics.

More than a century ago, at the dawn of modern quantum mechanics, the Noble Prize-winning physicist Neils Bohr predicted “quantum jumps.” Since the early 1990s, researchers have been able to view such jumps as interruptions of the continuous emissions from single molecules, a phenomenon informally called “blinking”. However, while some blinking can be directly ascribed to Bohr’s original quantum jumps, many observations do not follow predictions.

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Green Sky At Night, What A Delight! Plasma Eruption On The Sun Causes Spectacular Northern Lights

Spectacular: The Northern Lights bursting into a spectacular display of purple in Norway

From The Daily Mail:

In shimmering, rippling waves of green, Mother Nature's most spectacular show lights up the night sky.

Captured in the Arctic Circle above the still waters of a lake, it is an undeniably awe-inspiring display.

The haunting beauty of the Northern Lights - known as aurora borealis - is caused by massive explosions in the sun which send streams of electrically charged particles 3 million miles to the Earth.

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Stunning Photos of Space Capture Top Honors

This image of a bristlecone pine tree under the Milky Way took the top prize in the second annual Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition, run by the Royal Observatory of Greenwich, England. Hosted with Sky at Night magazine, the contest received more than 400 entries from about 25 countries. The winner, "Blazing Bristlecone," was shot by Tom Lowe in California's White Mountains. (© Tom Lowe)

CSN Editor: For more pictures, go here.

What Caused The Calif. Natural Gas Explosion?

From Discovery News:

A horrific explosion in San Bruno, Calif., yesterday initially prompted fears of an airplane crash. The source turned out to be a ruptured natural gas line, but what failure actually caused the deadly, Bruckheimer-like scene?

Pacific Gas and Electric Company, PG&E, told the Associated Press that a 30-inch gas pipe had ruptured several feet underground. PG&E told reporters that the blast originated in a steel gas pipeline about two feet in length, but they don't know the cause yet because the fire was still going this morning.

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30 Ways The World Could End

From Discover Magazine:

Crank up the gloom and doom: Global apocalypse could be just around the corner, and you might never see it coming—unless you read this article.

Fashions come and go in all human endeavors—even eschatology, the study of the end of the world.

Back in the 1980s, our planet seemed sure to perish in a nuclear barrage, and songs about atomic apocalypse were at the top of the charts: Cue Prince’s “1999” (“Everybody’s got a bomb/We could all die any day”). By the 1990s, death by asteroid impact was all the rage. After 9/11 and the 2001 anthrax attacks, worries turned to a bioweapon unleashed by a terror group. The latest obsession is plague, delivered in the metaphorical form of vampires and zombies—especially zombies, since vampires have developed an unseemly fondness for chaste romance.

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US Navy Seeks 'Safer' Bomb

Show some restraint (Image: Said Khatib/AFP/Getty)

From New Scientist:

COULD a variable-yield bomb reduce the number of innocent people killed or injured during an air attack targeting enemy soldiers? That's the thinking behind a US navy plan to develop a "dial-a-blast" bomb.

The navy is seeking proposals from companies to create a bomb weighing 200 kilograms that can either be detonated at full or reduced power. The idea is that the device could be loaded onto planes before a target has been identified, and the explosive power set by the pilot once a target is known. If there is a risk of killing civilians, then the explosive power can be reduced to ensure a small blast radius. In an unpopulated area the bomb, currently known as the Selectable Output Weapon, could be set so that it has the same power as a regular bomb of the same size. Carrying a single bomb would make it easier and cheaper for the navy to arm its planes.

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Alt Text: Google, Apple Unveil Competing Battle Robots

From The Underwire:

Google and Apple announced Friday what many analysts have long predicted: That they will settle the long-standing competition between the two companies with a series of giant robot battles.

The announcement comes as the culmination of a series of parallel developments between the two competitors. Apple recently unveiled its new Apple TV with 99-cent streaming episodes, and Google followed a week later with Google TV, to be deployed this fall.

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This Man Makes 137,000 iPhones A Day

Terry Gou. Photo: Tony Law for Bloomberg Businessweek

From Fortune/CNN Money:

"I should be honest with you," Foxconn founder and chairman Terry Gou told Bloomberg Businessweek on the subject of the suicides at his company's massive factory complex in Shenzhen, China. "The first one, second one, and third one, I did not see this as a serious problem. We had around 800,000 employees, and here [in Longhua] we are about 2.1 square kilometers. At the moment, I'm feeling guilty. But at that moment, I didn't think I should be taking full responsibility." After the fifth suicide, in March, Gou says, "I decided to do something different."

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Vitamin B Is Revolutionary New Weapon Against Alzheimer's Disease

From The Telegraph:

Vitamin B tablets could slow and even halt the devastating march of Alzheimer's Disease in the elderly, a breakthrough British study suggests.

The research showed that large doses of the supplement could halve the rate of brain shrinkage – a physical symptom associated memory loss and dementia in the elderly.

The effects were so dramatic that the scientists behind the work believe it could revolutionise the treatment of the disease.

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People Hanging Out More On Facebook Than Google

From CNET:

Internet users are spending a bit more time these days socializing on Facebook than searching on Google, according to new data from market researcher ComScore.

In August, people spent 41.1 million minutes on Facebook, accounting for 9.9 percent of the total number of minutes they spent online for the month. That inched past the 39.8 million minutes, or 9.6 percent of total time, that Net users spent on all of Google's sites combined, including its search engine, YouTube, Gmail, and Google News, ComScore said Thursday.

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'Tractor Beam' One Step Closer To Reality: Laser Moves Small Particles

Members of the scientific team: Yana Izdebskaya, Anton Desyatnikov, Vladlen Shvedov, Andrei Rode, Yuri Kivshar and Wieslaw Krolikowski. (Credit: Photo by Tim Wetherell)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 9, 2010) — Researchers from The Australian National University have developed the ability to move particles over large distances, using a specially designed laser beam.

Professor Andrei Rode's team from the Laser Physics Centre at ANU have developed a laser beam that can move very small particles up to distances of a metre and a half using only the power of light.

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