Scientists Investigate Massive Walrus Haul-Out In Alaska ‎

Walrus high on the barrier beaches near Pointt Lay, Alaska, 2010. Photograph: USGS

From The Guardian:

Scientists fear declining Arctic sea ice may have caused an unprecedented mass migration to dry land.

Scientists in the Arctic are reporting a rare mass migration of thousands of walrus from the ice floes to dry land along Alaska's coast.

Researchers from the US Geological Survey (USGS), who have been tracking walrus movements using satellite radio tags, say 10,000 to 20,000 of the animals, mainly mothers and calves, are now congregating in tightly packed herds on the Alaskan side of the Chukchi Sea, in the first such exodus of its kind.

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9/11 Memorial Lights Trap Thousands Of Birds

From Wired Science:

On the evening of the ninth anniversary of 9/11, the twin columns of light projected as a memorial over the World Trade Center site became a source of mystery.

Illuminated in the beams were thousands of small white objects, sparkling and spiraling, unlike anything seen on other nights. Some viewers wondered if they were scraps of paper or plastic caught in updrafts from the spotlights’ heat. From beneath, it was at times like gazing into a snowstorm. It was hard not to think of souls.

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Scientists 'Clone' Human Virus Responsible for Congenital Malformations and Other Life-Threatening Diseases

In this immunofluorescent image, a specimen of human embryonic lung reveals the presence of cytomegalovirus; magnification 25X. (Credit: CDC/Dr. Craig Lyerla)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 14, 2010) — A team of Welsh scientists has successfully cloned a human virus, offering new hope for the treatment of potentially life-threatening diseases.

Human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) is a major infectious cause of congenital malformations worldwide. The virus is also known to cause life-threatening disease in transplant patients and people with HIV/AIDS.

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Why Women Prefer 'Chill' Guys

Composite male faces constructed to differ in levels of testosterone and cortisol. From left to right: low-testosterone, high-cortisol; low-testosterone, low-cortisol. Credit: Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

From Live Science:

Women generally find calm, collected men more attractive, and scientists now suggest they know the biology of why that is.

Investigations into what makes men desirable often focus on testosterone. The hormone is linked with masculine facial traits, such as larger jaws and heavier brows, and is typically associated with better long-term health. As such, it might at first glance make sense from an evolutionary point of view if women found testosterone-laden men especially attractive.

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Pricetag Set For Tiger Conservation

The Bengal tiger is one of the better protected varieties - but even that is in trouble

From The BBC:

The cost of keeping tigers alive in the wild is about $80m (£50m) per year, say conservationists - but only about $50m (£30m) per year is being pledged.

The figures come from a new assessment that suggests targeting efforts in 42 selected breeding sites.

Building tiger populations in these sites would enable other areas to be re-populated later, the researchers report in the journal PLoS Biology.

About 3,500 tigers remain in the wild, and only about 1,000 breeding females.

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NSS Calls For House To Adopt Senate Version of NASA Authorization Act Of 2010

Photo: The Senate bill provides a framework for compromise, which will be required in order to obtain the widespread political support necessary to pass and fund a set of programs that together will enable the United States to once again move beyond low Earth orbit.

From Space Travel:

The National Space Society (NSS) is reaffirming its longstanding and unwavering commitment to further space exploration and development, by calling on the Executive and Legislative branches to incorporate their various proposals into a Unified Space Policy so that the United States can once again begin to move beyond low Earth orbit.

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Hurricane Twins Churn The Atlantic: Big Pics

Images: NOAA/NHC

From Discovery News:

Sept. 14, 2010 -- The busy Atlantic hurricane season that forecasters called for earlier this year has arrived in full force. Last month, Earl and Fiona lined up in tandem on their way through the tropics. This time it's Igor, a powerful Category 4 storm (at left in top image, and in infrared below) and Julia, a newly-minted Category 1 (at right in top image).

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Supercrops: Fixing The Flaws In Photosynthesis

To shade out rivals, plants make much more chlorophyll than they need
(Image: Jonnie Miles/Getty)

From New Scientist:

Many vital crops capture the sun's energy in a surprisingly inefficient way. A borrowed trick or two could make them far more productive

Take a look around you. All the organic things you see, from your hands to the leather of your shoes to the wood in your table, are built of strings of carbon atoms. So too is the petrol in your car and the coal in your local power station. All this carbon came from thin air, from carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

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The Porsche Effect: Why Racy Women Turn A Man To Racy Cars

Racy: The sight of an attractive woman sparks a man's interest in luxury goods from designer watches to flash cars such as Porsches and Ferraris

From The Daily Mail:

Ladies, if the man of your dreams becomes distracted by a passing sports car while talking to you, do not despair.

It means he likes you.

If, however, he starts talking about towels or toasters, he is just not interested.

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Amazon Knocks iPad In Kindle Commercial

From The Mac Observer:

Amazon is knocking Apple’s iPad in a new commercial promoting the Kindle. In the ad (see below), Amazon shows a dorky-looking iPad owner (sunning himself poolside in a T-shirt and khaki shorts) frustrated with not being able to read his device in daylight, while the bikini-clad Kindle user next to him has no such problem.

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Bing Beats Yahoo in Search, a Symbolic Win

From PC World:

Bing's vault over Yahoo in U.S. search volume should come as no surprise to anyone who's been following the horse race, but it's a symbolic milestone for a baby search engine whose prime directive is to take some of Google's advertising pie.

Bing Beats Yahoo in Search, a Symbolic WinWith Yahoo out of the way, according to the latest search share statistics from Nielsen, Bing's goal of becoming a genuine competitor to Google becomes a little more realistic. Bing, along with MSN and Windows Live, now has 13.9 percent of all search share. Yahoo fell to 13.1 percent, and Google still dominates with 65.1 percent. As Search Engine Land points out, Bing is still in third place by other metrics from comScore and Hitwise.

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Escaping Ions Explain The Mystery Of Venus

The 2004 Venus in situ exploration mission aimed to collect information about the extreme atmospheric conditions that render the planet very different from Earth. Credit: NASA

From Cosmos:

ASHLAND, OREGON: The difference in the escape velocities of ions may help to explain why Venus isn’t more like Earth, scientists say, and it may come down to a planet’s core.

Oxygen and hydrogen ions in Venus’s atmosphere do not behave the same when exposed to the solar wind, according to scientists at the Finnish Meteorological Institute in Helsinki.

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Are You Ready For A World Without Antibiotics?

Streptococcus pyrogens bacteria. Photograph: S Lowry/University of Ulster/Getty Images.

From The Guardian:

Antibiotics are a bedrock of modern medicine. But in the very near future, we're going to have to learn to live without them once again. And it's going to get nasty.

Just 65 years ago, David Livermore's paternal grandmother died following an operation to remove her appendix. It didn't go well, but it was not the surgery that killed her. She succumbed to a series of infections that the pre-penicillin world had no drugs to treat. Welcome to the future.

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Hubble Harvests Distant Solar System Objects

This is an artist's concept of a craggy piece of Solar System debris that belongs to a class of bodies called trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs). Astronomers culling the data archives of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have added 14 new TNOs to the catalog. The newfound TNOs range from 25 to 60 miles (40-100 km) across. Their method promises to turn up hundreds more. In this illustration, the distant Sun is reduced to a bright star at a distance of over 3 billion miles. (Credit: NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon (STScI))

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 13, 2010) — Beyond the orbit of Neptune reside countless icy rocks known as trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs). One of the biggest, Pluto, is classified as a dwarf planet. The region also supplies us with comets such as famous Comet Halley. Most TNOs are small and receive little sunlight, making them faint and difficult to spot.

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How Mosquitoes Find A Tasty Host

From Live Science:

Prepare to be bugged out of your minds, citizens of Earth, because I've got a new scheme that I’m just itching to unleash: I'm going to attract a swarm of bloodthirsty mosquitoes to the next Nobel Prize ceremony, and watch as the dignitaries scratch themselves crazy. Aren't I repellent?

"But how," you’ll bravely ask, "how do you intend to attract so many mosquitoes to the icy-cold nation of Sweden?" An intelligent question, but the answer is elementary: I shall make use of the newest in olfactory research from Vanderbilt University, where scientists are unraveling the secrets behind mosquitoes' sense of smell. They may soon be able to explain how mosquitoes are able to track down their blood-feasts.

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Meet The Men Whose Job Was To Photograph Nuclear Explosions

ZERO HOUR Milliseconds after the image at left, the vehicles beneath the fireball were obliterated. "How to Photograph an Atomic Bomb"

The Bomb Chroniclers -- New York Times

They risked their lives to capture on film hundreds of blinding flashes, rising fireballs and mushroom clouds.

The blast from one detonation hurled a man and his camera into a ditch. When he got up, a second wave knocked him down again.

Then there was radiation.

While many of the scientists who made atom bombs during the cold war became famous, the men who filmed what happened when those bombs were detonated made up a secret corps.

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My Comment: I always wondered about the men who photographed nuclear explosions .... the risks and dangers that they took each time that they were at an above nuclear test. Well .... now I know.

As to how many photographers are left ....

..... As for the atomic cameramen, there aren’t that many left. “Quite a few have died from cancer,” George Yoshitake, 82, one of the survivors, said of his peers in an interview. “No doubt it was related to the testing.”

Gadgets Give A Taste Of Home For The Soldiers In Afghanistam

Lance Cpl. Oscar Cedeno, of 2nd Battalion 6th Marines, watches episodes of the television show Heroes on a broken HP laptop during downtime at his patrol base. Downrange can be a tough environment for laptops that get bumped, dropped, and filled with dust and dirt. Photo: Victor J. Blue/Wired.com

Gadgets Give Soldiers In Afghanistan A Slice Of Home -- The Danger Room

The heat and the dust and the diesel fumes. The constant drone of the generators, of vehicles, of radio static. The same food everyday, the same meal in the same brown plastic bag. The constant danger and uncertainty. The confusion, wonder and consequences waiting for you outside the wire.

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My Comment: I own a small and isolated chalet that is in the bush and north of Montreal. On weekdays, everyone leaves and the closest person is a few kilometers away. I never feel alone .... my gadgets, internet, and satellite TV gives me an environment that tells me that I am in civilization, and everyone that I know is only a short distance away.

Nothing can be further from the truth .... but it is an illusion that you only become sensitive to when you think about it. For the soldiers in Afghanistan they are probably in the same type of environment .... but when they go outside the wire .... a very different reality sets in.

Military Robots Converted For Civilian use

(Photo by Synexxus, Inc.)

7 Military Robots, Now Modified for Your Living Room -- Popular Science

Dozens of robotics companies are customizing military robots with gear like interchangeable tools, 3D radar vision and voice controls. The resulting bots, tested and refined in the field, may soon find their way into homes, gardens and places of work near you. Here's how.

Give the world a new electronic device and, before you know it, modified products will pop up. Such is the way with gadgets, electronics and, yes, robots. Some manufacturers try to lock down such mods, either physically or through legal channels, but the robotmakers at iRobot have embraced crowd sourcing. Their Robot Developers Kit provides the hardware and software to help developers make their own upgrades and add-ons for the military PackBots that they produce. More than 80 companies are now involved, creating an avalanche of new concepts that could find their way into the domestic robot market. Here's a look.

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The Future Of Air Travel?

You Can Flex Your Quads In Flight! This new airplane seat is designed to mimic the incredibly comfortable experience of riding a horse. via USA Today

Please, Don't Let This Be the Future of Air Travel: Slouching toward JFK -- Popular Science -- Popular Science

On your last flight, did you stare with envy at the people sitting in the exit row? Did you get a charley horse from trying to cross your legs under your tray table? Consider yourself lucky, pal. Your next budget flight might ask you to fly horseback style, squeezed onto a saddle in just 23 inches of space.

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Stephen Fry Autobiography Is ‘Publishing First’

The enhanced ebook version of Stephen Fry's autobiography, The Fry Chronicles, features additional videos and photos

From The Telegraph:

'The Fry Chronicles', Stephen Fry’s new autobiography, has been launched simultaneously as an ebook, hardback novel and iPhone app

Fry, who is well known for his love of technology, has embraced multiplatform publishing for his new book, The Fry Chronicles, which documents his life from his time at university to his first experiences of acting.

The autobiography is available in traditional hardback format for £20, while the ebook costs £12.99. An app, designed for Apple’s iPhone, iPod touch and iPad costs £7.99.

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