How Mass Migration Might Have Evolved

From Wired Science:

Just a few small changes in the social behaviors of even solitary animals may set in motion an evolutionary cascade ending in massive, globe-spanning migrations, suggests a study of migration’s origins.

Such migrations — caribou across the Arctic and wildebeest across the Serengeti, birds and butterflies over oceans — are among nature’s most beautiful and mystifying phenomena. Many models suggest how migration works now, in terms of individual actions producing collective behavior; but how it could have started in the first place is far harder to explain.

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Young Adults Who Have Lived Their Whole Lives With HIV

LAURENCE KESTERSON / Staff Photographer

From Philadelphia Inquirer:

Last spring, Lafayette Sanders got a call from a friend who was concerned about his reputation. The word on the street, she said, was that he and his girlfriend had HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

It was true about Sanders, and he told her so because his friend was so supportive. But Sanders, then 23, also decided that he needed to tell all his friends that he had been HIV-positive - for his entire life.

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The Trials Of The Modern-Day Astronaut

A NASA Astronaut in space challenges earthlings to a chess match Photo: PHOTOSHOT/NASA

From The Telegraph:

Origami, 'non-sweat' underpants and nauseating sherry: in her new book, 'Packing for Mars', Mary Roach explains why today's astronauts have to be more than just heroes.

First you remove your shoes, as you would upon entering a Japanese home. You are given a pair of special isolation chamber slippers, light blue vinyl imprinted with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency logo, the letters JAXA leaning forward as though rushing into space at terrific speed.

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An 1,800 Year Old Murder Mystery

Unearthed: The remains of a child, thought to be aged between 8 and 10, have been found in a shallow pit in the corner of a barrack room floor at Vindolanda Roman Fort, Northumberland

The 1,800-Year-Old Murder Mystery: Archaeologists Unearth Body Of Young Girl Buried With Her Hands Tied -- Discovery News

She was no more than ten years old. Lying in a shallow grave, her tiny hands bound and with injuries to her head, it seemed she had met a most violent end.

But although all the clues point to the cruellest of murders, there is little chance of this ‘cold case’ ever being solved.

The mystery is puzzling not police, but archaeologists, as the gruesome events took place more than 1,800 years ago.

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Did the Greeks Spot Halley's Comet First?

From Discovery News:

Piecing together historic record and correlating it with the location of celestial objects nearly 2,500 years ago is an an epic task, but it can prove rather useful for interpreting ancient cosmic discoveries.

After some fascinating astronomical detective work, researchers have (possibly) found the first documented proof of a sighting of Halley's Comet two centuries earlier than when Chinese astronomers first described the famous 'dirty snowball' around 240 BC.

So, who beat the Chinese? The Greeks.

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Falling In Love Costs You Friends

From The BBC:

Falling in love comes at the cost of losing two close friends, a study says.

We probably all know that a passionate new relationship can leave you little time for others, but now science has put some numbers on the observation.

Oxford University researchers asked people about their inner core of friendships and how this number changed when romance entered the equation.

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Tsunamis Leave Ionosphere All Shook Up

Photo: Researchers hope measuring atmospheric waves will improve early warning of big tsunamis such as the one generated by a February earthquake in Chile.MARCELO HERNANDEZ/dpa/Corbis

From Nature News:

Progress of waves through open sea sends vibrations that magnify with height up the entire atmospheric column.

The signals of GPS satellites could be used to monitor tsunamis as they sweep across the ocean. In the most detailed study to date of the effect, scientists have shown that even though open ocean tsunami waves are only a few centimetres high, they are powerful enough to create atmospheric vibrations extending all the way to the ionosphere, 300 kilometres up in the atmosphere.

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Glacial Armour Lets Mountains Rise High

Ripe for the buzz saw (Image: Egner Photography/iStock)

From New Scientist:

Glaciers limit mountain height by stripping rock off the top – but not always. If conditions are right, glacial ice will protect the rocks beneath to let mountains grow.

The upper reaches of high mountains are covered with snow all year round, allowing glaciers to form. As these rivers of ice move slowly downhill, they wear away the rocks beneath them, meaning that mountains should not grow much beyond the height of their snowline: any rock that is pushed up above this altitude will eventually get worn away by the ice. This is called the buzz-saw hypothesis, because, like superhuman circular saws, the glaciers effectively cut the heads off mountains above a certain height.

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DARPA Makes Uncharacteristic Bid For A Better Means To Declassify Government Docs

President Obama's A.M. Briefing We'd tell you how we got this photograph of the President's morning security run-down, but then we'd have to kill you. (Just kidding. It's public domain.)

From Popular Science:

DARPA is usually so tight-lipped about the technologies it seeks that we can do little but read through bidding solicitations and speculate on what the agency is up to. But in a new request, the DoD’s blue-sky research team is asking for help shining light on the deepest corners of the Pentagon’s archives, asking industry and academia for help in developing technology that will help the government sort through its endless pool of stored information for material suitable for declassification.

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Only Two Men Have Reached The Deepest Part Of The Sea

Explorers Jacques Picard and Don Walsh reached the very deepest point of the ocean on January 23, 1960

As Director James Cameron Plans To Film Avatar Sequel Seven Miles Below The Sea's Surface, We Go Into The Deadly Deep With The Only Two Men Who've Been There -- The Daily Mail

Five thousand fathoms under the waves, a deafening clang rang out through the cramped, freezing submarine, causing the whole ­vessel to shake like a leaf.

Squinting through their tiny Plexiglas window into the abyss, the two explorers’ hearts missed
a beat.

‘It was a pretty hairy experience,’ they said afterwards with some understatement. The outer
layer of their porthole had cracked under the ­unimaginable weight of six miles of seawater — and they still had more than a mile to descend.

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Prehistoric Bird Sets Wingspan Record

This graphic features a skeletal reconstruction as well as a life-like depiction of this prehistoric bird in flight. Click to enlarge this image. Artwork by Carlos Anzures

From Discovery News:

At 17 feet, the bird's wingspan may exceed that of any other flying animal ever to exist. Size, however, has its drawbacks.

Soaring the Chilean skies 5-10 million years ago, an enormous bony-toothed bird has set the world wingspan record. The bird's wingspan was at least 17 feet, according to scientists.

The measurement is based on well preserved wing bones from the newly named bird species, Pelagornis chilensis, a.k.a. "huge pseudoteeth" from Chile. The animal weighed about 64 pounds and belonged to a group known as pelagornithids -- birds characterized by long, slender beaks bearing many spiny, tooth-like projections.

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'Rapid' 2010 Melt For Arctic Ice - But No Record

The Arctic on 3rd September, as visualised using data from Nasa's Aqua satellite.

From The BBC:

Ice floating on the Arctic Ocean melted unusually quickly this year, but did not shrink down to the record minimum area seen in 2007.

That is the preliminary finding of US scientists who say the summer minimum seems to have passed and the ice has entered its winter growth phase.

2010's summer Arctic ice minimum is the third smallest in the satellite era.

Researchers say projections of summer ice disappearing entirely within the next few years increasingly look wrong.

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Why Some Memories Stick

Image: Faces that activate the same regions of the brain again and again are more likely to be remembered.Pasieka / Science Photo Library

From Nature News:

Repetitive neural responses may enhance recall of faces and words.

Practice makes perfect when it comes to remembering things, but exactly how that works has long been a mystery. A study published in Science this week1 indicates that reactivating neural patterns over and over again may etch items into the memory.

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Electron Vortex Could Trap Atoms

From New Scientist:

Set a beam of electrons twisting, and the resulting vortex could be just the tool to manipulate atoms.

"This is a fundamentally new state that we can bring electrons into," says Jo Verbeeck from the University of Antwerp, Belgium.

Optical vortices, made of twisting beams of light, have been used to spin or move micrometre-sized particles like cells. But electron vortices could potentially trap much smaller particles, says Verbeeck.

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Robotics Expert Is NSW Scientist Of The Year

NSW Scientist of the Year 2010 - Hugh Durrant-Whyte

From Cosmos:

SYDNEY: Leader of the robotics revolution, Hugh Durrant-Whyte has been named the NSW Scientist of the Year for his contribution to the development of underwater robots, flying weed-spraying drones and massive mining automation systems.

Held at Government House in Sydney tonight, the awards ceremony saw winners in six categories take out the $5,000 prize, while Durrant-Whyte from the University of Sydney secured the top prize and $55,000.

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Discovery Of The First Earth-Like, Habitable Exoplanet Will Be Announced In May Of 2011 (Maybe)

Kepler's View at First Light NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech

From Popular Science:

The numbers are in, the data has been analyzed, and the date is now set: the discovery of an earth-like, habitable planet will be announced in May of next year. At least, that’s the conclusion reached by two professors at Harvard and U. of California, Santa Cruz, whose mathematical projections say that given the current pace of exoplanet discoveries, the finding of a suitable planet for life is right around the corner.

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Supply-Laden Russian Cargo Carrier Docks At Space Station

From USA Today:

A fresh load of supplies and equipment has arrived at the International Space Station after a robotic Russian space freighter eased up to the outpost and docked at the back end of the Russian side of the complex.

Two months after an aborted docking, station commander Alexander Skvortsov was ready to take manual control of the approaching spacecraft but its automated docking system worked as intended and the Progress 39 vehicle hooked up with the outpost without incident.

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'Artificial Ovary' Develops Oocytes Into Mature Human Eggs

An artificial ovary An engineered honeycomb of cultured theca cells (top row) envelopes spheres of granulosa cells (GC). The bottom row shows the tissue after 48 hours (left) and after five days. (Credit: Carson Lab / Brown University)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 14, 2010) — Researchers at Brown University and Women & Infants Hospital have invented the first artificial human ovary, an advance that provides a potentially powerful new means for conducting fertility research and could also yield infertility treatments for cancer patients. The team has already used the lab-grown organ to mature human eggs.

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Top 10 Animal Recruits in War

From Live Science:

Humans have enlisted animals to help fight their battles since the dawn of war, and today's militaries use an even wider range of creatures for everything from bomb sniffing to coastline patrolling.

That may seem remarkable, considering that dogs, horses and other animals certainly did not evolve for the purpose of human conflict. Yet nature's designs have not only stood the test of time, but have also inspired human engineers to try to harness their power directly or through mechanical imitations.

Here we count down some of the creatures that have become unwitting recruits in both ancient and modern warfare.

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Why Isn't The Price Of Broadband Obeying Moore's Law?

From Technology Review:

The quality and cost of broadband Internet access haven't budged in years.

The U.S. government doesn't keep an index of broadband internet prices by which to evaluate the success of its broadband promotion policies - the statistics they do have are mushed together with prices for dial-up access - so a couple of researchers at Northwestern University decided to build their own.

What they discovered is that broadband internet prices have remained nearly stagnant since 2004, despite the explosive pace of adoption since then - from approximately 20 percent of U.S. households in 2004 to more than 65 percent today.

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