Hubble Telescope Detects The Oldest Known Galaxy

The galaxy was already in existence 480 million years after the Big Bang.

From The BBC:

The Hubble Space Telescope has detected what scientists believe may be the oldest galaxy ever observed.

It is thought the galaxy is more than 13 billion years old and existed 480 million years after the Big Bang.

A Nasa team says this was a period when galaxy formation in the early Universe was going into "overdrive".

The image, which has been published in Nature journal, was detected using Hubble's recently installed wide field camera.

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My Comment: The Hubble telescope .... still going strong after all of these years.

Is Your Next Credit Card Your Cell Phone?

From ABC News:

Apple Reportedly Planning Pay-by-Phone Service for Next Gen iPhones, iPads.

Get ready to retire that worn leather wallet. If some of the country's biggest tech companies have their way, all the plastic cards crammed into your billfold will soon find their way into your phone.

Apple is planning to introduce a service that would let consumers use their iPhones and iPads to purchase products, essentially turning a user's cell phone into a credit or debit card, according to a Bloomberg report.

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My Comment: Credit cards, iPhones, Ipads .... what's wrong with paper cash?

Hormone Holds Promise As Memory Enhancer

From Live Science:

Could boosting your memory someday be as simple as popping a pill? Scientists found that rats injected with a hormone could remember better, even two weeks after the memory was formed.

The memory-boosting hormone was IGF2, which plays an important role in brain development. The researchers suggest that a better understanding of how this chemical works (IGF2 is short for insulin-like growth factor 2) might lead to drugs that enhance human brain power, particularly in individuals with Alzheimer's and other neurodegenerative diseases.

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My Comment: Faster please .... I am getting older, and my memory is not what it once was.

Report Advocates GM Crops In Food Supply Measures

Top of the crops: Government ministers are keen to embrace GM foods,like this modified soya crop. Photo from The Daily Mail

From The Independent:

Genetically-modified crops are among measures needed to tackle problems with global food supplies that could see prices soar, leading scientists said today.

A new Government-commissioned report warned that there were major failings in the global food system that damages the environment and leaves one billion people hungry.

A further one billion suffer from "hidden hunger" in which nutrients are missing from their diet and the same number are over-consuming, while a third of all food produced is currently wasted.

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My Comment: Lacking any other means to grow more crops .... our options are very limited.

Jupiter Scar Likely From Titanic-Sized Asteroid

These infrared images obtained from NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility in Mauna Kea, Hawaii, show particle debris in Jupiter's atmosphere after an object hurtled into the atmosphere on July 19, 2009. (Credit: NASA/IRTF/JPL-Caltech/University of Oxford)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Jan. 26, 2011) — A hurtling asteroid about the size of the Titanic caused the scar that appeared in Jupiter's atmosphere on July 19, 2009, according to two papers published recently in the journal Icarus.

Data from three infrared telescopes enabled scientists to observe the warm atmospheric temperatures and unique chemical conditions associated with the impact debris. By piecing together signatures of the gases and dark debris produced by the impact shockwaves, an international team of scientists was able to deduce that the object was more likely a rocky asteroid than an icy comet. Among the teams were those led by Glenn Orton, an astronomer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., and Leigh Fletcher, researcher at Oxford University, U.K., who started the work while he was a postdoctoral fellow at JPL.

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My Comment: That is one hell of a big scar.

Google Launches The Holocaust Archive

Holocaust Memorial Day: Google Launches Holocaust Archive To Help Keep Memories Of Tragedy Alive -- The Telegraph

Google has partnered with Israel’s Yad Vashem museum, to help digitise the largest collection of Holocaust photos and documents in the world, to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

The search giant is working with the Jerusalem-based archive to properly index and store in Google’s cloud 130,000 photographs, some of which are currently available on Yad Vashem’s website, but until now have been difficult to locate and discover online.

Google is also applying the same indexing and optical character recognition (OCR) technology to lots of documents, ranging from visas to survivor testimonials, in order to help people locate more easily online.

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My Comment: Once in a while Google gets involved in a good project .... this is one of them. The Yad Vashem's website is here.

How Memories Are Made

Memories Are Made Like This – Sleeping On Them -- The Telegraph

If you want knowledge to stick then it is best to take a nap after absorbing it, claims new research.

Researchers in Germany showed that the brain is better during sleep than during wakefulness at resisting attempts to scramble or corrupt a recent memory.

Their study, published in Nature Neuroscience, provides new insights into the hugely complex process by which we store and retrieve deliberately acquired information – learning, in short.

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My Comment: Sleep ... I love to sleep.

Did Humans Leave Africa Earlier Than Thought

This undated handout photo provided by the journal Science shows the Jebel Faya rockshelter from above, looking north, showing eboulis blocks from roof collapse and the location of excavation trenches. (CBS)

Humans May Have Left Africa Earlier Than Thought -- CBS News

New Evidence Suggests Early Humans Exited Africa Much Earlier Than Thought, Entering An Arabian Savannah.

(AP) WASHINGTON - Modern humans may have left Africa thousands of years earlier than previously thought, turning right and heading across the Red Sea into Arabia rather than following the Nile to a northern exit, an international team of researchers says.

Stone tools discovered in the United Arab Emirates indicate the presence of modern humans between 100,000 and 125,000 years ago, the researchers report in Friday's edition of the journal Science.

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Will Video Games Make U.S. Spies Smarter?

U.S. Spies May Soon Make Smarter Decisions, Thanks to Video Games -- Discover Magazine

Even U.S. intelligence agents make decidedly unintelligent decisions at times. So it may not come as a surprise that the government is willing to invest in any project that could help agencies spot and correct their own decision-skewing prejudices–even if that project is a video game.

Dubbed “Sirius,” the anti-bias project is the brainchild of the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA), a government agency whose mission statement might as well have come from a spy novel: to invest in “high-risk/high-payoff research programs that have the potential to provide our nation with an overwhelming intelligence advantage over future adversaries.”

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My Comment: I am skeptical.

The Dirty Secrets In Using Wind Power

Photo from Mettaefficient

Wind Power's Dirty Little Secrets -- The Daily Bayonet

A California court tells the naked and ugly truth about a proposed PG&E wind farm, the Manzana Wind Project:

We reject the application because we find that the Manzana Wind Project is not cost-competitive and poses unacceptable risks to ratepayers. We find that the proposed cost of the Manzana Wind Project is significantly higher than other resources PG&E can procure to meet its RPS program goal. Moreover, it will subject the ratepayers to unacceptable risks due to potential cost increases resulting from project under-performance, less than forecasted project life, and any delays which might occur concerning transmission upgrades and commercial online date.

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My Comment: More evidence on why wind power cannot be relied upon.

Say Hello To 8 Great Unsolved Mysteries

Science's 8 Greatest Unsolved Mysteries: Progress Report -- Popular Science

In the year 2000, PM asked how eight of the most profound questions in science might (optimistically) be answered before the dawn of the 22nd century. So where are we now, a decade later? Here's the skinny on some of science's greatest mysteries—from attaining immortality and the search for alien life to traveling through time.

The advances in science made over the past hundred years have been nothing short of astounding: We've split the atom and gone to the moon, spliced open the genome and saved countless lives with medicines. Yet as far as we've come, we have a long way to go. We continue to grapple with realties beyond our understanding, from the inner workings of our bodies to the intrinsic mechanics of the universe.

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My Comment: I am sure these mysteries will be solved one day .... but not today.

What Can Go Wrong With An Internet "Off" Switch?

Dropped Connection Turning off the Internet could shut down financial networks, and it wouldn't be easy to turn them back on Jamie Sneddon

What Could Possibly Go Wrong: An Internet "Off" Switch -- Popular Science

The last time someone could shut down the Internet was probably in 1969, when it consisted of two computers. But in recent years, concerned with the possibility of a “cyberattack,” Congress has been exploring such an option.

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My Comment: The last paragraph is the best point in this report ....

.... A more subtle (or cash-strapped) cyberterrorist might simply fake a cyberattack that would trick the U.S. itself into flipping the switch. No one really knows what would happen then—not only would e-mails go undelivered, but ATMs, stock exchanges and the flow of funds of all kinds could be disrupted. And then we would still face another challenge: how to turn the thing back on.

Indeed.

Shark Nations Failing On Conservation Pledges

Governments are supposed to "encourage full utilisation of dead sharks" - but fins are targeted.

From The BBC:

Many countries whose fishing fleets catch large numbers of sharks have failed to meet a 10-year-old pledge on conserving the species, a report says.

The wildlife trade monitoring network Traffic and the Pew Environment Group say most of the main shark fishing nations do not manage fisheries well.

Ten years ago, governments agreed a global plan to conserve sharks.

An estimated 100 million sharks are killed each year, with nearly a third of species at risk of extinction.

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My Comment: Shark fin soup is a delicacy that many people love to order (myself included). Until this changes .... and rising prices probably will change people's desire for this delicacy .... sharks will always be threatened with extinction.

NASA Honors Astronauts Lost From Apollo, Shuttles

From ABC News:

NASA marks Day of Remembrance to honor 17 fallen astronauts; Apollo fire, 2 shuttle accidents.

NASA is pausing Thursday to remember the 17 astronauts lost in the line of duty.

The so-called Day of Remembrance — always the last Thursday of January — takes on special meaning this year. Friday marks the 25th anniversary of the shuttle Challenger launch disaster.

Flags will fly at half-staff at NASA centers nationwide Thursday. In addition, NASA officials will lay wreathes at various memorials to honor the dead.

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My Comment: They will forever be remembered.

Sharing A Bed with Fido Can Make You Sick

Women are more likely than men to report sleeping in the same bed with their dog, according to a 2005 study by the American Kennel Club. Credit: Dreamstime.

From Live Science:

Sleeping with, kissing and being licked by your pet can make you sick. Although they are not common, documented cases show people contracting infections by getting too cozy with their animals, according to work by researchers in California.

These so-called zoonoses include contracting plague from flea-infested pets, a MRSA (Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus) infection, a bacterial infection resistant to multiple strains of antibiotics originating from the canine family, and various parasitic worms.

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My Comment: I had a dog for 14 years .... and they are telling me this now.

A Physicist Explains Why Parallel Universes May Exist

From NPR:

Our universe might be really, really big — but finite. Or it might be infinitely big.

Both cases, says physicist Brian Greene, are possibilities, but if the latter is true, so is another posit: There are only so many ways matter can arrange itself within that infinite universe. Eventually, matter has to repeat itself and arrange itself in similar ways. So if the universe is infinitely large, it is also home to infinite parallel universes.

Does that sound confusing? Try this:

Think of the universe like a deck of cards.

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My Comment: Reading articles like this one makes me realize how insignificant I am in this universe.

No Leftovers for Tyrannosaurus Rex: New Evidence That T. Rex Was Hunter, Not Scavanger

Artist's rendition of Tyrannosaurus rex. (Credit: iStockphoto)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Jan. 25, 2011) — Tyrannosaurus rex hunted like a lion, rather than regularly scavenging like a hyena, reveals new research published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

The findings end a long-running debate about the hunting behaviour of this awesome predator.

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My Comment: I feel hungry already.

Are We Becoming More Stupid? Human Brain Has Been 'Shrinking For The Last 20,000 Years'

Old big head: A 3D image replica of a 28,000-year-old skull found in France shows it was 20 per cent larger than ours

From The Daily Mail:

It's not something we'd like to admit, but it seems the human race may actually be becoming increasingly dumb.

Man's brain has been gradually shrinking over the last 20,000 years, according to a new report.

This decrease in size follows two million years during which the human cranium steadily grew in size, and it's happened all over the world, to both sexes and every race.

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My Comment: Are we devolving?

Language And Toolmaking Evolved Together, Say Researchers

Researchers say early humans were limited by brain power not manual dexterity when making stone age tools. Photograph: David Sillitoe/Guardian

From Popular Mechanics:

Evolutionary advance saw stone-age humans master the art of hand-toolmaking and paved the way for language to develop.

Stone-age humans mastered the art of elegant hand-toolmaking in an evolutionary advance that boosted their brain power and potentially paved the way for language, researchers say.

The design of stone tools changed dramatically in human pre-history, beginning more than two million years ago with sharp but primitive stone flakes, and culminating in exquisite, finely honed hand axes 500,000 years ago.

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Europe Simulates Total Cyber War

From The BBC:

Essential web services have come under simulated attack as European nations test their cyber defences.

The first-ever cross-European simulation of an all out cyber attack was planned to test how well nations cope as the attacks slow connections.

The simulation steadily reduced access to critical services to gauge how nations react.

The exercise also tested how nations work together to avoid a complete shut-down of international links.

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