Solar Systems Around Dead Suns?

Asteroid 'Bites the Dust' Around Dead Star. NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope set its infrared eyes upon the dusty remains of shredded asteroids around several dead stars. This artist's concept illustrates one such dead star, or "white dwarf," surrounded by the bits and pieces of a disintegrating asteroid. These observations help astronomers better understand what rocky planets are made of around other stars. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Apr. 20, 2009) — Using NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, an international team of astronomers have found that at least 1 in 100 white dwarf stars show evidence of orbiting asteroids and rocky planets, suggesting these objects once hosted solar systems similar to our own.

Team member Dr Jay Farihi of the University of Leicester will present this discovery on April 20th at the European Week of Astronomy and Space Science conference at the University of Hertfordshire.

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Is Picking A Mate Just Genetics?

Is finding true love a matter of romance and judgment or just cold genetics?
(ABCNews Photo Illustration/ABC News)

From ABC News:

Scientists Say Genes May Dictate Mate Selection, at Least for Fruit Flies

So after looking for years you finally found your perfect mate. Was it good judgment on your part, helped along by a lot of romance, or was it just a case of cold genetics?

It may well be that your genes, not your superior taste when it comes to the opposite sex, made the choice for you. But even your genes can get it wrong. At least if you are a fruit fly.

A team of scientists at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., and the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, have been trying for a number of years to figure out the role genes play in mate selection.

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Lack Of Water Threatens "Garden of Eden"

Iraq’s marshes in 2003. Today, the marshes are drying up due to a drought and competition over limited water supplies. Hassan Janali, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

From Earth Magazine:

Since the downfall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, Iraqis and scientists from around the world have been working hard to restore Iraq’s once-lush marshes. But after several years of measurable improvement, drought and competition over limited water supplies threaten to reverse this progress. Those working on the marshes are confident that the marshes can come back — but whether the people who rely on these wetlands for their livelihood will be as resilient remains to be seen.

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Manhattan Depicted Before Human Impact

Modern Manhattan on right; virtual recreation of 1609 Mannahatta on left. Image © Markley Boyer / Mannahatta Project / Wildlife Conservation Society

From Live Science:

New York City seems about as far removed from its natural state as any spot on the planet. Now a new study reveals what Manhattan looked like before it became a concrete jungle.

Once known as Mannahatta — the land of many hills — in the Lenape Native American dialect, New York was a lush island paradise 400 years ago. Times Square used to be an old-growth forest, Harlem was a ranging meadow, and downtown was wetlands. Streams teemed with fish. Wolves, mountain lion, elk and deer roamed the rolling hills.

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Medical Micro-Robots Made As Small As Bacteria

Artificial bacterial flagella are about half as long as the thickness of a human hair. They can swim at a speed of up to one body length per second. This means that they already resemble their natural role models very closely. (Credit: Institute of Robotics and Intelligent Systems/ETH Zurich)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Apr. 19, 2009) — For the first time, ETH Zurich researchers have built micro-robots as small as bacteria. Their purpose is to help cure human beings.

They look like spirals with tiny heads, and screw through the liquid like miniature corkscrews. When moving, they resemble rather ungainly bacteria with long whip-like tails. They can only be observed under a microscope because, at a total length of 25 to 60 µm, they are almost as small as natural flagellated bacteria. Most are between 5 and 15 µm long, a few are more than 20 µm.

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Are Wind Farms A Lot Of Hot Air... And What Would We Do When It's Not Windy?

Romantic hope: Wind farms cannot be the sole solution to our energy crisis

From The Daily Mail:

They're fine for making the odd cup of tea. But, says the Mail's Science Editor; if we wanted to go totally green, we'd have to carpet the country with more windmills than exist in the whole world.

There can be few more dramatic ways to create energy to boil a kettle. A few feet above my head, a giant blade scythes through the air. It is razorsharp, travels at about 90mph, is 130ft long and weighs some nine tons. Moments later, a second blade does the same thing, followed by a third.

The three rotors are attached to a 210ft-tall white tower which looms to the same height as St Paul's Cathedral - although many would consider it considerably less beautiful - and can be seen from miles around.

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Why Antarctic Ice Is Growing Despite Global Warming

Photo: Sea ice has grown in the Ross Sea off Antarctica, despite global warming: what's going on? (Image: Daisy Gilardini / The Image Bank / Getty)

From The New Scientist:

It's the southern ozone hole whatdunit. That's why Antarctic sea ice is growing while at the other pole, Arctic ice is shrinking at record rates. It seems CFCs and other ozone-depleting chemicals have given the South Pole respite from global warming.

But only temporarily. According to John Turner of the British Antarctic Survey, the effect will last roughly another decade before Antarctic sea ice starts to decline as well.

Arctic sea ice is decreasing dramatically and reached a record low in 2007. But satellite images studied by Turner and his colleagues show that Antarctic sea ice is increasing in every month of the year expect January. "By the end of the century we expect one third of Antarctic sea ice to disappear," says Turner. "So we're trying to understand why it's increasing now, at a time of global warming."

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Physicist Stephen Hawking Very Ill And In Hospital

Photo: Stephen Hawking (Wikimedia Commons)

From Yahoo News/Reuters:

LONDON (Reuters) – Physicist Stephen Hawking, the author of "A Brief History of Time" who is almost completely paralyzed by motor neurone disease, has been urgently admitted to hospital, Cambridge University said on Monday.

Hawking, 67, was taken by ambulance to a local hospital in Cambridge, where he teaches as a professor of applied mathematics and theoretical physics.

"Professor Hawking is very ill and has been taken by ambulance to Addenbrooke's Hospital," the university said.

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More News On Stephen Hawking

Stephen Hawking hospitalized, reported very ill -- AP
Scientist Hawking ill in hospital -- BBC
Physicist Hawking hospitalized -- UPI
Physicist Stephen Hawking hospitalized, "very ill" -- Scientific American
Stephen Hawking rushed to hospital -- CBC
Scientist Stephen Hawking 'very ill': university -- AFP
FACTBOX - Physicist Stephen Hawking -- Reuters

Egypt's Top Archaeologist Claims Antony And Cleopatra Tomb Found

Zahi Hawass (left) displays finds from the Toposiris Magna temple, where he believes Antony and Cleopatra's remains are located Photo: EPA

From The Telegraph:

Egypt's top archaeologist, Zahi Hawass, has shown off treasures from the site of a tomb which he claims contains the remains of Mark Antony and Cleopatra.

Ahead of the start of excavations on Tuesday, Mr Hawass exhibited 22 coins, 10 mummies, an alabaster head and a fragment of a mask with a cleft chin as evidence that the site, a 2,000-year-old temple to the god Osiris, is likely to hold further treasures.

He believes that the Toposiris Magna temple, 30 miles from Egypt's ancient seaside capital of Alexandria, contains the tomb of the doomed lovers that has been shrouded in mystery for so long.

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Learning Disabilities In Males: Nine New X Chromosome Genes Linked To Learning Disabilities

Image: Family with missense variants in the CASK gene, one of the genes discovered in this study. Individuals with the missense variant are denoted by a *. Females are denoted with circles and males with squares. Black shading denotes individuals with learning disabilities. (Credit: Image courtesy of Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Apr. 20, 2009) — A collaboration between more than 70 researchers across the globe has uncovered nine new genes on the X chromosome that, when knocked-out, lead to learning disabilities. The international team studied almost all X chromosome genes in 208 families with learning disabilities - the largest screen of this type ever reported.

Remarkably, the team also found that approximately 1-2% of X chromosome genes, when knocked-out, have no apparent effect on an individual's ability to function in the ordinary world. The publication in Nature Genetics - a culmination of five years of scientific collaboration - emphasises the power of sequencing approaches to identify novel genes of clinical importance, but also highlights the challenges researchers face when carrying out this kind of study.

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Laughter Is Indeed Good Medicine

From Live Science:

Nobody can say if laughter is the best medicine, but it certainly seems to help. So suggests a new but very small study of diabetes patients who were given a good dose of humor for a year.

Researchers split 20 high-risk diabetic patients —all with hypertension and hyperlipidemia (a risk factor for cardiovascular disease)— into two groups. Both groups were given standard diabetes medication. Group L viewed 30 minutes of humor of their choosing, while Group C, the control group, did not. This went on for a year of treatments.

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Discover Interview The Man Who Found Quarks And Made Sense Of The Universe

From Discover Magazine:

Murray Gell-Mann had a smash success with particles, notorious dustups with Feynman, and a missed opportunity with Einstein.

It is no accident that the quark—the building block of protons and neutrons and, by extension, of you and everything around you—has such a strange and charming name. The physicist who discovered it, Murray Gell-Mann, loves words as much as he loves physics. He is known to correct a stranger’s pronunciation of his or her own last name (which doesn’t always go over well) and is more than happy to give names to objects or ideas that do not have one yet. Thus came the word quark for his most famous discovery. It sounds like “kwork” and got its spelling from a whimsical poem in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. This highly scientific term is clever and jokey and gruff all at once, much like the man who coined it.

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Shuttle Dodges Space Junk Risk

Photo from National Geographic

From Wired Science:

Despite the recent rash of space-debris problems, the risk that the space shuttle mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope will have a catastrophic collision with space junk and micrometeoroids won't exceed NASA guidelines.

NASA said Thursday the new orbital debris risk for STS-125 had fallen to 1 in 221. A couple of precautionary maneuvers -- in particular coming into a lower, less crowded orbit on the 10th day of the mission and using Hubble as a shield -- reduced the spaceship's chance of getting hit with a stray paint chip or metal bolt.

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New Bird Flu Cses Suggest The Danger Of Pandemic Is Rising

Chickens for sale in Cairo: Most bird-flu victims in Egypt this year are children. Reuters

From The Independent:

Infections in Egypt raise scientists' fears that virus will be spread by humans.

First the good news: bird flu is becoming less deadly. Now the bad: scientists fear that this is the very thing that could make the virus more able to cause a pandemic that would kill hundreds of millions of people.

This paradox – emerging from Egypt, the most recent epicentre of the disease – threatens to increase the disease's ability to spread from person to person by helping it achieve the crucial mutation in the virus which could turn it into the greatest plague to hit Britain since the Black Death. Last year the Government identified the bird-flu virus, codenamed H5N1, as the biggest threat facing the country – with the potential to kill up to 750,000 Britons.

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Scientists Compete To Build Best Living Machine

American scientist and entrepreneur Craig Venter Photo: REUTERS

From The Telegraph:

Scientists from around the world are to compete in a competition to build the best machine using only parts from living organisms.

More than 100 genetic engineering laboratories will compete using the microscopic components found inside biological cells.

The organisers of the competition, which is now in its sixth year, hope that useful technology will be created from these basic building blocks of life.

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Ocean Dead Zones Likely To Expand: Increasing Carbon Dioxide And Decreasing Oxygen Make It Harder For Deep-sea Animals To Breath

Photo: A new study by marine chemists at MBARI suggests that deep-ocean animals such as this owlfish (Bathylagus milleri) may suffer as carbon dioxide increases and oxygen concentrations decline in the deep sea. (Credit: Copyright 2001 MBARI)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Apr. 18, 2009) — New calculations made by marine chemists from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) suggest that low-oxygen "dead zones" in the ocean could expand significantly over the next century. These predictions are based on the fact that, as more and more carbon dioxide dissolves from the atmosphere into the ocean, marine animals will need more oxygen to survive.

Concentrations of carbon dioxide are increasing rapidly in the Earth's atmosphere, primarily because of human activities. About one third of the carbon dioxide that humans produce by burning fossil fuels is being absorbed by the world's oceans, gradually causing seawater to become more acidic.

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Jet Lag Caused By Out-Of-Synch Brain

From Live Science:

The droopy-eyed jet lag that comes after a cross-country plane trip could be caused by two groups of cells at the base of the brain falling out of synch, a new study suggests.

The body has a built-in time-keeping system, known as a circadian rhythm, that helps us keep track of when it's time to eat, sleep, wake up and perform other body functions. This system is partly governed by the cycle of day and night.

Changing time zones or working the late shift can throw off the body's sense of timing because it changes the timing of our exposure to light.

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Titanium Reveals Explosive Origins Of The Solar System

Photo: The same ratio of two varieties of titanium has been found in a range of meteorites, hinting that the cloud of gas and dust that formed the solar system was well-mixed before the first solids formed (Illustration: NASA)

From New Scientist:

The solar system emerged from a well-blended soup of dust and gas despite being cobbled together from the remains of multiple exploded stars, new meteorite measurements suggest.

Meteorites form a fossil record of the conditions that existed when they formed. By looking at the chemical makeup of some rocks, evidence has mounted in recent years that sun and the rest of the solar system formed from a cloud of debris blasted away from a number of supernovae.

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Blind To Be Cured With Stem Cells

From Times Online:

BRITISH scientists have developed the world’s first stem cell therapy to cure the most common cause of blindness. Surgeons predict it will become a routine, one-hour procedure that will be generally available in six or seven years’ time.

The treatment involves replacing a layer of degenerated cells with new ones created from embryonic stem cells. It was pioneered by scientists and surgeons from the Institute of Ophthalmology at University College London and Moorfields eye hospital.

This week Pfizer, the world’s largest pharmaceutical research company, will announce its financial backing to bring the therapy to patients.

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Why Leaves Turn Red

From Live Science:

Scientists have long wondered if the red color of fall leaves was more than just a sign of death. The process of turning leaves to brilliant colors requires energy, but doesn't seem to benefit the trees.

Some have suggested that fall colors act as sunscreen and keep trees from freezing. In 2001, British evolutionary biologist William Hamilton suggested the color might ward off bugs that would otherwise feast on the tree.

Hamilton looks to be on to something, a new study suggests. And the methodology is cool:

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Do 'Vicious' Dogs Learn From Their Owners?

From New Scientist:

ARE you right to trust your instincts if you cross the street when you encounter a snarling pit bull with an equally forbidding owner? A new study suggests that the owners of so-called "vicious" dogs commit more crimes than those who do not own such a dog.

Laurie Ragatz and her colleagues at the University of West Virginia in Morgantown examined whether owners of vicious dogs - those classed by the American Kennel Club as breeds with a high risk of causing injury to humans - were different in personality and behaviour to others. Their online questionnaire of 758 students, 563 of whom owned dogs, revealed owners of vicious dogs were significantly more likely to admit crimes such as vandalism, illegal drug use and fighting than other dog owners and those without dogs

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Newly Discovered Iron-Breathing Species Have Lived In Cold Isolation For Millions Of Years

A cross-section of Blood Falls showing how micorbial communities survive. (Credit: Zina Deretsky / NSF)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Apr. 17, 2009) — A reservoir of briny liquid buried deep beneath an Antarctic glacier supports hardy microbes that have lived in isolation for millions of years, researchers report April 17 in the journal Science.

The discovery of life in a place where cold, darkness, and lack of oxygen would previously have led scientists to believe nothing could survive comes from a team led by researchers at Harvard University and Dartmouth College. Their work was funded by the National Science Foundation, NASA, and Harvard's Microbial Sciences Initiative.

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The Hunt For Another Earth Begins: Nasa's New Telescope Scours Space For Life-Supporting Planets

The Kepler telescope pictures the eight-billion-year-old star cluster NGC 6791, 13,000 light years from Earth. It will focus on the 'Goldilocks' zone - an orbital band where temperatures are not too hot and not too cold, but just right to allow the existence of watery oceans, lakes and rivers

From The Daily Mail:

These are the first incredible pictures captured by Nasa's new telescope, preparing to discover Earth-like planets orbiting other stars.

Kepler's first image reveals a vast star field in the Cygnus-Lyra region of our galaxy, the Milky Way.

One fascinating picture is ablaze with stars filling the telescope's entire field of view, while two others zoom in on targeted stars and clusters.

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CO2, EPA, Politics, And All That

From Watts Up With That?:

In a stunning act of political kowtowing, the EPA caved to special interest groups and politics and declared CO2 a “dangerous pollutant”, even though it is part of the natural cycle of life. Now the gloves come off and the real fight begins during the 60 day public comment period. If you’ve never stood up to “consensus” before, now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. See instructions below for submitting public comment. - Anthony

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Video: How The International Space Station Was/Is Being Built

WNU Editor: The following link shows an excellent flash video of how the International Space Station was built .... from start to where it will be finished.

The link is HERE.

Revealed: Antarctic Ice Growing, Not Shrinking

From The Australian:

ICE is expanding in much of Antarctica, contrary to the widespread public belief that global warming is melting the continental ice cap.

The results of ice-core drilling and sea ice monitoring indicate there is no large-scale melting of ice over most of Antarctica, although experts are concerned at ice losses on the continent's western coast.

Antarctica has 90 per cent of the Earth's ice and 80 per cent of its fresh water. Extensive melting of Antarctic ice sheets would be required to raise sea levels substantially, and ice is melting in parts of west Antarctica. The destabilisation of the Wilkins ice shelf generated international headlines this month.

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Key to Happiness: Location, Location, Location

A San Diego sunset is not a cure for depression, but it can't hurt. Image credit: Dreamstime

From Live Science:

I am boarding a plane headed to San Diego, Calif., from my home town of Ithaca, New York, and pondering the recent announcement that where one lives is connected to the incidence of Frequent Mental Distress (FMD).

As I take off my down coat (yes, it's April, but we just had snow), discard my galoshes, and roll up the sleeves of my flannel shirt, I am thinking hard about the researchers from San Diego who presumably averted their gaze from the pounding surf before their office windows long enough to analyze surveys on mental health from the Centers for Disease Control to discover that people who live on, say, Hawaiian beaches have fewer bouts of stress, depression and emotional problems than people who live in the misty hollows of Appalachia.

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RNA Used To Reprogram One Cell Type Into Another

Rat neuron with a micropipette inserting mRNAs directly onto the cell. After laser photoporation the mRNA goes into the cell and the TIPeR-induced changes in cell phenotype are initiated. (Credit: Chia-wen Wu, PhD and James Eberwine, PhD University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Apr. 17, 2009) — For the past decade, researchers have tried to tweak cells at the gene and nucleus level to reprogram their identity. Now, working on the idea that the signature of a cell is defined by molecules called messenger RNAs, which contain the chemical blueprint for how to make a protein, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, School of Arts and Sciences and School of Engineering have found another way to change one cell type into another.

By simply flooding one cell type, a nerve cell, with the an abundance of a specific type of messenger RNA (mRNA) from another cell type, the investigators changed a neuron into an astrocyte-like cell, a star-shaped brain cell that helps to maintain the blood-brain barrier, regulates the chemical environment around cells, responds to injury, and releases regulatory substances.

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Early Warning Clue For Dementia

From BBC:

Heightened activity in an area of the brain that deals with memory may give a subtle early warning of dementia decades later, UK research suggests.

It was known that carrying a rogue version of a gene called ApoE4 raised the risk of Alzheimer's disease.

Now researchers have linked the same mutation with raised activity in an area of the brain called the hippocampus in people as young as 20.

The study appears in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

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Is Fringe's Genetic Monster Possible?

(Photograph by Craig Blankenhorn/FOX)

From Popular Mechanics:

In last night's episode of Fringe, "Unleashed," a genetically generated monster terrorizes Boston—and mad scientist Walter Bishop, son Peter and FBI agent Olivia Dunham must find the transgenic animal, a gila monster-wasp-bat hybrid that activists had let loose from an animal testing facility. The creature—which had physical characteristics of all the animals it was spliced together from—mostly kills people with its massive claws and prodigious fangs, but its real drive is to infect people with its larvae to create more monsters. PM spoke with geneticists to find out just how close science is to creating a Fringe-style supermonster.

When a car-full of dead college students—their bodies mangled by an animal "not indigenous to the area," according to the local coroner—it's not long before Walter pinpoints a transgenic animal as the culprit. "It's an animal creation, an organism made up of the genes of many species," he explains. "It's accelerated Darwinism!" Bishop, of course, had worked on such animals during his heyday, but none of his creations had survived. "It's possible, in theory," he says. "You would have to solve many problems," like stopping gene rejection similar to what people experience when their bodies reject donor organs.

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Pirate Bay Verdict Is Guilty -- News Updates And Commentaries

The Pirate Bay Guilty; Jail for File-Sharing Foursome -- Wired News

Four men connected to The Pirate Bay, the world's most notorious file sharing site, were convicted by a Swedish court Friday of contributory copyright infringement, and each sentenced to a year in prison.

Pirate Bay administrators Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg and Peter Sunde were found guilty in the case, along with Carl Lundström, who was accused of funding the five-year-old operation.

In addition to jail time, the defendants were ordered to pay damages of 30 million kronor ($3.6 million) to a handful of entertainment companies, including Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Bros, EMI and Columbia Pictures, for the infringement of 33 specific movie and music properties tracked by industry investigators.

Read more .....

More News On The Pirate's Bay Verdict

‘Pirate Bay’ founders convicted by Swedish court -- Christian Science Monitor
What does the Pirate Bay verdict mean for innovation? -- The Guardian
Analysis: why the Pirate Bay prosecution is no deterrent -- Times Online
Pirate Bay Operator: “Definitely Not a Fair Judgment” -- Wall Street Journal
The Pirate Bay Guilty of Breaching Copyrights -- Time Magazine
Pirate Bay four jailed for breaking copyright in Swedish file-sharing trial -- The Telegraph
Pirate Bay Founders Sentenced to Jail, Fines for Violating Copyright Law -- Rolling Stone
The Pirate Bay Verdict and the Future of File-Sharing -- PC World
Guilty Pirate Bay Defendant Still Calls Verdict 'Epic Win' -- Extreme Tech
PirateBay founders guilty -- ZDNet
Pirate Bay defendants to fight on -- CNET News
Copyright holders cheer Pirate Bay verdict -- CNET News
Pirate Bay founders found guilty, get jail sentence -- Techspot
A to Z of online piracy -- CNN

U.S. Astronauts Might Hitch Rides on Chinese Spacecraft

An artist's depiction of China's Shenzhou manned spacecraft in space. Credit: Simon Zajc

From Space.com:

Once NASA's space shuttle fleet is retired next year, U.S. astronauts might arrive at the International Space Station via Chinese spacecraft, according to U.S. President Barack Obama's science chief.

The prospect is being aired by presidential science adviser John Holdren, head of the White House Office of Science and Technology, in an interview posted on ScienceInsider - a web-based blog from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

In the ScienceInsider interview, Holdren underscored the fact that President Obama's administration is intent on retiring the space shuttle in 2010, with the president open to an additional shuttle mission flown within 2010.

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Capturing The Quake: Fascinating satellite image Which Reveals How The Earth Moved In Italy Tragedy

Pictured: An 'interferogram' shows the Earth's deformation pattern over the L'Aquila area in central Italy following the devastating quake last week

From The Daily Mail:

This intriguing image is being scrutinised by Italian scientists trying to unravel exactly how the Earth moved during Italy's devastating quake last week.

The picture shows shock waves radiating from the epicentre of the massive 6.3 seismic event in the medieval town of L’Aquila.

Its rainbow-coloured interference patterns were deduced using 'synthetic aperture radar' (SAR) data from the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Envisat and the Italian Space Agency’s COSMO-SkyMed satellites.

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Archaeologists Discover Temple That Sheds Light On So-called Dark Age

TAP excavations on the Tayinat Citadel. (Credit: Tim Harrison)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Apr. 16, 2009) — The discovery of a remarkably well-preserved monumental temple in Turkey — thought to be constructed during the time of King Solomon in the 10th/9th-centuries BCE — sheds light on the so-called Dark Age.

Uncovered by the University of Toronto's Tayinat Archaeological Project (TAP) in the summer of 2008, the discovery casts doubt upon the traditional view that the transition from the Late Bronze Age to the Early Iron Age was violent, sudden and culturally disruptive.

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The Chemistry of Life: The Human Body

From Live Science:

You are what you eat. But do you recall munching some molybdenum or snacking on selenium? Some 60 chemical elements are found in the body, but what all of them are doing there is still unknown.

Roughly 96 percent of the mass of the human body is made up of just four elements: oxygen, carbon, hydrogen and nitrogen, with a lot of that in the form of water. The remaining 4 percent is a sparse sampling of the periodic table of elements.

Some of the more prominent representatives are called macro nutrients, whereas those appearing only at the level of parts per million or less are referred to as micronutrients.

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West Africa Faces 'megadroughts'

From The BBC:

Severe droughts lasting centuries have happened often in West Africa's recent history, and another one is almost inevitable, researchers say.

Analysis of sediments in a Ghanaian lake shows the last of these "megadroughts" ended 250 years ago.

Writing in the journal Science, the researchers suggest man-made climate change may make the situation worse.

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Total Recall: The Woman Who Can't Forget

From Wired:

It's a Monday afternoon in November, and I'm driving down Ventura Boulevard with Jill Price, the woman who can't forget. Price, who is 43, has spent most of her life here in Los Angeles, and she remembers everything. In the space of two minutes, she tells me about the former motel lodge with a bear in front, the Courtyard hotel that used to be a Hilton, and a bowling alley—since replaced by a Marshalls—where a Nicolas Cage film was shot. All this comes pouring out so fast, I wonder aloud whether Price has had too much coffee. She laughs, says no, pulls slightly at her blond hair, and starts up again.

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Would Life Form Differently Around Cool Stars?

This artist's conception shows a young, hypothetical planet around a cool star. Credit: JPL

From Universe Today:

“Life as we know it” seems to be the common caveat in our search for other living things in the Universe. But there’s also the possibility of life “as we don’t know it.” A new study from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope hints that planets around stars cooler than our sun might possess a different mix of potentially life-forming, or “prebiotic,” chemicals. While life on Earth is thought to have arisen from a hot soup of different chemicals, would the same life-generating mix come together around other stars with different temperatures? (And should we call it ‘The Gazpacho Effect?’) “Prebiotic chemistry may unfold differently on planets around cool stars,” said Ilaria Pascucci, lead author of the new study.

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Do You Think Bandwidth Grows On Trees?

From Slate:

User-generated content may have changed the Internet, but sites like YouTube are suffocating under the costs of storing it.

Everyone knows that print newspapers are our generation's horse-and-buggy; in the most wired cities, they've been pummeled by competition from the Web. But it might surprise you to learn that one of the largest and most-celebrated new-media ventures is burning through cash at a rate that makes newspapers look like wise investments. It's called YouTube: According a recent report by analysts at the financial-services company Credit Suisse, Google will lose $470 million on the video-sharing site this year alone. To put it another way, the Boston Globe, which is on track to lose $85 million in 2009, is five times more profitable—or, rather, less unprofitable—than YouTube. All so you can watch this helium-voiced oddball whenever you want.

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Love Eternal? Egyptian Dig Hopes To Uncover Cleopatra And Mark Antony Side By Side

From The Daily Mail:

The burial place of doomed lovers Cleopatra and Mark Antony has remained an enduring mystery, but new evidence suggests it could soon be laid to rest.

Archaeologists are to begin searching three new sites identified in a radar survey of a temple close to Alexandria for the tombs of the celebrated queen of Egypt and the Roman general.

Egypt's top archaeologist Zahi Hawass said the finds have raised hopes that the legendary couple will be found together in a system of tunnels beneath the temple of Tabusiris Magna.

The discovery would be even bigger than the uncovering of King Tutankhamun's tomb, which was found in 1922, according to Dr Hawass.

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Factors Other Than Genes Could Cause Obesity, Insulin Study Shows

Purdue researchers have uncovered new evidence that factors other than genes could cause obesity, finding that genetically identical cells store widely differing amounts of fat depending on subtle variations in how cells process insulin. Here, insulin (green) is present in cells with no fat storage and absent in cells with fat storage at two days after insulin addition. This observation indicates faster insulin processing rates in cells with fat storage. Fluorophore-labeled insulin (green) is visualized with fluorescence imaging, and fat is visualized with coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering - or CARS - imaging (red/white). (Credit: Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering, Purdue University)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Apr. 15, 2009) — Researchers have uncovered new evidence suggesting factors other than genes could cause obesity, finding that genetically identical cells store widely differing amounts of fat depending on subtle variations in how cells process insulin.

Learning the precise mechanism responsible for fat storage in cells could lead to methods for controlling obesity.

"Insights from our study also will be important for understanding the precise roles of insulin in obesity or Type II diabetes, and to the design of effective intervention strategies," said Ji-Xin Cheng, an assistant professor in Purdue University's Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering and Department of Chemistry.

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Strange 1761 Atmospheric Phenomenon Explained

From Live Science:

Unusual atmospheric phenomena were recorded worldwide in 1761, unexplained at the time.

Now independent astronomer Kevin D. Pang of La Cañada Flintridge, California, says he's figured out the cause — and he credits Benjamin Franklin with a conceptual assist.

While serving as American ambassador in Paris, Franklin first made the connection between a "dry fog" that had obscured the Sun for months in 1784, the extremely cold weather in Europe and North America that same year, and the 1783 eruption of Iceland's Laki volcano. The fog was, we now know, droplets of sulfuric acid, called vog (volcanic fog).

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Why Some People Sneeze When The Sun Comes Out

Every time some people go out into the sun, they sneeze: why does it happen?
(Image: RESO / Rex Features)

From New Scientist:

Are you a photic sneezer? Take the questionnaire and find out

I WAS rounding the corner to the bus stop when it hit me - a bright shaft of sunlight smack between the eyes. My reaction was immediate: an unpleasant prickling in my nose, a quickening of my breath, an uncontrollable watering of my eyes. Then, almost as quickly as the sensation came, relief, blessed relief. Aaaaa-tisshoo! A sneeze.

It wasn't the first time. In fact, the same thing happens every time I go into the sun. For a long time, I thought it was a quirk all of my own. Then a friend mentioned she was similarly afflicted. Next my mother came out of the closet. With a bit of digging around I came to a startling realisation: not only am I not alone, but the "photic sneeze reflex" is actually common. Quite how common, no one knows exactly - but anything between 1 in 10 and 1 in 3 of us might be affected.

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PIN Crackers Nab Holy Grail Of Bank Card Security

From Wired/Threat Level:

Hackers have crossed into new frontiers by devising sophisticated ways to steal large amounts of personal identification numbers, or PINs, protecting credit and debit cards, says an investigator. The attacks involve both unencrypted PINs and encrypted PINs that attackers have found a way to crack, according to an investigator behind a new report looking at the data breaches.

The attacks, says Bryan Sartin, director of investigative response for Verizon Business, are behind some of the millions of dollars in fraudulent ATM withdrawals that have occurred around the United States.

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Why Teenagers Are Moody, Scientists Find The Answer

From The Telegraph:

Teenagers are selfish, reckless and irritable because their brains develop slower than their bodies, scientists have claimed.

Psychologists used to blame the unpleasant characteristics of adolescence on hormones.

However, new brain imaging scans have revealed a high number of structural changes in teenagers and those in their early 20s.

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Technology Opens Promise, Perils Of Ocean Mining

This 1997 photo released by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution shows the robotic arm of an unmanned aquatic vehicle reaching toward a hydrothermal vent in the east Pacific Ocean far off the coast of Chile. New technology and worldwide demand for metals have combined to make feasible deep ocean mining of the mineral-laden liquid spewed from these vents. By Pat Hickey, AP

From USA Today:

BOSTON — There's gold in that thar sea floor. Silver, copper, zinc and lead, too. The problem is, it's a mile or two underwater and encased in massive mineral deposits that layer a dark, mysterious world. But new technology and worldwide demand have combined to make mining for these metals economically feasible for the first time.

A breakthrough project is moving forward in New Guinea, and new rules to govern deep ocean mining will be set by an international authority this spring.

On Thursday, scientists, businessmen and policymakers from 20 countries meet on Cape Cod for a public forum on how to best extract these riches while protecting hidden worlds in the earth's oceans. Strange animals, from six-foot tubeworms to "blind" shrimp, thrive in water as acidic as battery acid, near "hydrothermal vents" that spew out mineral-laden liquid as hot as 750 degrees.

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The Next Phage

Inphasion: Phages [in orange] prey on a lone bacterium, using prong-like proteins to anchor themselves to the cell before they inject their genes into it Lee D. Simon/Photo Researchers

From Popsci.com:

How to heal an infection that defies antibiotics? Another infection. Doctors in Eastern Europe have used lab-grown viruses to safely cure millions of wounds. So why can't we do the same here?

It seemed like nothing at first. The red patch that appeared on Roy Brillon's thigh could have been a spider bite. But as the weeks passed, it grew and grew. By December 2004, the innocuous-looking bump had become an open wound the size of the palm of his hand. Brillon's doctor, Randy Wolcott, prescribed just about every antibiotic he could think of to cure the infection, but the lesion just got worse. "It was really bad," says Brillon, a 62-year-old retired housepainter from Lubbock, Texas. "I had to give up work because I couldn't climb ladders anymore."

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PG&E Makes Deal For Space Solar Power

From MSNBC:

Utility to buy orbit-generated electricity from Solaren in 2016, at no risk.

California's biggest energy utility announced a deal Monday to purchase 200 megawatts of electricity from a startup company that plans to beam the power down to Earth from outer space, beginning in 2016.

San Francisco-based Pacific Gas & Electric said it was seeking approval from state regulators for an agreement to purchase power over a 15-year period from Solaren Corp., an 8-year-old company based in Manhattan Beach, Calif. The agreement was first reported in a posting to Next100, a Weblog produced by PG&E.

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Cure For Honey Bee Colony Collapse?

Beekeeper with honeycomb. (Credit: iStockphoto/Kamilla Mathisen)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Apr. 14, 2009) — For the first time, scientists have isolated the parasite Nosema ceranae (Microsporidia) from professional apiaries suffering from honey bee colony depopulation syndrome. They then went on to treat the infection with complete success.

In a study published in the new journal from the Society for Applied Microbiology: Environmental Microbiology Reports, scientists from Spain analysed two apiaries and found evidence of honey bee colony depopulation syndrome (also known as colony collapse disorder in the USA). They found no evidence of any other cause of the disease (such as the Varroa destructor, IAPV or pesticides), other than infection with Nosema ceranae. The researchers then treated the infected surviving under-populated colonies with the antibiotic drug, flumagillin and demonstrated complete recovery of all infected colonies.

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Three Subgroups of Neanderthals Identified

A Neanderthal Family. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

From Live Science:

We tend to think of Neanderthals as one species of cavemen-like creatures, but now scientists say there were actually at least three different subgroups of Neanderthals.

Using computer simulations to analyze DNA sequence fragments from 12 Neanderthal fossils, researchers found that the species can be separated into three, or maybe four, distinct genetic groups.

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Egypt Discovers Dozens Of Well-Preserved Mummies In 4,000-Year-Old Necropolis In Fayoum

Ancient beauty: A wooden coffin containing a linen-wrapped mummy covered in cartonnage found by the Egyptian archaeological mission

From The Daily Mail:

Egyptian archaeologists have discovered an ancient necropolis containing dozens of beautifully preserved mummies dating back as far as 4,000 years.

Excavations sponsored by Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities revealed 53 tombs cut into rock south east of the Illahun pyramids in the oasis of Fayoum.

Antiquities chief Zahi Hawass described four of the mummies, dating to the 22nd Dynasty (931-725 BC), as among the most beautiful ever discovered.

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