Ancient Tablets Decoded; Shed Light On Assyrian Empire

Ancient clay tablets (such as the one pictured) inscribed with cuneiform script, a type of ancient writing once common in the Middle East, have been found in southeastern Turkey, archaeologists announced in October 2009. Photograph courtesy University of Akron

From The National Geographic:

Meticulous ancient notetakers have given archaeologists a glimpse of what life was like 3,000 years ago in the Assyrian Empire, which controlled much of the region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Persian Gulf.

Clay tablets inscribed with cuneiform, an ancient script once common in the Middle East, were unearthed in summer 2009 in an ancient palace in present-day southeastern Turkey.

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Wind Energy Industry Looks To Copenhagen For A Mandate

Denise Bode, chief executive officer of the American Wind Energy Association, says what happens in global climate and global energy politics matters very much to the industry. (Sarah Beth Glicksteen/The Christian Science Monitor)

From The Christian Science Monitor:

In an interview, Denise Bode, CEO of the American Wind Energy Association, says the industry needs a renewable energy mandate from the climate conference in Copenhagen and from Congress.

American wind power is blowing strong despite hard economic times. That’s the message from Denise Bode, chief executive officer of the American Wind Energy Association and she’s sticking to it – despite the dicey economy.

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Work The New Digital Sweatshops

Photo: A call center in India. Brent Stirton / Getty Images for GBC

From Newsweek:

When hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans in 2005, the Red Cross announced a toll-free telephone hotline to help victims and their families find each other. The hotline was quickly swamped. So the Red Cross turned to a little-known firm called -LiveOps, a company that recruits call agents from around the world and directs their tasks entirely through the Internet. Within three hours, it had arranged for 300 people to staff the phones. A few days later, the freelance agents had processed more than 17,000 calls.

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Stem Cells Can be Engineered into Genetic Vaccines Against HIV and More

Killer T-Cells The blue blobs are killer T-cells getting ready to attack a tumor via PNAS

From Popular Science:

While some viruses attack the lungs, and others the blood, HIV attacks the only system that could put up a fight: the immune system itself. The immune system mounts some defense, but after HIV launches its surprise attack, the body simply can't produce enough killer T blood cells to take out the virus.

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Startups Mine The Real-Time Web

Image: Credit: Technology Review

From Technology Review:

There's more to it than microblog posts and social network updates.

The "real-time Web" is a hot concept these days. Both Google and Microsoft are racing to add more real-time information to their search results, and a slew of startups are developing technology to collect and deliver the freshest information from around the Web.

But there's more to the real-time Web than just microblogging posts, social network updates, and up-to-the-minute news stories. Huge volumes of data are generated, behind the scenes, every time a person watches a video, clicks on an ad, or performs just about any other action online. And if this user-generated data can be processed rapidly, it could provide new ways to tailor the content on a website, in close to real time.

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Why Does The Air Force Want Thousands Of PlayStations?

PlayStation 3 (PS3)

From ABC News:

Clusters of High-Performance Gaming Consoles Can Serve as Supercomputers.

Guess what's on the U.S. Air Force's wish list this holiday season.

Sony's popular PlayStation 3 gaming console. Thousands of them.

The Air Force Research Laboratory in Rome, N.Y., recently issued a request for proposal indicating its intention to purchase 2,200 PlayStation 3 (PS3) consoles.

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Clever Folds In A Globe Give New Perspectives On Earth

From New Scientist:

A new technique for unpeeling the Earth's skin and displaying it on a flat surface provides a fresh perspective on geography, making it possible to create maps that string out the continents for easy comparison, or lump together the world's oceans into one huge mass of water surrounded by coastlines.

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Dogs Are Better Than Cats – At Least Scientifically Speaking

Dogs won six categories compared with five for cats Photo: Martin Pope

From The Telegraph:

A dog really is man's best friend claims a new scientific study that shows that canines make better pets than their arch rivals cats.

Researchers concluded that when it comes to a number of criteria including intelligence, bonding and obedience, dogs narrowly beat their feline adversaries.

Out of 11 categories selected by the magazine New Scientist, dogs won six compared with five for cats.

Despite cats deemed overall to have a more powerful brains, dogs showed greater ability to understand commands, problem solve and were generally more helpful, it was said.

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Why King Kong Failed to Impress: Humans, Apes Use Odor-Detecting Receptors Differently

New research shows that humans and other primates use the same receptors for detecting odors related to sex in different ways. (Credit: iStockphoto/Larissa Lognay)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Dec. 9, 2009) — Humans have the same receptors for detecting odors related to sex as do other primates. But each species uses them in different ways, stemming from the way the genes for these receptors have evolved over time, according to Duke University researchers.

Varying sensitivity to these sex-steroid odors may play a role in mate selection -- and perhaps prevent cross-species couplings, the researchers speculate.

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Snow At Highest Elevations No Longer Pure

The toxic pollutants called PCBs have been found in snow on the Aconcagua Mountain, the highest mountain in the Americas. Here, an image of Aconcagua mountain. Credit: Mariordo Mario Roberto Duran Ortiz, Wikimedia Commons

From Live Science:

The pure white snow atop the Andes Mountains may not be so pure after all. Scientists have found traces of toxic pollutants called PCBs in snow samples taken from Aconcagua Mountain, the highest peak in the Americas.

While the overall PCB levels were quite low, the results show that these long-lasting contaminants, notorious for causing myriad health problems, can end up at altitudes as high as 20,340 feet (6,200 meters), making their way through the atmosphere to these remote areas.

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Climate Change Not To Blame For Polar Bear Cannibalism

An adult polar bear with the remains of a cub. Scientists argue that climate change may be causing a spike in the rate of cannibalism among bears. Iain D. Williams/Reuters

From The National Post:

The gory photos of male polar bears devouring cubs, dragging shredded carcasses around and creating a bloody mess on the white snow of Canada's North have caused a stir on the Internet and in reports that link the activity to climate change.

But cannibalism among the species is a natural occurrence, says one expert, disputing what is just the latest story to put the polar bear in the debate over man-made global warming.

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How Do Countries Determine Their Time Zones?

Matthias Kulka / Corbis

From Time Magazine:

Russia wishes it were smaller. No, it isn't about to shed any territory, but President Dmitry Medvedev has suggested that Russia reduce its number of time zones from 11 to four, arguing that the extreme time difference — in which western Russia wakes for breakfast just as eastern Russia climbs into bed — "divides" the country and "makes it harder to manage it effectively." Can Russia just change time zones like that? How are time zones determined anyway?

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Have No Fear – Breakthrough Offers Hope To Phobia Sufferers

12% of Britons fear spiders, whilst 13% fear heights. ALAMY

From The Independent:

Scientists manage to block scary thoughts selectively – without the use of mind-altering drugs

Fear has been eliminated from the human mind for the first time in a series of pioneering experiments that could open the way to treating a range of phobias and anxiety disorders with behavioural therapy rather than drugs.

Scientists have selectively blocked thoughts of fear by interfering with the way memories are "reconsolidated" by the brain. It could lead to new ways of treating the thousands of people whose lives are crippled by fear and anxiety relating to phobias and memories that go back many years.

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Giant iceberg heading for Australia

A satellite image released by the Australian Antarctic Division howing a giant iceberg (4th from right) which is drifting towards Western Australia Photo: EPA

From The Telegraph:

A giant iceberg double the size of Sydney Harbour is on a slow but steady collision course with Australia, scientists have said.

The mammoth chunk of ice, which measures 12 miles long and five miles wide, was spotted floating surprisingly close to the mainland by scientists at the Australian Antarctic Division (ADD).

Known as B17B, it is currently drifting 1,000 miles from Australia's west coast and is moving gradually north with the ocean current and prevailing wind.

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Miracle Light: Can Lasers Solve The Energy Crisis?

An artist's rendering of laser beams entering both ends of a capsule containing a pea-sized pellet of deuterium and tritium at the Energy Department's National Ignitition Facility in Livermore, Calif. National Ignition Facility/MCT

From McClatchy News:

WASHINGTON — Next year will mark the 50th birthday of the laser, one of the most productive and widely used mega-inventions of the last century. Scientists hope that 2010 also will see the launch of laser technology's greatest challenge: creating an inexhaustible supply of clean, carbon-free energy.

In the five decades since lasers were developed, they've found a host of applications — from the everyday to the exotic — in industry, science, medicine, entertainment and national security.

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WHO: Smoking Kills 5 Million Every Year

Corbis

From Time Magazine:

(LONDON) — Tobacco use kills at least 5 million people every year, a figure that could rise if countries don't take stronger measures to combat smoking, the World Health Organization said Wednesday.

In a new report on tobacco use and control, the U.N. agency said nearly 95 percent of the global population is unprotected by laws banning smoking. WHO said secondhand smoking kills about 600,000 people every year.

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Americans Consume 34 Gigabytes Daily Per Person

Info Hogs Truly, we live in the Information Age University of California-San Diego

From Popular Science:

TMI? A new report calculates that Americans ingest an enormous info diet.

Let's face it, Americans are info hogs. We feast our eyes and ears on TV, computers, video game consoles, handheld consoles, smart phones, radio, movies, and music -- not to mention print media. Now a new report finds that the info diet adds up to about 34 gigabytes per day for each person, or the equivalent of 11.8 hours per day.

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A New Step Forward For Robots

Jerry Pratt (l.) with research associates push M2V2 to test its balance at the Institute for Human Cognition in Pensacola, Fla. (Carmen K. Sisson/Special to The Christian Science Monitor)

From The Christian Science Monitor:

Engineers decode human balance to build walking robots.

For the past 30 years, scientists and technicians have grappled with making robots walk on two legs. Humans do it effortlessly, but the simple act has a lot of hidden complexity. And until recently, computers were very bad at it.

Now, several teams across the country are refining the first generation of robots that are close to walking like people. That includes the ability to recover from stumbles, resist shoves, and navigate rough terrain.

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Nanoparticle Protects Oil In Foods From Oxidation, Spoilage

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Dec. 9, 2009) — Using a nanoparticle from corn, a Purdue University scientist has found a way to lengthen the shelf life of many food products and sustain their health benefits.

Yuan Yao, an assistant professor of food science, has successfully modified the phytoglycogen nanoparticle, a starchlike substance that makes up nearly 30 percent of the dry mass of some sweet corn. The modification allows the nanoparticle to attach to oils and emulsify them while also acting as a barrier to oxidation, which causes food to become rancid. His findings were published in the early online version of the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

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Mysterious Radiation May Strike Airline Passengers

There's a small chance that passengers aboard an airplane flying through a storm may be exposed to high levels of radiation, new research suggests. Credit: Stockxpert

From Live Science:

Airline passengers flying through storms might have more to worry about than a little turbulence. A new study suggests that if jets pass near lightning discharges or related phenomena known as terrestrial gamma-ray flashes, passengers and crew members could be exposed to harmful levels of radiation, a dose equal to that of 400 chest X-rays.

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Discovery On HIV Testing Could Save A Million Lives

From The Independent:

Scientists have made a major advance in understanding the treatment of HIV which could see life-saving drugs extended to more than one million extra people at no additional cost. Researchers have discovered that routine laboratory testing of blood for signs of side-effects – long regarded as essential for HIV treatment – is unnecessary and a waste of time and money.

By abandoning routine laboratory testing, which is costly and requires sophisticated equipment only available in hospitals, the money saved could be used to buy and distribute extra anti-retroviral drugs.

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Googlefest Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop: 3 New Ways Google Will Take Over Your Life

From Discover Magazine:

Google is hitting the ‘nets hard this week. The Mountain View, Ca. behemoth has unleashed a fresh batch of fancy tricks for their avid followers, further extending the Googleplex’s empire beyond search and into other facets of life. Not only did Google open Wave to 1 million people and launch its Chrome browser for Mac users, but they’re dropping other potential game changers as well.

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Rumours That First Dark Matter Particle Found

From New Scientist:

The physics blogs are abuzz with rumours that a particle of dark matter has finally been found.

If it is true, it is huge news. Dark matter is thought to make up 90 per cent of the universe's mass and what evidence there is for it remains highly controversial. That's why any news of a sighting is seized upon.

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Nuclear Fusion Is The Future

James Hansen Photo: PA

From The Telegraph:

The Copenhagen Summit: Could a new nuclear fusion process allow us to escape the whole carbon trap?

'It's time to stop waffling so much and say that the evidence is pretty strong that the greenhouse effect is here." With that warning to the US Congress in June 1988, the Nasa climatologist James Hansen focused the minds of politicians on a danger that, until then, many of them had treated with scepticism.

A few days later came the first international conference to discuss man's impact on the Earth's climate, in Toronto, to which I had been packed off by The Daily Telegraph's then editor. I watched as scientists tried to persuade government representatives, legal experts, economists and industrialists that the time had come to take the threat seriously.

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Paper Battery Could Power Gadgets Of The Future

The light-weight battery is created by painting nanotube ink onto paper

From the Daily Mail:

Ordinary paper could one day be used as ultra-lightweight, bendable batteries, according to scientists from Stanford University.

Simply coating a sheet of paper with ink made of silver and carbon nanomaterials makes an efficient storage device that is 10 times as powerful as lithium-ion batteries used to power laptops.

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Mysterious Light Display Leaves Norwegians And Astronomers Puzzled

From Popular Science:

A Russian missile test or a meteor remain the top guesses for a strange spiraling light phenomenon.

A bizarre spiraling light show over Norway has raised speculations ranging from a Russian rocket test to an odd meteoric display. The Norwegian Meteorological Institute remains unsure of the phenomenon's origins, but astronomers have said that it does not appear connected to the Aurora Borealis, also known as the Northern Lights.

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‘Testosterone’s Aggressive Impact Is A Myth. It Makes You Friendlier’

From Times Online:

It is popularly known as the selfish hormone, which courses through male veins to promote egotistical and antisocial behaviour. Yet research has suggested that testosterone’s bad reputation is largely undeserved.

Far from always increasing aggression and greed, the male hormone can actually encourage decency and fair play, scientists have discovered.

The common belief that it makes people quarrelsome, however, can cause it to have that effect. When people think they have been given supplements of the hormone they tend to act more aggressively, even though it does nothing biological to promote such behaviour.

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'Small Wind' Market To Double By 2013, Study Says

Cascade Engineering has the rights to sell this Swift turbine, which is already installed in dozens of locations in the U.K., some attached to roofs on homes. Like other wind turbines, the Swift has blades that turn and power a generator. But rather than the typical three blades, the Swift has five and a ring that goes around them. That "outer diffuser" ring cuts the noise level to 35 decibels and reduces vibration, according to the company. Photo by Cascade Engineering. Caption by Martin LaMonica

From Green Tech/CNET News:

Individuals and commercial businesses around the world are increasingly drawn to small wind turbines to supplement energy consumption, according to a report released Wednesday by Pike Research.

The niche industry of small wind turbines, which saw $165 million in revenue in 2008 and $203 million in 2009, will grow to $412 million by 2013, according to Pike's "Small Wind Power" report.

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The Smoking Gun At Darwin Zero

Darwin Airport - by Dominic Perrin via Panoramio

From Watts Up With That?:

People keep saying “Yes, the Climategate scientists behaved badly. But that doesn’t mean the data is bad. That doesn’t mean the earth is not warming.”

Let me start with the second objection first. The earth has generally been warming since the Little Ice Age, around 1650. There is general agreement that the earth has warmed since then. See e.g. Akasofu . Climategate doesn’t affect that.

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Life On Mars Theory Boosted By New Methane Study

This image shows concentrations of Methane discovered on Mars. (Credit: NASA)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Dec. 8, 2009) — Scientists have ruled out the possibility that methane is delivered to Mars by meteorites, raising fresh hopes that the gas might be generated by life on the red planet, in research published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters.

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Colossal Flood Created The Mediterranean Sea

Mediterranean Sea and the Strait of Gibraltar photographed by NASA. Part of Spain can be seen above and Africa, below, in the photo.

From Live Science:

The Mediterranean Sea as we know it today formed about 5.3 million years ago when Atlantic Ocean waters breached the strait of Gibraltar, sending a massive flood into the basin.

Geologists have long known that the Mediterranean became isolated from the world's oceans around 5.6 million years ago, evaporating almost completely in the hundreds of thousands of years that followed.

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TV Chosen Over Longer Life: Poll

What would you refuse to give up even if it added five healthy years to your life? According to many Canadians, you can put television on that list — and don’t try to take away booze or red meat, either. Photograph by: File, Reuters

From The Montreal Gazette:

What would you refuse to give up even if it added five healthy years to your life? According to many Canadians, you can put television on that list — and don’t try to take away booze or red meat, either.

Some 55 per cent of the respondents to a poll for RBC Insurance said they would not give up indulgences such as watching television, red meat (45 per cent) and alcohol (34 per cent), even if it would add five healthy years to their lives.

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Doctors Query Ability Of Tamiflu To Stop Severe Illness

Tamiflu tablets may shorten bouts of illness by a day or two, reviewers say.
Photograph: Leonhard Foeger/Reuters

From The Guardian:

Review published in British Medical Journal accuses flu drug manufacturer Roche of withholding evidence from trials.

Roche, the manufacturer of Tamiflu, has made it impossible for scientists to assess how well the anti-flu drug stockpiled around the globe works by withholding the evidence the company has gained from trials, doctors alleged today .

A major review of what data there is in the public domain has found no evidence Tamiflu can prevent healthy people with flu from suffering complications such as pneumonia.

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A Hot Piece of Hardware: NASA’s New Orbiter Will Map the Entire Sky in Infrared

From Discover Magazine:

Stars and other astronomical phenomena radiate across the electromagnetic spectrum, on both sides of the puny band of visible light that the human eye can pick up. NASA’s newest toy, set for a Friday launch into space, will map the infrared portion of that radiation—and do it across the entire sky.

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Five Ways To Revolutionise Computer Memory

Digital memory is getting smaller and smaller (Image: Chung Sung-Jun/Getty)

From New Scientist:

Once upon a time, not so long ago, the idea that you might store your entire music collection on a single hand-held device would have been greeted with disbelief. Ditto backing up all your essential computer files using a memory stick key ring, or storing thousands of high-resolution holiday snaps in one pocket-sized camera.

What a difference a decade makes. The impossible has become possible thanks to the lightning rise of a memory technology with the snazzy name of "flash".

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Sobering News: Coffee Increases Drunkenness

From The Telegraph:

Drinking coffee does not sober you up – and may actually further impair your judgement, new research suggests.

The combination of alcohol and caffeine produces a potentially lethal mix that just makes it harder to realise you are actually drunk in the first place.

And the study published in Behavioural Neuroscience suggests popular caffeinated energy drinks could also raise risks from intoxication rather than lessen them.

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Google Launches Real-Time Search With Instant Twitter And Facebook Updates

Google real-time: The screen continually updates with new information, without the need to refresh. Users also have the option to pause the scrolling action

From The Daily Mail:

Google has launched 'real-time' search to give users up-to-the-second information.

The search engine will update its information at the same rate as it receives it, which means postings on sites such as Twitter and Facebook will appear immediately at the bottom of the page.

The new data - from more than a billion pages on the web - will scroll past in real-time, without any need to refresh the page. Users can also stop the page from continually scrolling by clicking on the 'stop updating' phrase.

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To Save Soldiers on The Battlefield, Darpa Invests In Suspended Animation

Better Medevac Darpa is investing nearly $10 million in creating a medical cocktail that will suspend soldiers' animation after sustaining wounds in battle, reducing their need for oxygenated blood and keeping them (barely) alive until they can receive proper treatment.

From Popular Science:

An active battlefield is a really inconvenient place to lose a lot of blood. But naturally that's exactly where soldiers sustain the bulk of their life-threatening injuries, so Darpa is committing $9.9 million to finding drugs that can extend the "golden hour" -- the one-hour window that medics generally have to bring a soldier back from severe blood loss -- by as much as six hours.

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Hubble Sees Most Distant Galaxies

Very distant galaxies were spotted in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field

From BBC:

Nasa's Hubble Space Telescope (HST) has captured its deepest view of the Universe, producing images of galaxies that have never been seen before.

The pictures were acquired by the HST's new Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3).

This highly sensitive camera can see starlight from far-off objects - light that has been "stretched" by the expanding Universe.

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Untold Levels Of Oil Sands Pollution On Athabasca River Confirmed

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Dec. 8, 2009) — After an exhaustive study of air and water pollution along the Athabasca River and its tributaries from Fort McMurray to Lake Athabasca, researchers say pollution levels have increased as a direct result of nearby oil sands operations.

University of Alberta biological sciences professor David Schindler was part of the team that conducted a long term air and water study and found high levels of Polycyclic Aromatic Compounds. PACs are a group of organic contaminants containing several known carcinogens, mutagens, and teratogens. The highest levels of PAC's were found within 50 kilometres of two major oil sands up graders.

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Humans Have Hidden Sensory System

From Live Science:

The human body may be equipped with a separate sensory system aside from the nerves that gives us the ability to touch and feel, according to a new study.

Most of us have millions of different types of nerve endings just beneath the skin that let us feel our surroundings. However, the once-hidden and recently discovered skin sense, found in two patients, is located throughout the blood vessels and sweat glands, and most of us don't even notice it's there.

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Rutan And Branson Make A Giant Leap For Space Tourism

From L.A. Times:

The intergalactic entrepreneurs unveil the VSS Enterprise, the world's first commercial passenger spacecraft. Tests are expected to start early next year, and flights could begin in 2011.

On a wind-tossed desert night, the dream of space pioneers Richard Branson and Burt Rutan to bring space flight to everyone -- at least everyone who can afford it -- drew closer to reality when the pair unveiled the world's first commercial passenger spacecraft.

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Using Rust To Capture CO2 From Coal Plants

Photo: Carbon trap: This laboratory device extracts energy from fossil fuels and produces an easy-to-capture stream of carbon dioxide. A larger version will be tested in a new 250-kilowatt power plant. Credit: Fanxing Li

From Technology Review:

Process could capture carbon more cheaply.

Researchers at Ohio State University are developing a novel process for generating electricity from coal that also promises to make capturing carbon-dioxide emissions cheaper. The work is being done with the help of a $5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy's new Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy. The technology has been proven in laboratories; researchers will use the new funds to demonstrate it in a 250-kilowatt, pilot-scale power plant.

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U.S. EPA Moves On Emissions As Congress Stalls

U.S. EPA moves on emissions as Congress stalls A Toyota Prius hybrid car drives past downtown Los Angeles on the 10 freeway, January 27, 2009. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

From Scientific American:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency formally declared that greenhouse gases endanger human health Monday, allowing President Barack Obama to show his commitment to act as a major climate change summit opened in Copenhagen.

The ruling by the EPA, widely expected after it issued a preliminary finding earlier this year, will allow the agency to regulate planet-warming gases even without legislation in the U.S. Congress.

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The Secrets Of Tutankhamun's Decaying Tomb

Scientists examining the flaking King Tut murals.

From The Independent:

Scientists mount inquiry into how millions of visitors to Egyptian boy king's chamber are destroying the wonder they came to see, reports Guy Adams.

Given the peace and quiet Tutankhamun enjoyed for three millennia, it has been a rough 87 years for him since he was discovered by Howard Carter in 1922. He was immediately relieved of his treasures; his tomb became one of the world's best-known tourist attractions, and finally, in 2005, his mummified corpse was hoiked out of its final resting-place to be studied by scientists.

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First Look at Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo

Image: VSS Enterprise stowed under the dual-hulled Virgin Mother Ship (VMS) Eve at the unveiling of the first SpaceShipTwo in the Mojave Desert (Virgin Galactic)

From Discovery News:

After two years of construction, Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo has been shown to the public for the first time. The first of a planned fleet of six SpaceShipTwo's has been named Virgin Space Ship (VSS) Enterprise.

WATCH VIDEO: Kasey-Dee Gardner sits down with one of Virgin Galactic's maiden space travelers and finds out his three biggest fears about this sub-orbital spaceflight.

Read more ....

MIT Plans To Rebuild Artificial Intelligence From The Ground Up

Artificial Intelligence: It's not what we think.

From Popular Science:

After 50 years and countless dead ends, incremental progress, and modest breakthroughs, artificial intelligence researchers are asking for a do-over. The $5 million Mind Machine Project (MMP), a patchwork team of two dozen academics, students and researchers, intends to go back to the discipline's beginnings, rebuilding the field from the ground up. With 20/20 hindsight, a few generations worth of experience, and better, faster technology, this time researchers in AI -- an ambiguous field to begin with -- plan to get things right.

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Optimism As Artificial Intelligence Pioneers Reunite

INTELLIGENCE John McCarthy, seated center, who ran the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, at a reunion last month with Bruce Buchanan to his left and Vic Scheinman on the right. Standing, from left, are Ralph Gorin, Whit Diffie, Dan Swinehart, Tony Hearn, Larry Tesler, Lynn Quam and Martin Frost. John Markoff

From The New York Times:

STANFORD, Calif. — The personal computer and the technologies that led to the Internet were largely invented in the 1960s and ’70s at three computer research laboratories next to the Stanford University campus.

One laboratory, Douglas Engelbart’s Augmentation Research Center, became known for the mouse; a second, Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center, developed the Alto, the first modern personal computer. But the third, the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, or SAIL, run by the computer scientist John McCarthy, gained less recognition.

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Draft Text Divides Climate Summit

From BBC:

Documents leaked at the UN climate summit reveal divisions between industrialised and developing countries over the shape of a possible new deal.

Campaigners say a draft text proposed by the Danish host government would disadvantage poorer nations.

It also sees everything coming under a single new deal, whereas an alternative text from developing countries wants an extension to the Kyoto Protocol.

Other blocs are expected to release their own texts in the next few days.

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New Project In Scramble To Save Vanishing Internet Links

From Times Online:

The Internet Archive is fighting to preserve shortened web links created by free online services that may be running out of money.

What if, the next time you went on the internet, you clicked on a link and nothing happened?

What if billions of internet links all stopped working at once?

As 2010 approaches, this is exactly the problem that the internet is facing. So great is the concern that the Internet Archive in the United States has already begun what some people are calling one of the most important repair jobs in the web’s history.

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Undocumented Volcano Contributed to Extremely Cold Decade From 1810-1819

SDSU Professor Jihong Cole-Dai and his colleagues studied ice cores from Antarctica and Greenland and found evidence of a previously undocumented volcanic eruption exactly 200 years ago that contributed to the record cold decade of 1810-1819. (Credit: Image courtesy of South Dakota State University)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Dec. 7, 2009) — South Dakota State University researchers and their colleagues elsewhere in America and in France have found compelling evidence of a previously undocumented large volcanic eruption that occurred exactly 200 years ago, in 1809. The discovery helps explain the record cold decade from 1810-1819.

Read more ....

Killer Petunias And Murderous Potatoes Revealed

Petunias have sticky hairs that trap insects. Credit: Stockxpert

From Live Science:

Petunias and potatoes may actually be carnivorous plants, scientists now suggest.

Indeed, carnivorous behavior may be far more widespread in plants than commonly thought — if we take a closer look, botanists said.

At least six different kinds of killer plants have been recognized since the time of Darwin, such as Venus flytraps, which snares insects between its jaw-like leaves, and pitcher plants, which capture victims in slippery pits. These plants apparently target animals to supplement their growth in harsh, nutrient-poor habitats.

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"Very Likely" The Warmest Decade On Record

Watch CBS News Videos Online

From CBS:

At Copenhagen Climate Summit, U.N. Weather Agency also says 2009 Probably Warmest Year in Some Areas.

(CBS/AP) This decade has very likely been the warmest in the historical record, and 2009 will probably end up as one of the warmest years, the U.N. weather agency announced Tuesday at the second day of the 192-nation climate conference in Copenhagen.

In some areas - parts of Africa, central Asia - this will probably be the warmest year, but overall 2009 "is likely to be about the fifth-warmest year on record," said Michel Jarraud, secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organization.

Read more ....

Google's Real-Time Search Ready To Challenge Bing

From PC World:

Google on Monday unveiled its real-time search capability, the latest salvo in its ongoing feature war with Bing. Microsoft's search engine already integrates real-time Twitter and Facebook results. Now, both search engines have released their initial real-time products, and there's a lot to like from the two major search brands. Let's take a look at how Bing's Twitter search matches up against Google's real-time search.

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Breakthrough Flu Drug Might Already Exist

Image: Structurally sound: The neuraminidase protein of the H1N1 virus is particularly adept at mutating to avoid attack. In this crystal structure, the mutations that allow it to resist Tamiflu and other antiviral drugs are visible as multicolored stick structures. Credit: Dani

From Technology Review:

Fragments of known drugs could lead to a more robust antiviral for H1N1 and other flu variants.

The flu virus is a wily target, constantly mutating to avoid attack from the immune system and from antiviral drugs like Tamiflu. But in research presented Sunday at the annual meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) in San Diego, scientists announced a new method for fighting pandemic influenzas such as H1N1 (swine) and H5N1 (avian).

Read more ....