NASA: Space Shuttles Could Fly Longer With Extra Funds

From Space.com:

WASHINGTON – The chief of NASA's space shuttle program said Tuesday that the agency could technically continue to fly its three aging orbiters beyond their planned 2010 retirement if ordered to do so by President Barack Obama and lawmakers. All it would take would be the extra funding needed to pay for it.

Space shuttle program manager John Shannon said NASA spends about $200 million a month on its space shuttle program. That's about $2.4 billion a year that would be required to keep the shuttle flying beyond their 2010 retirement date, he said.

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Did 'Midwife Molecule' Assemble First Life On Earth?

Forming a double helix prevents the RNA from going round in circles
(Image: Laguna Design/SPL)

From New Scientist:

The primordial soup that gave birth to life on EarthMovie Camera may have had an extra, previously unrecognised ingredient: a "molecular midwife" that played a crucial role in allowing the first large biomolecules to assemble from their building blocks.

The earliest life forms are thought by many to have been based not on DNA but on the closely related molecule RNA, because long strands of RNA can act as rudimentary enzymes. This would have allowed a primitive metabolism to develop before life forms made proteins for this purpose.

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New HIV Hiding Spot Revealed

From Science:

Powerful anti-HIV drugs have come tantalizingly close to eradicating the virus from people, driving the blood level of HIV so low that standard tests cannot detect it. But no one has been cured: the virus comes roaring back in everyone who stops taking the drugs. A new study has identified one of HIV's main hideaways, raising intriguing possibilities about how to remove it.

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Exposure To Letters A Or F Can Affect Test Performance

A new study finds that seeing the letter A before an exam can improve a student's exam result while exposure to the letter F may make a student more likely to fail. (Credit: iStockphoto/Stacey Newman)

From New Scientist:

Science Daily (Mar. 9, 2010) — Seeing the letter A before an exam can improve a student's exam result while exposure to the letter F may make a student more likely to fail.

The finding is published in the British Journal of Educational Psychology in March 2010.

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13 Crazy Earthquake Facts

From Live Science:

1. Earth has been more seismologically active in the past 15 years or so, says Stephen S. Gao, a geophysicist at Missouri University of Science & Technology. Not all seismologist agree, however.

2. San Francisco is moving toward Los Angeles at the rate of about 2 inches per year — the same pace as the growth of your fingernails — as the two sides of the San Andreas fault slip past one another. The cities will meet in several million years. However, this north-south movement also means that despite fears, California won't fall into the sea.

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DARPA Seeks Prosthetics Directly Controllable Through Brain Implants

Military Amputees Brian Frasure, a clinical prosthetist and world-class athlete, speaks to the audience on the last day of the Military Amputees Advances Skills Training workshop at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Sgt. Sara Wood/U.S. Army

From Popular Science:

Artificial limbs have advanced quite a bit since the days of the pirate peg leg, but not nearly enough for DARPA. The Pentagon agency has kicked off a new phase of its "Revolutionizing Prosthetics" program that sets the hefty goal of creating a fully-functional human limb directly controlled by the brain within five years, according to Wired's Danger Room.

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More States Propose Internet Sales Taxes

From CNET:

Jeremy Bray received an e-mail message this morning with an unwelcome surprise: Amazon.com told him it had canceled its affiliate program, which provides small payments for referring customers, for everyone in the state of Colorado.

The reason? A state law, which Democratic Gov. Bill Ritter signed last week, slaps onerous new restrictions on large out-of-state sellers like Amazon, which said it has no choice but to end its marketing program in response.

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How To Reboot Your Corpse

Photo: Could you go on ice now and be revived around 2050? iStockphoto

From Discovery News:

Thousands of bodies are already cryonically frozen, waiting for faster computers and medical advances that will undo their cause of death.

What is death? Over the centuries, the line dividing life and death has moved from the cessation first of breathing, then of the heartbeat, and finally of brain activity. But cryogenic methods first contemplated in science fiction may push the line even further. The idea is to freeze legally dead people in liquid nitrogen in the hope of regenerating them at some future date.

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Now This Is One Big Boat

The Oasis of the Seas off Fort Lauderdale, Fla., one recent evening.
Barbara P. Fernandez for The Wall Street Journal

What It Takes to Keep a City Afloat -- Wall Street Journal

In One Day, the World's Largest Cruise Ship Prepares to Set Sail, with 700 Tons of Supplies, 80,000 Beers, and One Bagpiper

How do you keep more than 6,300 people fed, housed and having the time of their life while floating in the middle of the ocean?

The Oasis of the Seas—the world's largest cruise ship—aims to accomplish that feat nearly every week. Almost five times as large as the Titanic, it has a population during its seven-day Caribbean sailings that is larger than many American small towns—more than 8,600 when it is fully booked and including staff. The Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. ship, which first set sail last December, is almost as long as five Airbus A380 airplanes, or about four football fields. It has 24 restaurants and its own leafy "Central Park." During the weeklong sailings, about 700 tons of new supplies are needed, all loaded aboard each Saturday. Guests consume about 20 gallons of maraschino cherries and 80,000 bottles of beer.

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Chile Earthquake Moved Entire City 10 Feet To The West

From Wired Science:

The magnitude 8.8 quake that struck near Maule, Chile, Feb. 27 moved the entire city of Concepcion 10 feet to the west.

Precise GPS measurements from before and after the earthquake, the fifth largest ever recorded by seismographs, show that the country’s capital, Santiago, moved 11 inches west. Even Buenos Aires, nearly 800 miles from the epicenter, shifted an inch. The image above uses red arrows to represent the relative direction and magnitude of the ground movement in the vicinity of the quake.

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'We Don't Know What 96% Of The Universe Is Made Of

Professor Brian Cox is helping us understand the solar system.
Photograph: Mike Hogan/Antonio Saba

From The Guardian:

Pop star-turned-physicist Brian Cox speaks about his new TV series on the solar system.

It's big space, isn't it?

It's 93 million miles to the Sun: that's a long way. It takes light eight minutes to do that. There are 100bn galaxies in the observable universe. If you take a 5p coin and hold it 75 feet away, the space in the sky it would obscure would hold 10,000 galaxies. It's mindblowing. I don't think anyone has a grasp of that other than to say: it's big.

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Eating Breakfast And Fatty Diet During Early Pregnancy Increases Chances Of Having A Boy

Eating a high-fat diet around conception increases the odds of giving birth to a boy, while low fat consumption with periods of long fasts favours girls Photo: PHOTOLIBRARY

From The Telegraph:

What women eat while they are in the early stages of pregnancy influences the sex and health of their unborn baby, new research suggests.

Women who eat a full breakfast and a high fat diet at the time of conception are more likely to have a boy, scientists claim.

A low fat diet with periods of long fasts favours girls, the researchers have found.

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The Shocking Truth About Tasers

The new long-range Taser rifle, which can immobilise a suspect for 20 seconds from 100ft away, with an X26 pistol mounted beneath it.

From The Daily Mail:

A commuter in a diabetic coma, an 89-year-old man and children as young as 12 - just some of the targets of British police armed with skin-piercing 50,000-volt Taser guns. As the Home Office investigates bringing an even more powerful rifle version to Britain, Jason Benetto reports on the slow creep of arms onto our streets.

The smartly dressed sales executive travelling on the number 96 bus across Leeds didn't notice his body descending into a state of severe hypoglycaemia.

He didn't have time to ask his fellow passengers for help, or press the bell. Instead he slumped back in his seat in a diabetic coma, his head lolling from side to side.

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New Treatments And Good Skin Care Helping Patients Control Acne And Rosacea

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Mar. 8, 2010) — Acne and rosacea are two seemingly different skin conditions that have one important thing in common: both are chronic and extremely common skin conditions. However, dermatologists recommend that with proper diagnosis, treatment and a healthy dose of good, old-fashioned skin care, acne and rosacea can be less of a nuisance for patients.

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iPhone Addictive, Survey Reveals

iPhone

From Live Science:

A new Stanford University survey confirms what many iPhone users may have long suspected: Apple's smartphone can be addicting.

The survey was administered to 200 students with iPhones, 70 percent of whom had owned their iPhones for less than a year.

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Light-Speed Computing One Step Closer

Until now, infrared germanium lasers required expensive cryogenic cooling systems to operate (Source: iStockphoto)

From ABC News (Australia):

A new infrared laser made from germanium that operates at room temperature could lead to powerful computer chips that operate at the speed of light, say US scientists.

The research, by scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, published in a forthcoming issue of Optics Letters

"Using a germanium laser as a light source, you could communicate at very high data rates at very low power," says Dr Jurgen Michel, who developed the new germanium laser.

"Eventually you could have the computing power of today's supercomputers inside a laptop."

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Video: Boeing 747 Withstands Simulated What-If Underwear Bomber Blast

From Popular Science:

The bomb blast was meant to gauge what might have happened if the Flight 253 suicide bomber succeeded.

An explosion aboard Flight 253 on Christmas Day would not have crippled the Boeing 747, according to a recent test that simulated the success of would-be bomber Umar Abdulmutallab. Only the bomber and passenger next to him would have died, the BBC reports.

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My Comment: I am sure that Al Qaeda is appreciative of this test .... it means that if they wish to do this in the future they will have to pack more explosive.

US Lifts Web Sanctions On Cuba, Iran And Sudan

From The Guardian:

The US yesterday said it will allow export of instant messaging, web browsing and other communications technology to Cuba, Iran and Sudan, in an effort to facilitate the flow of information and promote freedom of speech.

The move by the US Treasury department comes after Iranian anti-regime protesters used Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and other sites to great effect in the aftermath of the disputed June elections. In the months since, anti-regime forces have used the technology to organise demonstrations, spread news and communicate with the outside world, including western journalists largely barred from covering the protest movement.

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My Comment: Iran and Cuba have a tight lid on their citizens when it comes to having internet access, but if this can help spread the word .... I am all for it.

Amazon Is Building A Better Browser For Kindle

From Web Monkey:

Browsing the web on one of Amazon’s Kindle e-readers is like taking a step backwards in time. It’s clunky and has only limited support for web standards and bare-bones JavaScript capabilities.

But now Amazon may be looking to add browser engineers to the Kindle team, according to the job listings on the company’s website.

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Humans Driving Extinction Faster Than Species Can Evolve, Say Experts

The IUCN lists west African giraffes as an endangered species. Conservationists say the rate of new species is slower than diversity loss. Photograph: Graeme Robertson

From The Guardian:

Conservationists say rate of new species slower than diversity loss caused by the destruction of habitats and climate change.

For the first time since the dinosaurs disappeared, humans are driving animals and plants to extinction faster than new species can evolve, one of the world's experts on biodiversity has warned.

Conservation experts have already signalled that the world is in the grip of the "sixth great extinction" of species, driven by the destruction of natural habitats, hunting, the spread of alien predators and disease, and climate change.

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