Science News

[Duke of Buckingham]

Evening star goes black in rare celestial event
Astronomers position themselves to capture crucial measurements as Venus passes across the face of the sun

By Nadia Drake
Web edition : Tuesday, May 22nd, 2012

On June 5, skywatchers will have their last chance to glimpse a rare celestial spectacle, a “transit of Venus,” in which the planet passes directly between Earth and the sun. Venus will take six hours to march across the star’s face, appearing as an inky black dot in silhouette against the looming solar disk.

After that, the sun-shadowed Venusian outline will disappear until 2117. Because the planet’s orbit is slightly off-kilter, its solar transits come in pairs spaced eight years apart, with more than 100 years between pairs.

During the most recent transit pair of 1874 and 1882, observers around the world focused on triangulating the Earth-sun distance. They tried to time precisely when Venus entered and exited the sun’s disk, so they could calculate the size of the sun (a complicated endeavour, it turns out, since an optical effect that blurred the boundary between planet and sun muddied the timing measurements). The most recent transit happened in 2004 — only the sixth such performance seen through telescopes — and it revealed that large portions of the Venusian atmosphere are visible to Earthly observers.

Now, scientists are hoping not only to study Venus itself during the transit, but are using the crossing to inform observations of far-off exoplanets that similarly betray their presence by passing between their star and Earth. “Over 100 years ago, astronomers couldn’t have anticipated this transit question,” says astronomer Jay Pasachoff of Williams College in Williamstown, Mass., who will observe the transit from Hawaii.

Pasachoff and his colleagues are also deploying nine instruments to locations including Japan, Kazakhstan, and Norway, to study the sunlight filtered through Venus’ toxic clouds.

During the transit the sun will act as a giant light bulb, illuminating Venus’ upper atmosphere and providing information about temperature and aerosols across the planet. The orbiting Venus Express spacecraft can gather data only about isolated portions of the swirling sulfuric acid clouds, begging the question of how the shroud behaves globally. “As temperatures and winds are closely linked, those measurements will be fed into models that aim to explain the exotic dynamics of the Venusian atmosphere,” says astronomer Thomas Widemann of the Paris Observatory, who will join Venus Express team members in Svalbard, Norway to observe the transit against the midnight sun.

When Earth’s little sister passes before the solar backdrop, its planetprint produces the type of dimming that occurs when exoplanets periodically block their stars’ light. Astronomers have been able to study the atmospheres of Jupiter-sized exoplanets, but similar observations of terrestrial planets are still a thing of the future.

Gathering data about a known planet – Venus – will help ground those future observations, says astronomer Paolo Tanga at the Cote d’Azur Observatory in Nice, France. “Maybe one day we will be able to measure the same light that is filtered from the atmospheres of exoplanets – exo-Venuses and exo-Earths,” says Tanga, who will be in Arizona for the transit.

But such observations aren’t so simple. “Big mirrors and sensitive detectors are not good things to point at the sun,” explains planetary astronomer Heather Knutson of Caltech. Instead astronomers will use the Hubble Space Telescope to capture sunlight reflected off the face of the moon during the transit. In that light are signatures of chemical compounds in the Venusian atmosphere, Knutson says. “It’s the first time we can make this measurement for a truly terrestrial planet.”


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The shadow of Venus last passed across the sun in June 2004. After another transit by the planet this June 5 and 6, the spectacle will not recur until 2117. Credit: Andjelko Gilvar/ VT-2004 programme; ESO

[trigggl]

I have my solar shades eagerly anticipating staring at the sun. Hopefully the skies will be clear here unlike when the eclipse happened.

[Duke of Buckingham]

Nice Master trigggl. I hope you can see all that you wish. Now more news from science.



Blue light tells plants when to flower
Protein that marks day length also coordinates blooming genes

By Rebecca Cheung
Web edition : Friday, May 25th, 2012

As the days become longer in spring, plants know to bloom thanks to an interaction between several crucial proteins and blue light, scientists report in the May 25 Science. The new work describes the molecular mechanics that enables a light-sensitive protein to help switch on a suite of genes that control flowering. Understanding the biology of how plants regulate flowering could be useful for tweaking crops to start producing food earlier in the year.

“We might be able to grow three times or twice as much in a season,” says study coauthor Takato Imaizumi, a molecular biologist at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Generally, plants need to start blooming around the time when most pollinating insects will be buzzing around — such as in early spring — to maximize their chances of reproducing.Scientists have known that plants have higher levels of the blue-light sensitive protein FKF1 toward the end of the day and that the protein is important for tracking day length. It’s also been shown that another protein, called CO, plays a key role in turning on flowering genes.

In the new work, Imaizumi and his team looked at the flowering plant Arabidopsis thaliana. The researchers show that FKF1 helps stabilize the CO protein long enough to turn on flowering. Blue light — a particular wavelength of visible light that is common in sunlight that shines down at the end of a spring day, around the same time there is more FKF1 — enhances the interaction. FKF1 also lowers levels of a protein that normally serves as a brake on blooming.


http://www.sciencenews.org/view/download/id/340985/name/_
Day length helps plants determine when to bloom and is sensed by proteins tuned to blue-light wavelengths in the leaves of Arabidopisis thaliana. These proteins, in turn, help switch on genes that trigger flowering in springtime, a new study reveals. A. thaliana tissues where proteins that measure day length reside are shown stained in blue. Credit: © Science/AAAS

[Duke of Buckingham]

Climate Change Led to Collapse of Ancient Indus Civilization, Study Finds

ScienceDaily (May 28, 2012) — A new study combining the latest archaeological evidence with state-of-the-art geoscience technologies provides evidence that climate change was a key ingredient in the collapse of the great Indus or Harappan Civilization almost 4000 years ago. The study also resolves a long-standing debate over the source and fate of the Sarasvati, the sacred river of Hindu mythology.

Once extending more than 1 million square kilometers across the plains of the Indus River from the Arabian Sea to the Ganges, over what is now Pakistan, northwest India and eastern Afghanistan, the Indus civilization was the largest -- but least known -- of the first great urban cultures that also included Egypt and Mesopotamia. Like their contemporaries, the Harappans, named for one of their largest cities, lived next to rivers owing their livelihoods to the fertility of annually watered lands.

"We reconstructed the dynamic landscape of the plain where the Indus civilization developed 5200 years ago, built its cities, and slowly disintegrated between 3900 and 3000 years ago," said Liviu Giosan, a geologist with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and lead author of the study published the week of May 28 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "Until now, speculations abounded about the links between this mysterious ancient culture and its life-giving mighty rivers."

Today, numerous remains of the Harappan settlements are located in a vast desert region far from any flowing river. In contrast to Egypt and Mesopotamia, which have long been part of the Western classical canon, this amazingly complex culture in South Asia with a population that at its peak may have reached 10 percent of the world's inhabitants, was completely forgotten until 1920's. Since then, a flurry of archaeological research in Pakistan and India has uncovered a sophisticated urban culture with myriad internal trade routes and well-established sea links with Mesopotamia, standards for building construction, sanitation systems, arts and crafts, and a yet-to-be deciphered writing system.

"We considered that it is high time for a team of interdisciplinary scientists to contribute to the debate about the enigmatic fate of these people," added Giosan.

The research was conducted between 2003 and 2008 in Pakistan, from the coast of the Arabian Sea into the fertile irrigated valleys of Punjab and the northern Thar Desert. The international team included scientists from the U.S., U.K., Pakistan, India, and Romania with specialties in geology, geomorphology, archaeology, and mathematics. By combining satellite photos and topographic data collected by the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM), the researchers prepared and analyzed digital maps of landforms constructed by the Indus and neighboring rivers, which were then probed in the field by drilling, coring, and even manually-dug trenches. Collected samples were used to determine the sediments' origins, whether brought in and shaped by rivers or wind, and their age, in order to develop a chronology of landscape changes.

"Once we had this new information on the geological history, we could re-examine what we know about settlements, what crops people were planting and when, and how both agriculture and settlement patterns changed," said co-author Dorian Fuller, an archaeologist with University College London. "This brought new insights into the process of eastward population shift, the change towards many more small farming communities, and the decline of cities during late Harappan times."

The new study suggests that the decline in monsoon rains led to weakened river dynamics, and played a critical role both in the development and the collapse of the Harappan culture, which relied on river floods to fuel their agricultural surpluses.

From the new research, a compelling picture of 10,000 years of changing landscapes emerges. Before the plain was massively settled, the wild and forceful Indus and its tributaries flowing from the Himalaya cut valleys into their own deposits and left high "interfluvial" stretches of land between them. In the east, reliable monsoon rains sustained perennial rivers that crisscrossed the desert leaving behind their sedimentary deposits across a broad region.

Among the most striking features the researchers identified is a mounded plain, 10 to 20 meters high, over 100 kilometers wide, and running almost 1000 kilometers along the Indus, they call the "Indus mega-ridge," built by the river as it purged itself of sediment along its lower course.

"At this scale, nothing similar has ever been described in the geomorphological literature," said Giosan. "The mega-ridge is a surprising indicator of the stability of Indus plain landscape over the last four millennia. Remains of Harappan settlements still lie at the surface of the ridge, rather than being buried underground."

Mapped on top of the vast Indo-Gangetic Plain, the archaeological and geological data shows instead that settlements bloomed along the Indus from the coast to the hills fronting the Himalayas, as weakened monsoons and reduced run-off from the mountains tamed the wild Indus and its Himalayan tributaries enough to enable agriculture along their banks.

"The Harappans were an enterprising people taking advantage of a window of opportunity -- a kind of "Goldilocks civilization," said Giosan. "As monsoon drying subdued devastating floods, the land nearby the rivers -- still fed with water and rich silt -- was just right for agriculture. This lasted for almost 2,000 years, but continued aridification closed this favorable window in the end."

In another major finding, the researchers believe they have settled a long controversy about the fate of a mythical river, the Sarasvati. The Vedas, ancient Indian scriptures composed in Sanskrit over 3000 years ago, describe the region west of the Ganges as "the land of seven rivers." Easily recognizable are the Indus and its current tributaries, but the Sarasvati, portrayed as "surpassing in majesty and might all other waters" and "pure in her course from mountains to the ocean," was lost. Based on scriptural descriptions, it was believed that the Sarasvati was fed by perennial glaciers in the Himalayas. Today, the Ghaggar, an intermittent river that flows only during strong monsoons and dissipates into the desert along the dried course of Hakra valley, is thought to best approximate the location of the mythic Sarasvati, but its Himalayan origin and whether it was active during Vedic times remain controversial.

Archaeological evidence supports the Ghaggar-Hakra as the location of intensive settlement during Harappan times. The geological evidence -- sediments, topography -- shows that rivers were indeed sizable and highly active in this region, but most likely due to strong monsoons. There is no evidence of wide incised valleys like along the Indus and its tributaries and there is no cut-through, incised connections to either of the two nearby Himalayan-fed rivers of Sutlej and Yamuna. The new research argues that these crucial differences prove that the Sarasvati (Ghaggar-Hakra) was not Himalayan-fed, but a perennial monsoon-supported watercourse, and that aridification reduced it to short seasonal flows.

By 3900 years ago, their rivers drying, the Harappans had an escape route to the east toward the Ganges basin, where monsoon rains remained reliable.

"We can envision that this eastern shift involved a change to more localized forms of economy: smaller communities supported by local rain-fed farming and dwindling streams," said Fuller. "This may have produced smaller surpluses, and would not have supported large cities, but would have been reliable."

Such a system was not favorable for the Indus civilization, which had been built on bumper crop surpluses along the Indus and the Ghaggar-Hakra rivers in the earlier wetter era. This dispersal of population meant that there was no longer a concentration of workforce to support urbanism. "Thus cities collapsed, but smaller agricultural communities were sustainable and flourished. Many of the urban arts, such as writing, faded away, but agriculture continued and actually diversified," said Fuller.

"An amazing amount of archaeological work has been accumulating over the last decades, but it's never been linked properly to the evolution of the fluvial landscape. We now see landscape dynamics as the crucial link between climate change and people," said Giosan. "Today the Indus system feeds the largest irrigation scheme in the world, immobilizing the river in channels and behind dams. If the monsoon were to increase in a warming world, as some predict, catastrophic floods such as the humanitarian disaster of 2010, would turn the current irrigation system, designed for a tamer river, obsolete."


http://www.sciencedaily.com/images/2012/05/120528154943-large.jpg
Once extending more than 1 million square kilometers across the plains of the Indus River from the Arabian Sea to the Himalayas and the Ganges, over what is now Pakistan, northwest India and eastern Afghanistan, the Indus civilization was the largest—but least known—of the first great urban cultures that also included Egypt and Mesopotamia. Named for one of their largest cities, the Harappans relied on river floods to fuel their agricultural surpluses. Today, numerous remains of the Harappan settlements are located in a vast desert region far from any flowing river. (Credit: Liviu Giosan, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; Stefan Constantinescu, University of Bucharest; James P.M. Syvitski, University of Colorado.)

[Duke of Buckingham]

Milky Way will be hit head-on
Andromeda galaxy will smash directly into ours
By Alexandra Witze
Web edition : 4:26 pm

The monstrous Andromeda galaxy and the Milky Way are destined to hit head-on, not in a glancing blow, new observations from the Hubble Space Telescope show.

By precisely locating the same stars in Andromeda in 2002 and then again in 2010, astronomers at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore have calculated how the galaxy has moved against the background of deep space — confirming that the galaxy’s sideways motion is but a fraction of the speed at which it’s hurtling toward the Milky Way.

Andromeda is 2.5 million light-years away and closing in on the Milky Way at 250,000 miles per hour. The cosmic collision will transform the heavens into a hallucinogenic swirl 4 billion years from now. Calculations suggest that the sun will be tossed out during this galactic mash-up, to drift erratically in the eventual single, large galaxy that will coalesce from the two.

The work will appear in an upcoming Astrophysical Journal.


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Four billion years from now, a collision between the Milky Way (left) and Andromeda (right) galaxies will have ripped out streams of stars, warped the galactic shapes and turned Earth’s night sky into a dramatic swirl of starlight. Credit: NASA, ESA, Z. Levay and R. van der Marel/STScI, A. Mellinger

[Duke of Buckingham]

Quantum teleportation leaps forward
Two teams improve long-distance transmission of information about particles
By Alexandra Witze
Web edition : Thursday, May 31st, 2012

Quantum information has leapt through the air about 100 kilometers or more in two new experiments, farther and with greater fidelity than ever before. The research brings truly long-distance quantum communication networks, in which satellites could beam encrypted information around the globe, closer to reality.

Both studies involve quantum teleportation, which transports the quantum state of one particle onto another. This Star Trek–like feat is possible because of a phenomenon called entanglement, in which pairs of particles become linked in such a way that measuring a certain property of one instantly determines the same property for the other, even if separated by large distances.

In teleportation, two people — physicists call them Alice and Bob — share one each of a pair of entangled particles. Alice measures a property on her particle and sends Bob a note, through regular channels, about what she did. Bob then knows how to alter his own particle to match Alice’s. Bob’s particle then possesses the information that had been contained in Alice’s, which was obliterated by her measurement. Thus the information has been “teleported” from Alice’s lab to Bob’s.

Physicists first teleported quantum information in 1997 using a single pair of entangled photons, or particles of light. Since then researchers have slowly upped the ante, teleporting with larger groups of photons, over longer distances and sometimes using atoms as the entangled particles.

In 2007 Anton Zeilinger of the University of Vienna and his colleagues set a distance record by using a pair of entangled photons to transmit a piece of quantum information over 143 kilometers, between two of the Canary Islands. In new work, posted online May 17 at arXiv.org, the team reports a cleaner and more robust version of the same experiment using multiple entangled photons.

This time around, the scientists added a phase shift into the laser beams that made the final measurement cleaner and easier to pick out from background signals. The technique, called “active feed-forward,” is “an essential ingredient in future applications such as communication between quantum computers,” Zeilinger and his colleagues wrote. Team members declined interviews because the paper is not yet published.

“Our experiment confirms the maturity and applicability of the involved technologies in real-world scenarios, and is a milestone towards future satellite-based quantum teleportation,” they wrote.

In the second experiment, Chinese researchers entangled many photons together and teleported information 97 kilometers across a lake in China. That’s two orders of magnitude farther than any other multiphoton teleportation experiment, say Jian-Wei Pan of the University of Science and Technology of China in Shanghai and his colleagues. The work appeared online May 9 on arXiv.org.

Pan’s team also developed a way to track moving teleportation signals more accurately, which again could help make the final result more robust. “Our results show that even with high-loss ground to satellite uplink channels, quantum teleportation can be realized,” the scientists wrote.

Both Zeilinger and Pan next want to teleport information to a satellite in low-earth orbit. That distance is about three times that already accomplished in the Canary Islands, but because there are fewer air molecules to interfere with the signals at higher altitudes it may be easier to do.


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[Duke of Buckingham]

Plate Tectonics Cannot Explain Dynamics of Earth and Crust Formation More Than Three Billion Years Ago

ScienceDaily (June 1, 2012) — The current theory of continental drift provides a good model for understanding terrestrial processes through history. However, while plate tectonics is able to successfully shed light on processes up to 3 billion years ago, the theory isn't sufficient in explaining the dynamics of Earth and crust formation before that point and through to the earliest formation of planet, some 4.6 billion years ago. This is the conclusion of Tomas Naæraa of the Nordic Center for Earth Evolution at the Natural History Museum of Denmark, a part of the University of Copenhagen. His new doctoral dissertation has just been published by the journal Nature.

"Using radiometric dating, one can observe that Earth's oldest continents were created in geodynamic environments which were markedly different than current environments characterised by plate tectonics. Therefore, plate tectonics as we know it today is not a good model for understanding the processes at play during the earliest episodes of Earths's history, those beyond 3 billion years ago. There was another crust dynamic and crust formation that occurred under other processes," explains Tomas Næraa, who has been a PhD student at the Natural History Museum of Denmark and the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland -- GEUS.

Plate tectonics is a theory of continental drift and sea floor spreading. A wide range of phenomena from volcanism, earthquakes and undersea earthquakes (and pursuant tsunamis) to variations in climate and species development on Earth can be explained by the plate tectonics model, globally recognized during the 1960's. Tomas Næraa can now demonstrate that the half-century old model no longer suffices.

"Plate tectonics theory can be applied to about 3 billion years of the Earth's history. However, the Earth is older, up to 4.567 billion years old. We can now demonstrate that there has been a significant shift in the Earth's dynamics. Thus, the Earth, under the first third of its history, developed under conditions other than what can be explained using the plate tectonics model," explains Tomas Næraa. Tomas is currently employed as a project researcher at GEUS.

Central research topic for 30 years

Since 2006, the 40-year-old Tomas Næraa has conducted studies of rocks sourced in the 3.85 billion year-old bedrock of the Nuuk region in West Greenland. Using isotopes of the element hafnium (Hf), he has managed to shed light upon a research topic that has puzzled geologists around the world for 30 years. Næraa's instructor, Professor Minik Rosing of the Natural History Museum of Denmark considers Næraa's dissertation a seminal work:

"We have come to understand the context of the Earth's and continent's origins in an entirely new way. Climate and nutrient cycles which nourish all terrestrial organisms are driven by plate tectonics. So, if the Earth's crust formation was controlled and initiated by other factors, we need to find out what controlled climate and the environments in which life began and evolved 4 billion years ago. This fundamental understanding can be of great significance for the understanding of future climate change," says Minik Rosing, who adds that: "An enormous job waits ahead, and Næraas' dissertation is an epochal step."


http://www.sciencedaily.com/images/2012/06/120601120606-large.jpg
“Plate tectonics theory can be applied to about 3 billion years of the Earth’s history. However, the Earth is older, up to 4.567 billion years old. We can now demonstrate that there has been a significant shift in the Earth’s dynamics. Thus, the Earth, under the first third of its history, developed under conditions other than what can be explained using the plate tectonics model,” explains Tomas Næraa. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of Copenhagen)

[Duke of Buckingham]

Stone Age art gets animated
Ancient cave paintings depict moving animals
By Bruce Bower
Web edition : Friday, June 1st, 2012

Welcome to Animation Domination, Stone Age style. By about 30,000 years ago, Europeans were using cartoon-like techniques to give observers the impression that lions and other wild beasts were charging across cave walls, two French investigators find.

Ancient artists created graphic stories in caves and illusions of moving animals on rotating bone disks, say archaeologist Marc Azéma of the University of Toulouse–Le Mirail in France and Florent Rivère, an independent artist based in Foix, France.

“Stone Age artists intended to give life to their images,” Azéma says. “The majority of cave drawings show animals in action.”

Flickering torches passed over painted scenes would have heightened onlookers’ sense of seeing live-action stories, the researchers suggest in the June Antiquity.

Azéma and Rivère summarize their 20 years of research on Stone Age animation techniques, much of it previously published in French, in the new paper. They also describe for the first time examples of animation at two French caves, Chauvet and La Baume Latrone.

“Movement and action are indeed represented in cave art in different manners,” remarks archaeologist Jean Clottes, a rock-art specialist who now serves as honorary conservator general of heritage for the French Ministry of Culture. Clottes led a 1998 investigation of Chauvet’s 30,000-year-old cave paintings.

A 10-meter-long Chauvet painting represents a hunting story, Azéma proposes. The story begins by showing several lions, ears back and heads lowered, stalking prey. Mammoths and other animals appear nearby. In a second section of the painting, a pride of 16 lions, some drawn smaller than the rest to appear farther away, lunge toward fleeing bison.

Stone Age artists meant to depict animal movement in such scenes, Azéma says. An eight-legged bison at Chauvet, for example, resulted from superimposing two images of the creature in different stances to create the appearance of running.

In France, 53 figures in 12 caves superimpose two or more images to represent running, head tossing and tail shaking. At the famous Lascaux Cave, 20 painted animals display multiple heads, legs or tails.

A carving on an animal bone from another Stone Age cave in France depicts three freeze-frame images of a running lion, another way to represent motion.

Ancient Europeans also invented a kind of animation toy, the researchers suggest. Sites in France and Spain have yielded stone and bone disks, typically with center holes, showing opposing images of sitting and standing animals.

In experiments conducted since 2007, Rivère has reproduced these engraved disks and looped strands of animal tendon through the center holes. By twisting these strands, the disks rotate back and forth rapidly enough to make animals appear to be sitting down and standing up.

That’s the principle behind the thaumatrope, a device invented (or perhaps reinvented) in 1825. Two strings attached to the ends of a disk or card with an image on each side — say, a vase opposite a bouquet of flowers — were twirled between the fingers, so that the rotating pictures appeared to combine into a single image, such as flowers in a vase.

Thaumatropes are considered precursors of movie cameras and animation.


http://www.sciencenews.org/view/download/id/341205/name/Legging_It_Out
Ancient artists at France's Chauvet Cave superimposed drawings of two bison to create an eight-legged beast intended to depict trotting or running, two researchers say. Credit: M. Azema, J. Clottes, Chauvet Cave scientific team

[Duke of Buckingham]

How a mosquito survives a raindrop hit
Lightweight insects can ride water droplets, as long as they separate in time

By Susan Milius
Web edition : Monday, June 4th, 2012

A raindrop hitting a mosquito in flight is like a midair collision between a human and a bus. Except that the mosquito survives.

New experiments show how the insect’s light weight works in its favor, says engineer David Hu of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. In essence, the (relatively) huge, fast drop doesn’t transfer much of its momentum to a little wisp of an insect. Instead the falling droplet sweeps the insect along on the downward plunge. As Hu puts it, the mosquito “just rides the drop.”

The trick is breaking away from that drop before it and the insect splash into the ground. Mosquitoes that separate themselves in time easily survive a raindrop strike, Hu and his colleagues report online June 4 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Such studies help reveal how animals evolved to take advantage of flight, says biologist Tyson Hedrick of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Mosquito tricks may also inspire engineers designing swarms of tiny flying robots, or interest physicists and mathematicians studying complex fluid dynamics at this scale.

Plenty of lab work has investigated how flying animals recover from disturbances, but there’s little work on raindrops because those collisions are very hard to study, Hu says. To mimic raindrop speed of about 9 meters per second, he and his colleagues tried dripping water off the third floor of a building toward ground-level mosquitoes. “It’s the worst game of darts you can imagine,” he says. “You have no hope of hitting them.”

Finally, Hu sprayed streams of water from a pump at caged lab mosquitoes and then refined the process by spraying mosquito-sized beads. His team found that mosquitoes hit with water survived using an insect version of tai chi: Move with the blow instead of resisting it. A raindrop can reach 50 times the mass of a mosquito, and after colliding, “the mosquito becomes a stowaway,” Hu says.

The wild ride comes with danger. Mosquitoes hitchhiking on water experience acceleration 100 to 300 times the force of Earth’s gravity, the researchers found. The previous champs for surviving acceleration had been jumping fleas, at a mere 130 times Earth’s gravity.

Such studies suggest insects are making tradeoffs, Hedrick says. Mosquitoes’ small mass might allow them fly through raindrops but leave them more vulnerable to other menaces, such as wind. Larger and heavier horseflies “should have no problem with wind but might be more disturbed by raindrop impacts,” he says.

Scientists who work in the field know how readily mosquitoes can survive wet weather. “I’ve worked in the field many rainy nights,” says entomologist Nathan Burkett-Cadena of the University of South Florida in Tampa, “and received zero respite from mosquitoes during even heavy rains.”

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/download/id/341281/name/_
A mosquito survives being walloped by a raindrop by riding along on its descent to the ground, scientists have found. Credit: Courtesy Tim Nowack, Andrew Dickerson and David Hu/Georgia Tech

http://vimeo.com/43408617
Water drops slamming into insects can knock them partly or completely off course, this laboratory video shows.

Credit: Courtesy Andrew Dickerson and David Hu/Georgia Tech

[Duke of Buckingham]

Some newfound planets are something else
Re-evaluation suggests one-third of hot giant orbs are misclassified

By Nadia Drake
Web edition : Thursday, June 7th, 2012

When the Kepler spacecraft finds a giant planet closely orbiting a star, there’s a one in three chance that it’s not really a planet at all.

At least, that’s the case according to a new study that put some of Kepler’s thousands of candidate planets to the test using a complementary method for discovering celestial objects in stellar orbits. The results, posted June 5 on arXiv.org, suggest that 35 percent of candidate giants snuggled close to bright stars are impostors, known in the planet-hunting business as false-positives.

“Estimating the Kepler false-positive rate is one of the most burning questions in this field,” says astronomer Jean-Michel Désert of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, who has performed similar calculations for smaller planets.

Estimates by Désert and others place the false-positive rate at less than 10 percent, which isn’t necessarily contradictory given the different target populations of various research efforts.

“We cannot say anything about smaller planets,” says Alexandre Santerne, a graduate student at the University of Aix-Marseille in France and coauthor of the arXiv.org paper. “It’s just for giant planets close-in.”

Kepler looks for the periodic dimming of starlight produced by planets passing between Earth and their home stars near the constellation Cygnus. But not everything that darkens a star is a planet; smaller stars, for example, might masquerade as a planet. Instead of detecting periodic twinkles, Santerne and his colleagues looked for gyrations in host stars, the wiggles produced by orbiting planets’ gravitational tugs. Since heavy, nearby planets yank more noticeably on their stars, the team focused on giant candidates with orbits of 25 days or less.

Out of more than 2,300 possible planets, only 46 fell into that category. Eleven of these were already known planets. Santerne’s team confirmed nine more.

The remaining 26 candidates included 13 unknowns, two failed brown dwarf stars, and 11 members of binary star systems. “These can mimic clearly a planetary transit event,” says Santerne. “That’s why it’s so important to distinguish these things when you want to study planets and transits from the Kepler mission.”

After distributing the unknowns according to the observed ratios of objects, the team arrived at the 35 percent false-positive rate.

That number might seem high when compared with previous estimates, but scientists don’t consider it a serious flaw for Kepler. “This false-positive percentage is very low compared to all other transit programs,” says study coauthor and astronomer Claire Moutou, also at the University of Aix-Marseille.

The authors point to a discrepancy between their result and a 2011 study done by Timothy Morton and John Johnson at Caltech, who found a false positive rate closer to 5 percent. But comparisons between the two studies might not be so simple, Morton says, noting that the two groups calculated different things. Instead of looking at impostor rates in a specific population of planets, Morton determined the probability that any candidate — plucked from the sea of twinkling candidates — was real. He also excluded data from obvious impostors.

“Everything here is sort of a game of probabilities,” Morton says, pointing to the abundance of candidates. “It will be impossible to confirm them all with observations.”

As for current estimates of billions and billions of planets in the Milky Way, Moutou says those numbers are still valid. “Short period transiting planets are exotic objects, we don’t expect them to be everywhere,” she says. “The potential billion planets are more expected to be small, long-period planets. We didn’t kill those ones, fortunately.”


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[Duke of Buckingham]

Invasive mite worsens honeybee viruses
Parasite’s move into Hawaiian islands lets obscure pathogen go big and bad

By Susan Milius
Web edition : Friday, June 8th, 2012

A mite that parasitizes honeybees can turn formerly small-time, local virus strains into widespread, dominant hazards.

As the Varroa destructor mite infiltrated Hawaiian bee colonies from 2007 to 2010, viral infection strength in local bees soared a million-fold, and a once-obscure but nasty strain of deformed wing virus surged to prominence. Even when beekeepers beat back the mite, the newly prominent virus remained abundant. Mite damage plus the virus shorten the lives of bees and can destroy colonies.

So far Hawaiian beekeepers have not reported the swifter, specific malady called colony collapse disorder (SN: 7/28/2007, p. 56), but the ability of the mite — now spreading globally — to reshape viral threats is worrisome, say Stephen J. Martin of the University of Sheffield in England and his colleagues in the June 8 Science.


http://www.sciencenews.org/view/download/id/341366/name/_
Honeybees in Hawaii, like the one shown on the native Hawaiian tree "Ohi'a," face worsening risks from deformed wing virus as the Varroa destructor mite spreads across the islands. Credit: Courtesy of Ethel M. Villalobos

[Duke of Buckingham]

Ancient volcanoes destroyed ozone
Eruptions gave off gas that eroded the protective atmospheric layer
By Alexandra Witze
Web edition : Tuesday, June 12th, 2012

SELFOSS, Iceland — Geoscientists have exposed another assault on Earth’s protective ozone layer — not by manufactured chemicals, but by gas ejected in the blasts of huge volcanic eruptions.

A new study shows that volcanic rocks in Nicaragua contain bromine, an element known for speeding ozone’s destruction in the upper atmosphere. When magma erupted to form those rocks, scientists say, it also released huge amounts of bromine into the air — enough to destroy large parts of the ozone layer for several years.

“We have to be aware of this,” says Kirstin Krüger, a meteorologist at the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences at the University of Kiel (GEOMAR) in Germany. “Large-scale tropical eruptions have the potential to deplete ozone on a big scale.”

Krüger presented the work, led by GEOMAR volcanologist Steffen Kutterolf, on June 12 at an American Geophysical Union conference on volcanism and the atmosphere.

The scientists studied rocks formed during 13 big Central American eruptions over the past 70,000 years. Volcanoes at tropical latitudes are good at injecting the stuff they erupt into the stratosphere, some 16 kilometers up. When elements such as chlorine and bromine reach that high, they help trigger a series of reactions in which ozone’s three oxygen atoms break apart and recombine with other atoms.

Researchers have previously measured chlorine coming from volcanoes, such as 1991’s Mount Pinatubo eruption in the Philippines, and watched it destroy ozone overhead. But the new work is the first to pin down bromine in such detail. The element is 60 times as efficient as chlorine at destroying ozone, Krüger says.

Kutterolf and his colleagues collected thousands of rock samples both on and offshore, then analyzed bromine concentrations in tiny glass bubbles that formed within the rocks when the magma erupted out of the volcano. The scientists found enough bromine in the bubbles to suggest that 4,000 to 600,000 tons of bromine came out per eruption.

Enough bromine would have made it to the stratosphere to create at least double the ozone-destroying potential seen at the highest modern-day levels, Krüger says. It would have taken three to six years for the chemicals to clear out so that ozone could begin to recover.

It’s still not clear what makes a particular eruption rich in bromine, or whether the bromine would have destroyed ozone locally or globally once aloft.

About three-quarters of atmospheric bromine comes from human-made sources like chlorofluorocarbon chemicals, used in refrigeration and other devices. One-quarter is natural, produced by the sea or by volcanoes. “Wherever it comes from, it will destroy the ozone,” Krüger says. Most human-made ozone-depleting chemicals were phased out by the 1987 Montreal Protocol.

The new study is an important step in better quantifying bromine from present-day eruptions, says Tamsin Mather, a volcanologist at the University of Oxford in England. “If we can apply this to other volcanoes,” she says, “we can really get a handle on how much bromine is coming out.”


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Bromine from big volcanic eruptions, like the one that created the Apoyo Caldera in Nicaragua 24,500 years ago, would have destroyed the planet’s protective ozone for years at a stretch. Credit: Steffen Kutterolf/GEOMAR

[zombie67]

Ancient volcanoes destroyed ozone
Eruptions gave off gas that eroded the protective atmospheric layer
By Alexandra Witze

This is obviously a load of crap. We all know that man is the sole source of all things harmful to the environment. Without man, everything would be rainbows and unicorns.

[Crazybob]

920

[Duke of Buckingham]

This is obviously a load of crap. We all know that man is the sole source of all things harmful to the environment. Without man, everything would be rainbows and unicorns.

I don't think so Z, no unicorns and some rare rainbows. The world is ruled by the nature of the Universe that we can understand is a very violent place for life.

We have enough proofs, that in the pass, the world lived some several mass extictions, long before man was around. I have a brief history of the major extinctions:

In a landmark paper published in 1982, Jack Sepkoski and David M. Raup identified five mass extinctions. They were originally identified as outliers to a general trend of decreasing extinction rates during the Phanerozoic, but as more stringent statistical tests have been applied to the accumulating data, the "Big Five" cannot be so clearly defined, but rather appear to represent the largest (or some of the largest) of a relatively smooth continuum of extinction events.

1 - Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event (End Cretaceous, K-T extinction, or K-Pg extinction): 65.5 Ma at the Cretaceous.Maastrichtian-Paleogene.Danian transition interval. The K–T event is now officially called the Cretaceous–Paleogene (or K–Pg) extinction event in place of Cretaceous-Tertiary. About 17% of all families, 50% of all genera and 75% of species became extinct. In the seas it reduced the percentage of sessile animals to about 33%. The majority of non-avian dinosaurs became extinct during that time. The boundary event was severe with a significant amount of variability in the rate of extinction between and among different clades. Mammals and birds emerged as dominant land vertebrates in the age of new life.
2 - Triassic–Jurassic extinction event (End Triassic): 205 Ma at the Triassic-Jurassic transition. About 23% of all families and 48% of all genera (20% of marine families and 55% of marine genera) went extinct. Most non-dinosaurian archosaurs, most therapsids, and most of the large amphibians were eliminated, leaving dinosaurs with little terrestrial competition. Non-dinosaurian archosaurs continued to dominate aquatic environments, while non-archosaurian diapsids continued to dominate marine environments. The Temnospondyl lineage of large amphibians also survived until the Cretaceous in Australia (e.g., Koolasuchus).
3 - Permian–Triassic extinction event (End Permian): 251 Ma at the Permian-Triassic transition. Earth's largest extinction killed 57% of all families and 83% of all genera (53% of marine families, 84% of marine genera, about 96% of all marine species and an estimated 70% of land species) including insects. The evidence of plants is less clear, but new taxa became dominant after the extinction. The "Great Dying" had enormous evolutionary significance: on land, it ended the primacy of mammal-like reptiles. The recovery of vertebrates took 30 million years, but the vacant niches created the opportunity for archosaurs to become ascendant. In the seas, the percentage of animals that were sessile dropped from 67% to 50%. The whole late Permian was a difficult time for at least marine life, even before the "Great Dying".
4 - Late Devonian extinction: 375–360 Ma near the Devonian-Carboniferous transition. At the end of the Frasnian Age in the later part(s) of the Devonian Period, a prolonged series of extinctions eliminated about 19% of all families, 50% of all genera and 70% of all species. This extinction event lasted perhaps as long as 20 Ma, and there is evidence for a series of extinction pulses within this period.
5 - Ordovician–Silurian extinction event (End Ordovician or O-S): 450–440 Ma at the Ordovician-Silurian transition. Two events occurred that killed off 27% of all families and 57% of all genera. Together they are ranked by many scientists as the second largest of the five major extinctions in Earth's history in terms of percentage of genera that went extinct.

Despite the popularization of these five events, there is no fine line separating them from other extinction events; indeed, using different methods of calculating an extinction's impact can lead to other events featuring in the top five.

The older the fossil record gets, the more difficult it is to read. This is because:

Older fossils are harder to find because they are usually buried at a considerable depth in the rock.
Dating older fossils is more difficult.
Productive fossil beds are researched more than unproductive ones, therefore leaving certain periods unresearched.
Prehistoric environmental disturbances can disturb the deposition process.
The preservation of fossils varies on land, but marine fossils tend to be better preserved than their sought after land-based counterparts.

It has been suggested that the apparent variations in marine biodiversity may actually be an artifact, with abundance estimates directly related to quantity of rock available for sampling from different time periods. However, statistical analysis shows that this can only account for 50% of the observed pattern, and other evidence (such as fungal spikes)[clarification needed] provides reassurance that most widely accepted extinction events are indeed real. A quantification of the rock exposure of Western Europe does indicate that many of the minor events for which a biological explanation has been sought are most readily explained by sampling bias.

And we had some lesser extinctions also:

Quaternary extinction event 50 ka to now
Neogene 23.03 Middle Miocene disruption 14.5 Ma Nördlinger Ries bolide impact? Volcanoes in African Rift Valley
Eocene–Oligocene extinction event 33.9 Ma Volcanoes? Chesapeake Bay and Popigai crater bolide impacts?
Cretaceous 145.5 Aptian extinction 117 Ma Rahjamal Traps volcanism episode in Bengal?
End-Jurassic extinction 145.5 Ma
Jurassic 199.6 Toarcian turnover 183 Ma
Permian 299 Olson's Extinction 270 Ma
Carboniferous 359.2 Carboniferous Rainforest Collapse 318 Ma Climate change
End Silurian 416 Ma
Lau event 420 Ma
Mulde event 424 Ma Global drop in sea level?
Silurian 443.7 Ireviken event 428 Ma Deep-ocean anoxia?
Cambrian–Ordovician extinction event 488 Ma Glaciation? Depletion of oxygen in marine waters?
Dresbachian 502 Ma
Cambrian 542 End Botomian extinction event 517 Ma
Precambrian 4567.17 End-Ediacaran extinction 542 Ma Ocean anoxia?

So as you can see, man it is not the only danger to life Z. We must have some protection to keep the life going but we know that for shure or wouldn't talk about extinctions on a dayly basis.

Some say the next will come on 21st December of this year. I say they didn't read the Maia, Aztecs and Inca hystory as they should. They were expecting their gods to come back, not the destruction of the world. The only surprise that could happen on that day was the ETs showing up in some places. The Maya codices are listed in here with a brief description of each but a good search and some studies could help the understanding of this fascinating culture.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_codices

[Duke of Buckingham]

Dark matter filament illuminated
Astronomers visualize one connection in a shadowy cosmic network
By Devin Powell
Web edition : 7:20 am

An invisible web thought to span the cosmos has now revealed one of its strands.

That thread is spun of dark matter and connects two titanic clusters of galaxies, some of the most massive objects in the universe. Its discovery supports the idea that galaxy clusters grow at the intersections of such filaments, and its heft backs the claim that filaments hide more than half of all matter.

“Filaments of dark matter have never been seen before,” says Jörg Dietrich, an astronomer at the University Observatory Munich in Germany, whose team reports the finding online July 4 in Nature. “For the first time, we successfully mapped one.”

As the name suggests, dark matter is difficult to detect because it gives off no light or other radiation. The material’s presence is typically inferred by measuring how its gravitational pull changes the motions of stars and galaxies.

But look closely, and the shy matter can provide more direct evidence of its presence. Its gravity warps the fabric of spacetime and bends light passing nearby, so that more distant galaxies beyond the intervening dark matter appear distorted.

This lensing has already revealed dense clouds of dark matter kicked out of colliding galaxies. (SN Online: 3/06/12; SN: 8/26/06, p. 131) Filaments should likewise produce the fun house–like distortion. But since the dark matter in such structures isn’t as dense as the clouds ejected by galactic smashups, the effect is much weaker.

“With current telescopes … it’s very difficult to detect a filament,” says Lindsay King, an astrophysicist at the University of Texas at Dallas.

To improve the odds of seeing one, Dietrich and colleagues focused on Abell 222/223, a pair of galaxy clusters that are close together and thus should be connected by a relatively massive filament. X-ray observations had already revealed a ribbon of hot gas between the clusters — the first hint of a dark matter link. Using the Subaru telescope in Hawaii, the researchers looked at light from distant galaxies passing through the space between the clusters.

Sure enough, the distorted shapes of the galaxies revealed a thick cord of matter with a mass comparable to that of a small galaxy cluster. Gas can account for only about 9 percent of that mass. Dark matter seems to make up the rest.

The new study won’t resolve the ongoing debate over the composition of dark matter; several candidate ingredients have been proposed. But understanding the structure of filaments could help to reveal their role in building galaxy clusters by funneling in gas or whole galaxies.

“We’re starting to connect the dots,” says Meghan Gray, an astronomer at the University of Nottingham in England who wasn’t involved in the study. “In the future I expect we will extend this and see more of these filaments.”


http://www.sciencenews.org/view/download/id/341984/name/_.jpg
Contour lines outline an invisible dark matter filament connecting the galaxy clusters Abell 222 (bottom) and Abell 223 (top) in the night sky. The cosmic thread revealed itself by distorting light coming from distant galaxies. Credit: J. Dietrich/University Observatory Munich

[Duke of Buckingham]

Space trek may help worms live long
Nematodes that orbited Earth had reduced signs of aging

By Tina Hesman Saey
Web edition : Thursday, July 5th, 2012

In space they can barely see you age, at least if you’re a worm.

Tiny, transparent nematodes that spent 11 days on the International Space Station — the equivalent of about 16 years for a person — appeared to age much more slowly than earthbound worms, Yoko Honda of the Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Gerontology and colleagues report online July 5 in Scientific Reports.

The result is the opposite of what some scientists expected, based on experience with human spaceflight and studies of other animals. Mammals, including people, in the microgravity of space are under physiological stress, says D. Marshall Porterfield, director of NASA’s Space Life and Physical Sciences Research and Applications Division in Greenbelt, Md. In low gravity, muscles atrophy and aging accelerates.

While the space station worms, from the species Caenorhabditis elegans, may have been under stress, they didn’t have those side effects. Their muscles did not degrade, and clumps of aging-related proteins known as Q35 aggregates did not build up in them as much as in worms on the ground, indicating that worms don’t age as fast in space as on Earth. Worms that visited the space station were frozen immediately after returning to Earth, so the researchers weren’t able to test whether time in space enabled the critters to live longer.

The researchers also discovered that relative to ground-based nematodes, the space-faring worms had lower activity of 199 genes, including 11 genes involved in transmitting information through the nervous or endocrine systems. For seven of the 11 genes, mutations that lowered the genes’ activity also caused ground-based worms in a separate experiment to live longer.

Reduced activity of three of the life-extending genes — called gar-3, cha-1 and shk-1 — also lowered the number of Q35 clumps that built up in aging worms. Those genes encode proteins that are produced in the nervous system, and two of them also encode proteins that are made in muscles.

Lowering the levels of those proteins during spaceflight might affect how worms perceive their environment, leading the nematodes to reduce their metabolism and extend their life spans, says Catharine Conley, NASA’s planetary protection officer. Conley helped develop the substance that worms grow in while in space.

Studying worms in space may help scientists learn more about how low gravity affects organisms, regardless of the impact on life span, Porterfield says. “It doesn’t really matter what the outcome is if we learn about the biophysical environment,” he says. That knowledge may help engineers design ways of better protecting the health of astronauts.


http://www.sciencenews.org/view/download/id/342085/name/TELL-TALE_SIGN_OF_AGING
Tiny worms that spent time in space (like the one shown here) have fewer clumps of aging-related proteins (green) than worms that stayed on the ground. That could mean that worms live longer in microgravity. Credit: Richard Morimoto/Northwestern Univ.

[Duke of Buckingham]

Not your typical pterosaur
Beautifully preserved fossil displays novel wing feature
By Janet Raloff
Web edition : Monday, July 9th, 2012

For a decade, scientists largely ignored a fossil of a juvenile, late-Jurassic flying reptile that’s just 14 centimeters long. It appeared to be just another of some 120 specimens of the genus Rhamphorhynchus excavated at Germany’s famed Solnhofen limestone beds.

Closer inspection now shows it’s something new, David Hone of the University of Bristol in England and his colleagues report July 5 in PLoS ONE. They’re creating a genus dubbed Bellubrunnus, or Brunn beauty, to honor the German quarry where it was unearthed.

The tiny flyer has fewer teeth and a more flexible tail than other Rhamphorhynchus-like pterosaurs. And the outermost bone of each wing curves outward, distinguishing it from any known flying vertebrate alive or extinct. This would have made flying somewhat harder, Hone explains, but afforded somewhat improved maneuverability to this animal, which had a perhaps meter-wide wingspan at maturity.


http://www.sciencenews.org/view/download/id/342171/name/_
This 14-centimeter-long fossil of a flying reptile has been given its own genus, dubbed Bellubrunnus, to acknowledge the curved wings that distinguish it from other known flying vertebrates. Credit: D.W.E. Hone

[Duke of Buckingham]

Moon patterns explained
Electric fields enveloping magnetic bubbles create lunar swirls
By Meghan Rosen
Web edition : Wednesday, July 11th, 2012

Scientists have charged up an old moon mystery. New research suggests that swirling designs on the dusty lunar surface might be the product of electric fields generated by pockets of magnetic bubbles.

“People have been looking at these strange, mysterious structures since the invention of the telescope,” says physicist Ruth Bamford of the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Didcot, England. “Now we know exactly how they are made.”

The milky patterns stand out like pale flesh against darkly tanned skin. It’s as if you used sunblock to paint whorls on your arm and then spent the day outside, says planetary geologist Georgiana Kramer of the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston. The sun would color everything but the protected skin, leaving the whorls white.

Scientists have long suspected that weak magnetic fields near the moon’s surface might shape the looping patterns. The moon doesn’t have a dynamo-driven magnetic field like Earth’s, but researchers have found patchy magnetic bubbles scattered across the lunar crust.


http://www.sciencenews.org/view/download/id/342188/name/_
A stream of charged particles (glowing purple) flows around a magnet in a solar wind tunnel experiment. Credit: Courtesy of R. Bamford

Data from the Apollo missions fed a 1970s theory that the moon’s magnetic bubbles act like a solar wind sunblock. The solar wind — a steady stream of charged particles from the sun — constantly buffets the moon, turning pale lunar dust dark. But magnetic bubbles might protect the moon’s crust, keeping silvery soil fresh and young-looking.

The mystery, Bamford says, was how such puny fields can deflect the raging solar wind. The answer is the bubbles’ electric field, she and her colleagues suggest in an upcoming Physical Review Letters.

Usually, the solar wind’s charged particles travel together. But when the wind smacks into the moon’s magnetic bubbles, flimsy negatively charged particles skirt around the bubble and hefty positive ones try to penetrate it. Splitting apart these oppositely charged particles whips up a heavy-duty electric field.

Bamford’s team created a scaled-down laboratory version to find out if man-made magnetic bubbles could also deflect rushing rivers of particles.

The researchers used a device called a solar wind tunnel to shoot a jet of blazing particles down a tube. The searing stream toasted any object in its path, except, the team discovered, a magnet. The scientists showed that a thin electric field formed around the magnet, shielding it — and anything behind it — from the scorching flow. “It works incredibly well,” Bamford says. Even a marshmallow placed in the magnet’s wake would escape melting, she says.

And if a tiny magnet — only slightly larger than an eraser tip — could make a protective electric skin, the moon’s much larger magnetic bubbles might also be able to.

“The work ties a bunch of ideas together,” says planetary scientist Ian Garrick-Bethell of the University of California, Santa Cruz. “And the lab model is really cool.”


http://www.sciencenews.org/view/download/id/342187/name/_
Bright white designs called lunar swirls stretch across about 60 kilometers of the moon’s surface. Credit: NASA

[Duke of Buckingham]

Top airports for spreading germs IDed
Major hubs with far-flung flights are most efficient
By Rachel Ehrenberg
Web edition : Friday, July 27th, 2012

An infectious disease that really wants to go global would do well boarding planes at JFK or LAX, according to a new computer simulation that ranks U.S. airports by their potential to kick-start an epidemic.

The simulation could help public health officials decide how and where to allocate resources such as vaccinations in the early days of an outbreak, says Ruben Juanes of MIT, who describes the analysis online July 19 in PLOS ONE.

Many simulations of how epidemics spread focus on the final outcome, such as how many people would ultimately be infected. This new work is mostly concerned with how the location of an initial outbreak affects the subsequent pandemic, says complex systems scientist Dirk Brockmann of Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill.

Surprisingly, the total number of passengers moving through an airport isn’t the deciding factor. By that measure, Atlanta’s airport — the busiest in the country — would be ideal for spreading germs. What’s key is how connected the airport is to other well-connected airports.

“You are a good spreader if your neighbors are good spreaders,” Juanes says. “That’s what’s really essential.”

Once an epidemic is well under way, other factors such as how the germ moves from one person to another seem to be most important, he says.

Juanes and his colleagues used air travel data on all flights originating or landing in the U.S. from January 2007 to July 2010 to construct an air transportation network made up of 1,833 airports and roughly 50,000 connections. The researchers also extracted airport waiting times from passenger itineraries. Then they developed a computer program that incorporated information on people’s travel patterns and how infectious diseases move from person to person.

The program ranks 40 major U.S. airports for how influential they are at spreading a disease originating in their home city. That New York City’s John F. Kennedy International Airport came in first and Los Angeles International was second isn’t so surprising. But third on the list is Honolulu International, which is only the 25th busiest airport in the country. Yet Honolulu is supremely positioned for sending sick people to myriad far-flung destinations. The airport is well-connected to massive hubs, it sends and receives travelers from both East and West, and its flight schedule is dominated by long-range routes.

Atlanta’s airport, on the other hand, ranked eighth. While it’s very busy in terms of number of passengers, most of the travel to and from Atlanta is regional. The flights in and out are on the shorter side and are to places that aren’t well connected, notes Juanes.

For passengers in the Washington, D.C., area, traveling via Dulles really helps germs out; it ranked seventh most influential. Baltimore’s airport ranked 23rd and Reagan National 30th.


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U.S. airports that are hubs and are connected to lots of other hubs, such as Honolulu International and JFK, excel at spreading infectious diseases that originate in the airport’s home city. Credit: Christos Nicolaides/MIT

[Duke of Buckingham]

Curiosity readies for dramatic entrance
Mars rover to touch down August 5
By Nadia Drake
Web edition : Tuesday, July 31st, 2012

Editor’s note: This is the first of two articles previewing the Mars Curiosity rover’s upcoming Mars landing. This installment describes the vehicle’s landing on the Red Planet, scheduled for Sunday evening, August 5, Pacific Daylight Time; the next will cover the rover’s science mission. Science News astronomy writer Nadia Drake will be covering the landing live from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

An enormous robot is about to hit the red dirt of Mars — not too hard, NASA hopes — in search of life-friendly environments, or remnants of them. The Curiosity rover’s off-road adventures will begin only if it survives a daring seven-minute, 125-kilometer plunge through the planet’s carbon dioxide atmosphere.

Scientists on Earth expect to observe the touchdown at 10:30 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time on August 5.

Curiosity, which is the size of a small car, is the newest and largest addition to NASA’s family of robotic planet explorers. Its target on Mars is Gale Crater, 154 kilometers wide and home to a massive peak that scientists call Mount Sharp.

After a nearly nine-month journey, the spacecraft carrying Curiosity will enter Mars’ thin atmosphere going approximately 21,250 kilometers per hour. Seven minutes later, just before the rover sets wheels on the fourth rock from the sun, it had better be going approximately zero.

“The Curiosity landing is the hardest NASA robotic mission ever attempted,” says John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. “This is risky business.”

Rather than being cushioned by interplanetary airbags — as the Spirit and Opportunity rovers were in 2004 — Curiosity’s touchdown involves a “sky crane” maneuver that seems ripped from a James Bond film.

That concept includes a parachute deployment 11 kilometers above the planet, once the atmosphere has slowed the spacecraft to a relatively pokey 1,400 kilometers per hour. At 1.6 kilometers above the surface, while falling at nearly 300 kilometers per hour, the parachute is designed to separate from the rover, leaving the craft folded up like a giant bionic insect underneath what’s called the descent vehicle.

Then the descent vehicle should fire its retro-rockets, slowing the plunge even more and setting the stage for the sky crane maneuver to begin. At 20 meters above the planet’s surface — and now dropping at just 2.7 kilometers per hour — the rover will descend from the mother ship on nylon cables and the still-tethered pair will move slowly toward the surface.

“Is it crazy? Well, not so much,” says NASA’s Doug McCuistion. “Once you understand it, it’s not a crazy concept. It works.”

After the rover has stretched its legs and is safely on the ground, it will sever the umbilical cords, allowing the descent vehicle to fly off and ditch itself in the dust about half a kilometer from the landing site.

During the spacecraft’s entry, descent and landing, NASA’s Mars Odyssey orbiter will act as an interplanetary Internet router, relaying information from the rover to scientists on Earth in near real time. (It takes almost 14 minutes for radio signals to travel between the two planets.)

And there will be video: The one-ton, six-wheeled, nuclear-powered rover will film the descent with a camera on its belly. Scientists hope to release the video soon after landing. “That’s just going to be an awesome video, landing on the surface of Mars,” says project scientist John Grotzinger of Caltech. “We’re going to go swinging out like an amusement park ride, and maybe see the flank of Mount Sharp, and then come back down again and see the ground, and the other side — maybe the crater rim.”

After spending a bit of time making sure that all systems are go, the rover will make tracks, driven by scientists wielding computer commands from nearly 250 million kilometers away. “I’m really envious of the rover drivers,” Grotzinger says. “I always wanted to be a rover driver.”

If the spacecraft comes down safely, team members will begin working in shifts on Mars time, synchronizing their days and nights to match the Martian day, which is roughly 40 minutes longer than an Earth day. It’s like being perpetually jet-lagged. “Every day, you come in to work 40 minutes later,” says Ryan Anderson, a planetary scientist at the U.S. Geological Survey Astrogeology Science Center in Flagstaff, Ariz. “If you started in the morning, several weeks later, you’re starting in the middle of the night.”

For at least 90 days, Curiosity will trundle along during the Martian day while scientists on Earth work the Red Planet’s night shift. “We wake up when the rover is going to sleep and work through the Mars night so that by morning, we can send the rover new commands for the next day,” Anderson says.

Of course, all that assumes Curiosity will land safely. If it doesn’t? “We don’t talk about that much,” Anderson says.


http://www.sciencenews.org/view/download/id/342707/name/_TOUCHDOWN
Curiosity, NASA’s newest Mars rover, will search for signs of life-friendly environments on Mars — if it survives the journey to the Martian surface on August 5. The journey’s final step is a maneuver that engineers call the sky crane (illustrated), in which a hovering spacecraft lowers the rover to the reddish soil. Credit: NASA; JPL-Caltech

[Duke of Buckingham]

BLOG: Mission control before the party
Days before Curiosity's planned Martian landing, Nadia Drake checks out JPL's space central
By Nadia Drake
Web edition : Friday, August 3rd, 2012

Though nearly empty Thursday afternoon, mission control at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory will be packed with more than 100 people when the Mars rover Curiosity is set to touch down this Sunday, August 5.

But for now, the control room is quiet, illuminated by a dim, soothing blue light. Data and images flash across the enormous screens hanging at the front of the room, which also serves as the nerve center for the Deep Space Network, an array of telescopes tasked with tracking the spacecrafts JPL sends zooming around the solar system.

One of the displays tells the team which of these 24 spacecraft are currently phoning home and where on Earth the call is received. At this moment, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is talking to a telescope near Madrid. The Dawn spacecraft, in orbit around the asteroid Vesta, is listening as an antenna in Canberra, Australia, relays instructions. And Juno, on the way to Jupiter, is phoning in to Goldstone, Calif. “There’s a minimum of five engineers here at all times,” says Jim McClure, the facility’s operations manager. “They’re monitoring the data flow from the spacecraft.”


http://www.sciencenews.org/view/download/id/342806/name/___
Atop the oxymoronic clean dirt in the In-Situ Instrument Laboratory are Mars Science Laboratory test conductor James Wang, Curiosity's twin on Earth ... and the rubber chicken, perched on the pile of rocks at back, added to the scene during the testing one of the rover’s imaging instruments. Credit: N. Drake

Staffed 24 hours a day since 1964, the Space Flight Operations Facility — which houses mission control — is now a U.S. historical landmark.

In the next room over is the cruise mission support area, a space lined with rows of computers set in front of a large American flag. Here, engineers are responsible for shooting the Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft toward Gale Crater like a well-aimed, cone-shaped meteorite. “We actually picked it up just a few minutes after it launched from Florida, and have been controlling it from here ever since,” says flight director David Oh.

An hour before landing on Sunday evening, a can of peanuts will be popped open and passed around the room — scientists too, it seems, are superstitious and adhere to decades-old rituals. “It’s always been a lucky charm for us,” Oh says. “I think missions have always seemed to work out better when we had the peanuts there.”

In another building on the JPL campus, a mock Curiosity rover is trundling around atop a seeming paradox: clean dirt, a grayish substance that serves as a stand-in for Mars’ red sands. “It’s actually crystals. Small, crushed crystals,” says Eric Aguilar, systems integration and tech manager for the Mars Science Laboratory. “It doesn’t cause as much dust.”

Here, in the In-Situ Instrument Laboratory, scientists test drive landing strategies and practice rover maneuvers. Years ago, the airbags that cushioned the Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity once filled the room to its ceiling. And later, when Spirit found herself stuck on a rock, scientists rolled out her Earthly twin and began sorting out how to free the rover from hundreds of millions of kilometers away.

Now, the team is getting ready for Curiosity’s surface operations — under the watchful eye of a rubber chicken perched atop a pile of rocks. The chicken moved in while the team was testing the Mars Descent Imager, a camera mounted on the rover’s belly. “We needed something to take an image of,” Aguilar explains. “We like to surprise the operations team as they get the data down and take a look.”


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The mission control room at JPL in Pasadena, Calif., will be buzzing on the night of August 5, when the NASA rover Curiosity is set to touch down on Mars. Before the big day, the room’s screens relay information about the status of JPL’s 24 interplanetary spacecraft. Credit: N. Drake

[Duke of Buckingham]

Today at 6:30 AM Lisbon time the Mars Rover should land.

Fingers crossed.

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[Duke of Buckingham]

Wheels down, Mars rover takes in the view
Curiosity lands safely, begins transmitting images
By Nadia Drake
Web edition : Monday, August 6th, 2012

PASADENA, Calif. — Curiosity is alive and well on Mars.

After a daring, well-documented descent into Gale Crater, NASA’s flagship rover came to rest about 6.5 kilometers from the base of Mount Sharp and 28 kilometers from the crater’s northwest rim.

For the next few weeks, Mars’ newest inhabitant will stay put, easing its many instruments into action while snapping photos of its environs. For now, it appears that Curiosity — and all the instruments aboard — are healthy.

“There’s a lot ahead of us, but so far we are just ecstatic about the performance of the vehicle,” said Jennifer Trosper, Mars Science Laboratory mission manager at JPL.

Though Curiosity won’t be stretching its wheels for a few weeks, the rover and its orbiting cousins are busy supplying scientists back home with pictures of the terrifying, seven-minute journey to the crater floor.

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From 6.5 kilometers away, Mount Sharp looms large on Curiosity’s Martian horizon. Eventually, the rover will begin climbing this mountain and reading a history of Mars’ ancient environments in its layers. Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech

“We’re going to make sure that we’re firing on all cylinders before we blaze out across the plains there,” said project scientist John Grotzinger of Caltech.

On August 6, a camera mounted on the rover’s belly returned a series of thumbnail images taken during the plunge into Gale Crater. Strung together into an animation, the 297 images span the descent, beginning with the spacecraft’s heat shield falling away and ending with billowing dust clouds kicked up during the rover’s retrorocket-powered, sky crane–mediated touchdown. A full-resolution video of the descent is expected in a few weeks, said Mike Malin, principal investigator for the Mars Descent Imager and president and chief scientist at Malin Space Sciences Systems in San Diego.

The belly-cam wasn’t the only instrument taking pictures during the rover’s daring skydive into Gale Crater.

An orbiting eye was also watching. From 340 kilometers away, the HiRISE camera aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shot an image that shows the rover parachuting into the crater one minute before touchdown. “This was a great, great shot,” said JPL’s Sarah Milkovich, HiRISE investigation scientist. Also in the image: The spacecraft’s heat shield, falling toward Mars. Capturing the image required wrangling the orbiter into place and aiming the camera toward Curiosity, a maneuver the HiRISE team estimated had a 60 percent chance of succeeding.

Curiosity has also sent postcards from its new home in Gale Crater.

The first photo from the surface arrived late in the California evening on August 5, just after the landing, and shows the rover’s rear wheel in front of a field of gravel, with the crater rim rising in the background. “I think that is the best picture of Mars that I’ve ever seen,” Grotzinger said. He notes that it appears as though Curiosity is parked near the edge of an area where flowing water once swept materials over the crater wall and into the basin. “This [process] is bringing materials in from the rim, which is not our destination,” he said. “But we’re getting a free sample without having to drive over there, potentially.”

A later photo from the front of the rover shows Mount Sharp looming in the distance, a massive pile of sediments the likes of which doesn’t exist anywhere on Earth. Unlike large mountains on Earth, Mount Sharp appears to have formed as water and wind filled in the crater, depositing the layered sediments that created the peak. Then, erosion created a moat-like shape, leaving the mountain protruding from the middle of the crater.

Today, Mount Sharp resembles several places on Earth, but with the story of Mars’ environmental history tucked into its layers and awaiting Curiosity’s eager reading.

Even with Mount Sharp calling from the horizon and tantalizing scientific treats underfoot, the rover’s team will take its time deciding where to send Curiosity first. “Be patient with us, please,” said project manager Pete Theisinger after touchdown. “Because we will be patient with Curiosity.”

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NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured Curiosity parachuting into Gale Crater (box, and inset). At this stage in the descent, Curiosity is about a minute from touchdown. Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech, Univ. of Arizona

[Duke of Buckingham]

New fossils hint at ancestral split
African discoveries point to two early species in the human genus
By Bruce Bower
Web edition : Wednesday, August 8th, 2012

Newly discovered face and jaw fossils show that at least two species of the human genus Homo lived alongside each other in East Africa nearly 2 million years ago.

These new finds are a good match for a roughly 2 million-year-old Homo brain case and face excavated in 1972 in the same part of East Africa, reports a team led by anthropologist Meave Leakey of the Turkana Basin Institute in Nairobi, Kenya. Long considered a puzzling exception among early Homo finds, the 1972 discovery features big bones and a flat, upright face and represents a species apart, Leakey and her colleagues conclude in the Aug. 9 Nature.

Until now, researchers have found it difficult to exclude the possibility that the large-faced fossil — known as KNM-ER 1470 — came from a male of the same species as smaller, early Homo finds in East Africa.

“After so many years of questions about the identity of the enigmatic 1470 fossil, the chances that it’s from a separate species have greatly improved with our new discoveries,” says anthropologist and study coauthor Fred Spoor of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.

Leakey and her colleagues unearthed the new fossils from 2007 to 2009 along the shore of Kenya’s Lake Turkana. Previously dated volcanic ash layers at the site place the finds at between 1.78 million and 1.95 million years old. Further study is needed before assigning the early Homo fossils to particular species, Spoor says, and it’s unclear whether either species led to Homo erectus or to people today. For now, he proposes only that at least two Homo species inhabited East Africa nearly 2 million years ago.

Anthropologist Bernard Wood of George Washington University in Washington, D.C., suspects that Leakey’s team has found fossil evidence for a new, early Homo species distinct from both the 1470 specimen, which he classes as H. rudolfensis, and other Homo fossils from that time, which he groups under H. habilis. The newly found face fossil, which belonged to a child about 8 years old, mirrors the shape of the adult 1470 face, Wood says. But the nearly complete lower jaw and partial lower jaw that Leakey’s team found fit neither in H. rudolfensis nor in H. habilis, he contends.

Evolutionary scientists disagree about whether early Homo fossils can be grouped even into those two species (SN: 3/1/03, p. 131).

Like Wood, anthropologist Donald Johanson of the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University in Tempe regards the new face fossil, from the child, and the 1470 fossil as H. rudolfensis. Homo split into at least three African species, including Homo erectus, by about 1.7 million years ago, Johanson says. His team previously excavated the earliest known Homo fossil, an upper jaw from Hadar, Ethiopia, that dates to 2.4 million years ago.

Even Spoor’s proposal that at least two species inhabited East Africa 2 million years ago goes too far, contends anthropologist Tim White of the University of California, Berkeley. Too few early Homo fossils exist to rule out whether the new finds, and the 1470 specimen, fall within a single species that included substantial skeletal differences across individuals and between sexes, White says.


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A nearly 2 million-year-old lower jaw discovered recently in East Africa, along with other new finds, differs substantially from smaller, earlier discoveries of Homo fossils in the region, a new study finds. Credit: Mike Hettwer, courtesy of National Geographic

[Duke of Buckingham]

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Curiosity in Exaggerated Color

This color-enhanced view of NASA's Curiosity rover on the surface of Mars was taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter as the satellite flew overhead. Colors have been enhanced to show the subtle color variations near the rover, which result from different types of materials.

The descent stage blast pattern around the rover is clearly seen as relatively blue colors (true colors would be more gray).

Curiosity landed within Gale Crater, a portion of which is pictured here. The mountain at the center of the crater, called Mount Sharp, is located out of frame to the southeast. North is up.

This image was acquired at an angle of 30 degrees from straight down, looking west. Another image looking more directly down will be acquired in five days, completing a stereo pair along with this image.

The scale of this image cutout is about 12 inches (31 centimeters) per pixel.

HiRISE is one of six instruments on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The University of Arizona, Tucson, operates the orbiter's HiRISE camera, which was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, built the spacecraft.

Image credit: NASNASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

[Duke of Buckingham]

Supersmall lab-on-a-chip is superfast
Nanowire setup may aid speedy detection of health emergencies
By Rachel Ehrenberg
Web edition : Friday, August 17th, 2012

Looking for a specific protein in a drop of blood is like trying to find a notorious white whale on the seven seas — it takes some time. But a new device quickly filters the ocean of molecules in a blood sample, capturing proteins that may warn of an impending heart attack or out-of-whack insulin levels. Besides detecting potential emergencies, such devices could minimize the fraught days a patient spends waiting for lab results, providing them in mere minutes.

Experiments showed the setup detected various levels of troponin T, a cardiac-regulating protein that can signal an impending heart attack, in less than 10 minutes, researchers from Tel Aviv University report online August 2 in Nano Letters. In the future, people at home who are having chest pains might use the technology to find out quickly whether they need to get to an emergency room, says biomedical chemist Fernando Patolsky.

The sugar-cube–sized lab-on-a-chip consists of two small compartments connected by a thin channel. In the first compartment is a densely packed forest of silicon nanowires coated with antibodies, molecules that latch onto specific proteins. The researchers made these nanowires very rough and full of holes, greatly increasing the surface area for attaching the protein-grabbing antibodies.

“They are so rough and porous we can turn a 1-centimeter-square wafer into a 300-centimeter-square surface,” Patolsky says.

The second compartment also contains silicon nanowires, but these are laid flat and their ends are connected to tiny electrodes. After coating both sets of nanowires with antibodies for the specific protein that the researchers want to catch, a tiny drop of blood (between 50 and 250 microliters) is added to the first compartment.

The thick nanowire forest allows the small proteins in the blood that researchers are looking for to move through and be captured by the antibodies, while blocking out larger things, such as cells, that can clog up the works.

A few minutes after the sample is added, the forest is rinsed with water, and a solution that detaches the target proteins from the antibodies is added. Then this concentrated stream of proteins is sent through the channel to the second compartment. The proteins are snatched up again by the antibodies on the flat nanowires, which changes the amount of electrical current passing through the wires. The researchers read this change in current and can determine how much of the protein in question is present in the blood sample.
“It’s clever,” says biomedical engineer Tarek Fahmy of Yale University. “They are doing separation and concentration on the same chip.”

[Duke of Buckingham]

Surprising rabies resistance
Amazon villagers survive deadly disease carried by vampire bats
By Stephen Ornes
Web edition : 3:56 pm

Rabies is a terrible way to die. The disease is caused by a virus that spreads through animal bites. Without treatment, it attacks the brain and can cause symptoms like hallucinations, paralysis, fever and severe pain. Untreated, the disease is usually deadly — except to some people in a few Peruvian villages, scientists now report.

“Why these individuals don’t die is very intriguing,” Amy Gilbert told Science News. Gilbert is a disease ecologist, a scientist who studies the relationship between germs and their homes. She works for the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Her new study in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene identified these unusual people who caught the rabies virus and survived without treatment.

The survivors live in a part of the Amazon rain forest populated by vampire bats — known carriers of the rabies virus. In those communities, about 1 in 7 people seem to have developed a natural resistance to the virus.

Each year, some 55,000 people worldwide die from rabies. Gilbert and her colleagues now find that all of the Peruvian villagers who survived rabies reported having been bitten by a vampire bat. Only one person reported having received a rabies vaccination.

All of the survivors came from communities that lacked formal roads. One community is a two-hour boat ride away from the nearest health clinic; the other village is six hours from doctors.

Gilbert says that a vampire bat’s bite is mild compared with that of a dog or raccoon. So perhaps rabid bats transmit less of the virus. How close a bite is to the head may also affect a person’s reaction to the virus.

Studies like this one show that researchers still don’t understand everything about this common disease.

“Rabies used to be a disease we said was 100 percent fatal. It was the most deadly disease of all diseases,” Carol Glaser, an infectious disease doctor with the California Department of Public Health, told Science News. But no disease is known to kill every person it infects. In fact, last year, a few people in the United States survived a bout with rabies.

Gilbert cautions that just because some people can survive rabies, the infection shouldn’t be taken lightly. She recommends that children be immunized regularly in places where vampire bats roam.

Power Words

immunize To make a person or animal immune, or resistant, to infection, typically by a vaccine.

rabies A contagious and fatal viral disease of dogs and other mammals that causes madness and convulsions and is transmissible through saliva to humans.

virus A tiny molecule made of a protein shell enclosing genetic information. A virus can live and multiply only in the living cells of a host organism, such as humans.

vampire bat A small bat that feeds on the blood of mammals or birds using its two sharp incisor teeth and anticoagulant saliva. Vampire bats are found mainly in tropical regions of the Americas.

vaccination A treatment given to produce immunity, or resistance, to a disease.


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Vampire bats, like this one, can carry rabies virus and transmit it to humans through bites. Daniel Streicker

[Duke of Buckingham]

Himalayan melt may be less than thought
Satellite data suggest modest net ice loss
By Allison Bohac
Web edition : 3:59 pm

Rising temperatures in the Himalayas may bring more moderate melting for the region’s glaciers than some previous studies have concluded. Combining six years of topographic measurements gathered by NASA’s Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite with radar data collected aboard the space shuttle Endeavour in 2000, an international team mapped out glacier activity throughout the range. Glaciers are thinning faster in some regions than others, but the researchers believe the range as a whole lost nearly 13 billion metric tons of ice per year between 2003 and 2008. While on-the-ground observations indicate heavier losses, this new figure is more than twice the melting tonnage reported earlier this year by another team using data from NASA’s GRACE satellites. The study also challenges the long-accepted idea that an insulating coat of rocky debris can slow down ice loss: Dirty glaciers like Ngozumpa in Nepal shrank at about the same rate on average as their cleaner neighbors, the researchers note August 23 in Nature.


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Debris-blanketed glaciers like Nepal’s Ngozumpa, once thought to be relatively immune to melting, have been found to be shrinking at about the same rate as more exposed ice fields. Credit: Kimberly Casey

[Duke of Buckingham]

Black hole’s annual feast begins
Astronomers offer explanations for source of light around object with an unusual yearly behavior
By Nadia Drake
Web edition : Friday, August 24th, 2012

BEIJING — A black hole about 290 million light-years away has just begun slurping material from its surroundings, an annual ritual revealed by a periodic brightening in X-ray wavelengths.

“It is picking up again, just today — or last night — which is good,” astronomer Roberto Soria of the International Center for Radio Astronomy Research in Perth, Australia, said August 22 at the 28th General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union. “I was starting to get a bit worried because this cycle was three or four days late.”

The black hole, known as HLX-1, is 10,000 times as massive as the sun and the only known specimen in its weight class. Middleweights like HLX-1, which should be numerous, are intermediate between the supermassive black holes at galactic cores — as massive as billions of suns — and the featherweights with just a few solar masses.

First detected by X-ray telescopes in 2009, HLX-1 has since been spied upon in visible wavelengths by the Hubble Space Telescope and other instruments. Those observations revealed a mysterious, bluish glow surrounding the object, which hovers above the plane of a distant galaxy. Now, scientists are trying to determine where the glow is coming from, how HLX-1 formed, and where the rest of the intermediate-mass black holes are hiding.

The most popular theory so far is that the glow is starlight, produced by a cluster of young, blue stars.

But young stars aren’t the only candidates. A different scenario implicates a debris field, or accretion disk, formed by the black hole's annual feasting on a companion star.

“When the [light] was first discovered, it wasn’t clear whether it was a single star, an accretion disk, or a star cluster,” Soria said. “The issue is still not resolved.”

Soria prefers the accretion disk scenario, in which the light comes from a glowing disk formed by the material stolen from a small, companion star. Because the star’s orbit is elliptical, it comes close enough for HLX-1 to slurp some of the star’s mass about once a year. That material then spirals into the disk, creating a transient brightening. Astronomers see an X-ray brightening around the black hole every 366 days or so, presumably the result of this periodic nibbling.
Though that’s a plausible theory, there are some problems with it, said Sean Farrell, an astronomer at Australia’s Sydney Institute for Astronomy, whose observations produced the young star cluster theory.

“I think there is a disk component. We see it in the X-rays; we see it with other black holes,” he said. “The problem is, it’s not enough on its own. The light we see is too bright to be a single star. We think there has to be a cluster of young stars.”

Observing the system again using the Hubble Space Telescope should help resolve the issue, he said.

This class of black holes consisting entirely of HLX-1 was, until 2009, merely theoretical. What’s confounding is that intermediate mass black holes should be numerous, populating the middle ground between featherweight stellar-mass black holes and the supermassive cosmic drains around which galaxies swirl.

Farrell suggests they’re hard to see because most are invisible, stripped of the stars and gas that telescopes can spy on. He speculates that these middleweights are the remains of collapsed primordial stars. Eventually, some became the centers of dwarf galaxies. Then the dwarf galaxies collided, booting their middleweight seeds into space.

“They’ll be floating around in the halos of galaxies, which is exactly where we see this one,” Farrell said. “There could be hundreds of them in every Milky Way–sized galaxy.”


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HLX-1, the only known intermediate-mass black hole (circled), hovers above the plane of a nearby galaxy, as seen in this Hubble Space Telescope image. Astronomers are debating the source of the light coming from the area around the black hole. Credit: NASA, ESA, S. Farrell/Sydney Institute for Astronomy

[Duke of Buckingham]

The Facts Behind the Frack
Scientists weigh in on the hydraulic fracturing debate
By Rachel Ehrenberg
September 8th, 2012; Vol.182 #5 (p. 20)

To call it a fractious debate is an understatement.

Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, wrenches open rock deep beneath the Earth's surface, freeing the natural gas that's trapped inside. Proponents argue that fracking-related gas recovery is a game changer, a bridge to the renewable energy landscape of the future. The gas, primarily methane, is cheap and relatively clean. Because America is brimful of the stuff, harvesting the fuel via fracking could provide the country jobs and reduce its dependence on foreign sources of energy.

But along with these promises have come alarming local incidents and national reports of blowouts, contamination and earthquakes. Fracking opponents contend that the process poisons air and drinking water and may make people sick. What's more, they argue, fracking leaks methane, a potent greenhouse gas that can blow up homes, worries highlighted in the controversial 2010 documentary Gasland.

Fears that fracking companies are operating in a Wild West environment with little regulation have prompted political action. In June, the group Don't Frack Ohio led thousands of protesters on a march to the statehouse, where they declared their commitment to halting hydraulic fracturing in the state. Legislation banning the process has been considered but is now on hold in California. New York — which sits atop a giant natural gas reserve — has a statewide fracking moratorium; pending policies would allow the process only where local officials support it.

Despite all this activity, not much of the fracking debate has brought scientific evidence into the fold. Yet scientists have been studying the risks posed by fracking operations. Research suggests methane leaks do happen. The millions of gallons of chemical-laden water used to fracture shale deep in the ground has spoiled land and waterways. There's also evidence linking natural gas recovery to earthquakes, but this problem seems to stem primarily from wastewater disposal rather than the fracturing process itself.

While the dangers are real, most problems linked to fracking so far are not specific to the technology but come with many large-scale energy operations employing poor practices with little oversight, scientists contend. Whether the energy payoff can come with an acceptable level of risk remains an open question.

"People want it to be simple on both sides of the ledger, and it's not simple," says environmental scientist Robert Jackson of Duke University. "Our goal is to highlight the problems, so we can understand the problems and do what we can to help."

What is hydraulic fracturing?

Hydraulic fracturing has been cranking up output from gas and other wells for more than 50 years. But not until fracking joined up with another existing technology, horizontal drilling, was the approach used to unlock vast stores of previously inaccessible natural gas. The real fracking boom has kicked off in just the last decade.

Conventionally drilled wells tap easy-to-get-at pockets of natural gas. Such gas heats homes and offices, fuels vehicles and generates electricity. But as easily accessible reserves have been used up, countries seeking a steady supply of domestic energy have turned to natural gas buried in difficult-to-reach places, such as deep layers of shale.

Gas doesn't flow easily through shale or other impermeable rock. Drilling a conventional well into such formations would gather gas only from a small area right around the well. And, for shale in particular, many formations in the United States extend hundreds of kilometers across but are less than 100 meters thick, hardly worth sending a vertical well into.

Combining hydraulic fracturing with horizontal drilling offers a way to wrest gas from these untapped reserves. By drilling sideways into a rock formation and then sending cracks sprawling though the rock, methane can burble into a well from a much larger area.

The drill-frack punch goes something like this: After constructing a drill pad, engineers drill a well straight down, typically for thousands of meters, toward the target bed of rock. Operators then begin "kicking off," turning the drill so it bores into the formation horizontally, forming an L-shape.


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Residents fear that hydraulic fracturing operations lead to home explosions, pollution and earthquakes. Science can speak to some of these concerns. Credit: © Red Circle Images RM/www.fotosearch.com Stock Photography

After small explosive charges perforate the far end of the well's horizontal portion, called the toe, hydraulic fracturing can begin. Millions of gallons of fracking fluid — a mixture of water, sand and chemicals — are pumped into the well at pressures high enough to fracture the shale. Methane within the shale diffuses into these fissures and flows up the well. Along with the gas comes flowback water, which contains fracking fluid and additional water found naturally in the rock.

After the well's toe is fracked, engineers repeat the procedure, moving back along the horizontal portion of the well until its heel is reached. Compared with conventional wells, which may steadily pump out fuel for more than a decade, shale gas extraction is like blasting open a faucet. There's a huge surge in gas, but it may become merely a dribble after a few years. At the end of its life, the well gets plugged.

Today hydraulic fracturing is used in about nine out of 10 onshore oil and gas wells in the United States, with an estimated 11,400 new wells fractured each year. In 2010, about 23 percent of the natural gas consumed in the United States came from shale beds.

While the immediate output is gas, the uptick in this type of extraction has also fueled fears over fracking's potential dangers — such as drinking water contamination.

Does methane leak into water?

One of the most explosive issues, literally, is whether fracking introduces methane into drinking water wells at levels that can make tap water flammable or can build up in confined spaces and cause home explosions.

Studies are few, but a recent analysis suggests a link. Scientists who sampled groundwater from 60 private water wells in northeastern Pennsylvania and upstate New York found that average methane concentrations in wells near active fracturing operations were 17 times as high as in wells in inactive areas. Methane naturally exists in groundwater — in fact, the study found methane in 51 of the 60 water wells — but the higher levels near extracting sites raised eyebrows.

To get at where the methane was coming from, the researchers looked at the gas's carbon, which has different forms depending on where it has been. The carbon's isotopic signature, and the ratio of methane to other hydrocarbons, suggested that methane in water wells near drilling sites did not originate in surface waters but came from deeper down.

But how far down and how the methane traveled aren't clear, says Duke's Jackson, a coauthor of the study, published last year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. He proposes four possibilities. The first, most contentious — and, says Jackson, the least likely — is that the extraction process opens up fissures that allow methane and other chemicals to migrate to the surface. A second possibility is that the steel tubing lining the gas well, the well casing, weakens in some way. Both scenarios would also allow briny water from the shale and fracking fluid to migrate upward. The well water analysis found no evidence of either.

Newly fracked gas wells could also be intersecting with old, abandoned gas or oil wells, allowing methane from those sites to migrate. "We've punched holes in the ground in Pennsylvania for 150 years," Jackson says. Many old wells have not been shut down properly, he says. "You find ones that people plugged with a tree stump." In some places in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and elsewhere (especially those with existing coal beds), methane turned up in well water long before hydraulic fracturing became widespread.

A fourth possibility, which Jackson thinks is most probable, is that the cement between the well casing and the surrounding rock is not forming a proper seal. Cracking or too little cement could create a passageway allowing methane from an intermediate layer of rock to drift into water sources near the surface. Such cases have been documented. In 2007, for example, the faulty cement seal of a fracked well in Bainbridge, Ohio, allowed gas from a shale layer above the target layer to travel into an underground drinking water source. The methane built up enough to cause an explosion in a homeowner's basement.

Other types of gas and oil wells have similar problems, Jackson says, but fracking's high pressures and the shaking that results may make cement cracks more likely. "Maybe the process itself makes it harder to get good seals," he says. "We need better information."

Accompanying these concerns are worries that methane leaking into the air will have consequences for the climate and human health. Burning methane creates fewer greenhouse gas emissions and smog ingredients than other fossil fuels, so natural gas is considered relatively clean. But evidence suggests that methane frequently escapes into the air during drilling and shipping, where it acts as a greenhouse gas and traps heat. Such leaking undermines the gas's "clean" status.


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View larger image | With the help of hydraulic fracturing, drillers can access natural gas that was previously locked in shale beds. A recent report from the U.S. Energy Information Administration analyzed major shale basins (shown) in 32 countries around the world. Credit: U.S. Energy Information Administration

Methane leaking into the air can also cause ozone to build up locally, leading to worries about headaches, inflammation and other ills among people who live nearby. Scientists in Pennsylvania have proposed a long-term study examining possible links between air pollution from the shale gas boom and human health. A more immediate concern for human health, Jackson and others argue, is exposure to fracking wastewater.

Is fracking fluid hazardous?

A typical fracked well uses between 2 million and 8 million gallons of water. At the high end, that's enough to fill 12 Olympic swimming pools. Companies have their own specific mixes, but generally water makes up about 90 percent of the fracking fluid. About 9 percent is "proppants," stuff such as sand or glass beads that prop open the fissures. The other 1 percent consists of additives, which include chemical compounds and other materials (such as walnut hulls) that prevent bacterial growth, slow corrosion and act as lubricants to make it easier for proppants to get into cracks.

As the gas comes out of a fracked well, a lot of this fluid comes back as waste. Until recently, many companies wouldn't reveal the exact chemical recipes of their fluids, citing trade secrets. A report released in April 2011 by the House Energy and Commerce Committee did provide some chemical data: From 2005 to 2009, 14 major gas and oil companies used 750 different chemicals in their fracking fluids. Twenty-five of these chemicals are listed as hazardous pollutants under the Clean Air Act, nine are regulated under the Safe Drinking Water Act and 14 are known or possible human carcinogens, including naphthalene and benzene.

In addition to the fracking fluid, the flowback contains water from the bowels of the Earth. This "produced" water typically has a lot of salt, along with naturally occurring radioactive material, mercury, arsenic and other heavy metals.

"It's not just what you put into the well. The shale itself has chemicals, some of which are quite nasty," says Raymond Orbach, director of the University of Texas at Austin's Energy Institute. A report analyzing the risks associated with fracking was released by the Energy Institute in February in Vancouver at the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. (The report is under independent review because one of its authors didn't disclose that he is on the board of a gas-drilling company, but Orbach stands behind the study.)

Wastewater is dealt with in different ways. Sometimes it is stored on-site in lined pits until it is trucked off. When these pits are open to the air, they can release fumes or overflow, with possibly hazardous consequences.

The Energy Institute report cites one case in West Virginia in which about 300,000 gallons of flowback water was intentionally released into a mixed hardwood forest. Trees prematurely shed their leaves, many died over a two-year study period, and ground vegetation suffered. A briefing paper coauthored by geophysicist Mark Zoback of Stanford University points to spills: In 2009, leaky joints in a pipeline carrying wastewater to a disposal site allowed more than 4,000 gallons to spill into Pennsylvania's Cross Creek, killing fish and invertebrates.

For obvious ethical reasons, controlled studies exposing people to fracking fluid don't exist. And long-term population studies comparing pre- and post-fracking health haven't yet been done. But these incidents — and the known dangers of some of the chemicals used — raise alarms about the possible consequences of human exposure.

Local geology in some areas may also allow fracking chemicals and produced water to seep up from deep below into water sources. A study published in July in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found a geochemical fingerprint of briny shale water in some aquifers and wells in Pennsylvania. Local geology probably also played a role in fracking fluid getting into drinking water in Pavillion, Wyo., a site that has been at the heart of the fracking controversy.

Still, several reviews of where fracking chemicals and wastewater have done harm find that the primary exposure risks relate to activities at the surface, including accidents, poor management and illicit dumping.

An accepted disposal route is injecting the water into designated wastewater wells. But that strategy can cause an additional problem: earthquakes.

Does fracking cause earthquakes?

Hydraulic fracturing operations have been linked to some small earthquakes, including a magnitude 2.3 quake near Blackpool, England, last year.

But scientists agree such earthquakes are extremely rare, occurring when a well hits a seismic sweet spot, and are avoidable with monitoring.

Of greater concern are earthquakes associated with the disposal of fracking fluid into wastewater wells. Injected fluid essentially greases the fault, a long-known effect. In the 1960s, a series of Denver earthquakes were linked to wastewater disposal at the Rocky Mountain arsenal, an Army site nearby. Wastewater disposal was also blamed for a magnitude 4.0 quake in Youngstown, Ohio, last New Year's Eve.

A study headed by William Ellsworth of the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, Calif., documents a dramatic increase in earthquakes in the Midwest coinciding with the start of the fracking boom. From 1970 to 2000, the region experienced about 20 quakes per year measuring at or above magnitude 3.0. Between 2001 and 2008, there were 29 such quakes per year. Then there were 50 in 2009, 87 in 2010 and 134 in 2011.

"The change was really quite pronounced," says Ellsworth. "We do not think it's a purely natural phenomenon." But the earthquakes weren't happening near active drilling — they seemed to be clustered around wastewater wells.

It's hard to look back without pre-quake data and figure out what triggers a single earthquake, notes Ellsworth. There are several pieces of the geology equation that, if toggled, can tip a fault from stable to unstable.

A recent study examining seismic activity at wastewater injection wells in Texas linked earthquakes with injections of more than 150,000 barrels of water per month. But not every case fit the pattern, suggesting the orientation of deep faults is important.

Ellsworth advises that injection at active faults be avoided. Drill sites should be considered for their geological stability, and seismic information should be collected. Only about 3 percent of the 75,000-odd hydraulic fracturing setups in the United States in 2009 were seismically monitored.

"There are many things we don't understand," says Ellsworth. "We're in ambulance-chasing mode where we're coming in after the fact."

Fracking footprint
A typical shale gas drilling site is abuzz with activity. After a well pad is constructed, engineers drill straight down, typically thousands of meters, toward the target shale. Then the well is drilled horizontally. Explosives set off in the horizontal portion create holes in the well’s sides through which millions of gallons of fracking fluid are pumped. The fluid fractures the shale, releasing the trapped gas for recovery. Beyond the rig itself, there are holding tanks and pits, and trucks for pumping in water and carrying away wastewater and gas. Such a big operation leaves a lot of room for error.


http://www.sciencenews.org/view/download/id/343206/name/SHALE%E2%80%99S_BIG_ROLE
The United States will produce more natural gas in the future, and much of it from shale, a recent report suggests. By 2035, total U.S. gas production is expected to increase to 27.9 trillion cubic feet, up from 21.6 trillion cubic feet in 2010. Credit: Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration’s Annual Energy Outlook

Potential hazards

1. Blowout When blowout prevention equipment is absent or fails, pressurized fluid and gas can explode out the wellhead, injuring people and spewing pollutants.

2. Gas leak Methane, the primary gas in natural gas, may be present in layers of rock above the target layer. Cracks in the cement that seal the well to the surrounding rock can provide a path for this methane to travel into the water table.

3. Air pollution Flare pipes that burn methane so it doesn’t build up, diesel truck exhaust and emissions from wastewater evaporation can dirty the air near a drill site. When methane is released without being burned, it acts as a potent greenhouse gas, trapping 20 times as much heat as carbon dioxide.

4. Wastewater overflow Fracking fluid, about 1 percent of which is made up of chemicals (sometimes including carcinogens), is increasingly recycled for use in other wells. But sometimes it is stored in open pits that emit noxious fumes and can overflow with rain.

5. Other leaks There are some worries that local geology in particular areas would allow fracking-produced fluid and methane to travel upward. But most evidence of exposure stems from surface problems such as spills or illicit dumping.

6. Home explosions If methane does get into the water table — because of cracked cement, local geology or the effects of old wells — it can build up in homes and lead to explosions.


http://www.sciencenews.org/pictures/090812/feat_fracking_footprint_zoom.gif
Illustration: Nicolle Rager Fuller

[Duke of Buckingham]

For those that are interested in this matter of Hydraulic Fracturing. Here is a link for you to read. http://www.epa.gov/hydraulicfracture/

[Duke of Buckingham]

The Science Life
The volcano watcher

Matt Patrick’s office is perched not far from the summit of Hawaii’s busiest volcano: Kilauea. When it erupts, he has a good view. Of course, it’s his job to see every possible vista of the peak, whether it’s flying over in a helicopter, hiking to fissures and along lava fields or checking webcams, seismometers and satellites. Working at the U.S. Geological Survey’s Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, Patrick is part of a team that monitors the volcano’s every tremor, eruption, burp of gas and lava path. This diligence helps researchers track potential danger and understand the details of a volcano’s inner workings.


http://www.sciencenews.org/view/download/id/343820/name/___
By keeping close watch on lava fields and fissures at Hawaii’s Kilauea, volcanologist Matt Patrick works to predict lava flows and eruptions. Credit: Jim Kauahikaua/USGS

“Working on an active volcano is a pretty special opportunity,” Patrick says. And for the first time in at least 200 years, there’s major action at two different places on Kilauea. “We’ve had eruptions going on at the summit and East Rift Zone, going on for years,” he says. “And with the quality of data we’re collecting, it gets better every day.” One of Patrick’s specialties is the use of thermal cameras, which see through eruption fumes and can show clearly where a lava field is newest and thus most likely to continue flowing. Before joining the observatory in 2007, he used thermal images to spot signs of upcoming eruptions on Alaskan and Russian volcanoes and to track eruptions at Italy’s Stromboli. Now he spies on Halemaumau, the eruption crater resting at Kilauea’s summit. The work is revealing that the crater’s lava lake and the East Rift Zone may be physically connected.

He remembers one evening in 2011 when data pointed to an imminent eruption in the rift zone. A helicopter flight confirmed a fissure opening. Patrick and a colleague had hiked to the eruption site by midnight. Nothing happened, so they started hiking back. An hour passed. “Suddenly we saw the sky turn bright orange. We heard a jetting sound. We were able to see the spot we were just at had become a fountain.” —Kristina Bartlett Brody

[Duke of Buckingham]

Killer whale mama’s boys live longer
Survival benefits to sons may favor orca menopause
By Susan Milius
Web edition : Thursday, September 13th, 2012

Male killer whale thirtysomethings appear to live longer when mom’s nearby, especially if mom has stopped reproducing. This survival bonus for mama’s boys could be the first evidence from nonhuman animals for an evolutionary advantage to living long after reproduction stops.

In the Pacific Northwest, a male killer whale’s risk of disappearing, presumably from dying, seems to jump almost 14-fold if he’s older than 30 and his post-reproductive mom dies, says marine biologist Emma Foster of the University of Exeter in England. Daughters get a more modest fivefold boost, Foster and her colleagues report in the Sept. 14 Science.

Both sons and daughters typically spend their lives swimming with mom and other maternal relatives. Even though a female killer whale may stop having babies in her 30s or 40s, she can live into her 90s.

Males typically don’t live as long, but they can keep siring offspring throughout their lives. Keeping sons alive as long as possible should therefore maximize the chances that the mom’s genes will be carried into further generations. So, Foster says, the whale survival boost may help explain how female killer whales have evolved the longest post-reproductive life span known among nonhuman animals.

“Menopause is still one of the great mysteries of biology,” Foster says. Evolution works as genes for traits multiply through greater numbers of offspring, so what drives the evolution of a no-babies phase of adulthood has been a puzzle. Some theorists have argued that this post-reproductive life span is just a side effect of other survival-boosting traits, but other biologists have searched for some benefit in staying alive post-baby-bearing. The evidence is “quite heavily debated,” as Foster puts it.

Foster and her colleagues analyzed whale-spotting censuses that have been running since 1974 off the coast of Washington state and British Columbia. Each year, volunteers photograph the resident killer whales feasting on the salmon runs there and identify individuals known from the quirks of their fins and saddle markings. By 2010, these data included records of 589 individuals, including 297 that had disappeared and thus were presumed dead.

Foster and colleagues then calculated how mom’s presence or absence affected her offspring’s likelihood of death. Losing a mother had a bigger effect on sons older than 30. Whales in their 30s certainly no longer suckle mommy’s milk, but Foster speculates that the mother might provide other kinds of life-lengthening guidance for foraging or some support in a fight.

“The results of this study, if interpreted correctly, are quite surprising,” says Craig Packer of the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. A big benefit to sons would be remarkable, he says, but a much simpler explanation would be that sons had disappeared because they swam off somewhere else after their mothers died.

Foster objects that this is unlikely because the whales in the region are tightly tied to the salmon runs and not likely to move where people wouldn’t spot them. To resolve this, Packer calls for radio-tagging as many killer whales as possible.
In his own analysis of lions and baboons, Packer and his colleagues found no evidence that older females increase the likelihood of their adult offsprings’ survival or reproductive success. Reproduction tapers off in these species as females age. Yet Packer says their post-reproductive phases just reflect the timescales in which a young cub would die without its mother’s.


http://www.sciencenews.org/view/download/id/345076/name/MOTHER%E2%80%99S_DAY
MOTHER’S DAY
A post-reproductive female killer whale and her son (shown) may have special bonds. Whale-spotting data raise the possibility that older moms somehow extend the lives of their grown-up sons and thus increase the chances of grandchildren. Credit: David Ellifrit/Centre for Whale Research

[Duke of Buckingham]

Reading disability (RD) or dyslexia.

Behavior genetic studies are discovering compelling evidence that reading disability is a heritable disorder. Reading disability (RD) or dyslexia is characterized by specific deficits in reading and related language skills. Evidence for the genetic etiology of RD is presented here, using a multivariate description of specific RD deficits and distinct genetic analyses.

The accurate and efficient decoding or recognition of printed words is a primary deficit in children with RD. In addition, most subjects with a word-reading deficit also exhibit problems in other reading component skills, such as phonological decoding and orthographic coding, as well as in related language skills, such as phonological awareness.

Behavioral genetic and linkage analyses of these reading and language measures are presented here within the context of the Colorado Learning Disabilities Research Center (CLDRC), a highly collaborative research program, which has recruited a large sample of RD and control twins. Data from these CLDRC twins have been analyzed using behavioral genetic techniques to estimate the proportion of the group reading deficits that are due to genetic, shared environment, and non-shared environment influences.

The existence of significant genetic effects on deficits for several different reading-related phenotypes raised the question of whether these genetic influenceswere due to the same or different genes. Structural modeling techniques have been applied to test for the commonality or independence of genetic and environmental effects on individual differences across different reading-related phenotypes. Finally, linkage studies
have been carried out to map genetic factors influencing different reading and language related skills to specific chromosomal locations.


So we must crunch NFS to have a solution to Dyslexia.

[zombie67]

A fully interactive, scaled view of the universe

Damn cool!

http://htwins.net/scale2/?bordercolor=white

[Duke of Buckingham]

A fully interactive, scaled view of the universe

Damn cool!

http://htwins.net/scale2/?bordercolor=white

Thanks Z great picture of the big and the small. I liked it a lot.


Uncertainty not so certain after all
Early formulation of famous physics principle undermined by lab experiments
By Alexandra Witze
Web edition : Friday, September 14th, 2012

Physicists may need to tweak what they think they know about Werner Heisenberg’s famous uncertainty principle.

Measuring light particles doesn’t push them as far into the realm of quantum fuzziness as once thought, new research suggests. The work doesn’t invalidate the principle underlying all of modern quantum theory, but may have implications for supersecure cryptography and other quantum applications.

“The real Heisenberg uncertainty principle is alive and well,” says Lee Rozema, a graduate student at the University of Toronto whose team reports the finding in the Sept. 7 Physical Review Letters. “It’s really just this [one aspect] that needs to be updated.”

In its most famous articulation, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle states that it’s possible at a given moment to know either the position or momentum of a particle, but not both. This relationship can be written out mathematically. But Heisenberg first came up with the idea in a slightly different fashion using slightly different mathematics. That version says the more you disturb a particle, the less precisely you can measure a particular property of it, and vice versa.

As an example, Heisenberg imagined shining particles of light on an electron and, by watching how the light bounced off it, deducing the position of the electron. But each time the light particles impart a little of their momentum to the electron, thus blurring how well scientists can measure the system. “This is how Heisenberg thought, but it wasn’t what was rigorously proven later,” says Rozema. “Physicists quite often confuse the two.”

Heisenberg’s original version still works for the light/electron example, Rozema says, but not in more general cases — as most scientists have assumed.

In 2003, Japanese physicist Masanao Ozawa showed mathematically that Heisenberg’s first version couldn’t be right. Earlier this year, he and a research team at the University of Vienna reported lab experiments confirming this.

Now, the Toronto physicists have weighed in with what they call a more direct measurement. They took single light particles, or photons, and measured two directions in which the light waves oscillated. The first measurement was a “weak” probe, gently inquiring about oscillations in one direction and then the other. Then the scientists made a “strong” measurement, directly probing whether that first, weak measurement had disturbed the system.

By combining the weak and strong measurements, Rozema’s team showed that the measured oscillations did not fit the mathematics of Heisenberg’s first formulation of the uncertainty idea. In other words, shrinking the inaccuracy of a particle measurement (making it more precise) doesn’t disturb the particle quite as much as scientists had thought.

“It is possible for both the inaccuracy and the disturbance to be small, although not both strictly zero,” says Howard Wiseman, a physicist at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia, who proposed the measurement the Toronto team used.

The discovery is important for anyone trying to build an unbreakable quantum code. Quantum cryptography relies on the fact that eavesdroppers would be spotted by the disturbance they make. If the disturbance is smaller than expected, then eavesdroppers might be harder to detect.

“The new relation will open up new science and technology in the field of quantum information,” says Ozawa, now of Nagoya University. “It also presents a profound philosophical problem.”

[John P. Myers]

Super-comet or super-dud? We'll see

"A new comet superstar named C/2012 S1 (ISON) is heading for the spotlight starting in November 2013 — but will it perform as some hope it will, or will it be a dud of cosmic proportions?

"This is one to watch, definitely," said Karl Battams, a scientist at the Naval Research Laboratory who monitors comets for the NASA-supported Sungrazer Comet Project. "But the astronomy community in general tries not to overhype these things. Potentially it will be amazing. Potentially it will be a huge dud."

Comet ISON quickly rose to the top of the charts after its discovery, which was based on imagery collected on Friday by the International Scientific Optical Network's 16-inch (0.4-meter) Santel reflecting telescope in Russia. The comet, which was described in an IAU circular on Monday, takes its common name from the network's acronym. Since the discovery, astronomers have gone back through their files to find "pre-discovery" images and calculate the comet's orbit.

That orbit is due to bring Comet ISON incredibly close to the sun — within just 1.1 million miles (1.8 million kilometers) in late November of next year. As a result, current projections suggest it could get very bright. How bright? Various estimates have set the brightest magnitude at -10 to -16. That suggests the comet could become brighter than the full moon — which led Astronomy Magazine's Michael E. Bakich to say it "probably will become the brightest comet anyone alive has ever seen."

Over the next year, you're going to hear a lot of comparisons to stunners of the past, as long ago as the Great Comet of 1680 and as recent as the Great Comet of 2007. You'll also hear comparisons to past letdowns, ranging from Comet Kohoutek to Comet Elenin. You may also hear a fresh wave of doomsday talk, like the ridiculous rumblings that accompanied Elenin's approach.

Don't believe anything you hear about a comet catastrophe — and don't get your hopes up just yet for a comet extravaganza. But do make plans to keep an eye on the sky in late 2013.

Battams said a lot depends on Comet ISON's composition. "It could turn into a huge letdown if it's a comet that's just too fragile and dissipates as it makes its way into the inner solar system," he told me. That's basically what happened to Comet Elenin. Because ISON appears to be a "new" comet coming in from the far-flung Oort cloud, it's tough to predict how the comet will behave.

The comet is currently in the constellation Cancer, as indicated in this (http://www.gophoto.it/view.php?i=http://en.es-static.us/upl/2012/09/Comet-C2012-S1-ISON.jpeg) star chart from Astronomy Magazine. When the comet hits prime time, a year from now, it should be heading through the constellation Virgo and visible from northern latitudes before sunrise. Here's a night-sky animation from the Remanzacco Observatory that shows how things are likely to go down.

During the months ahead, astronomers of all stripes will be keeping a watch on Comet ISON and refining their expectations. "I would imagine that by next summer, we should have a much better handle on it," Battams said. In the meantime, check out the chatter on SpaceWeather.com, the Remanzacco Observatory's comet blog and the Comets Mailing List. (And on Twitter, keep an eye on @SungrazerComets.) "

[Duke of Buckingham]

Curiosity goes to the flow
Mars rover appears to have landed in a dry streambed
By Nadia Drake
Web edition : Thursday, September 27th, 2012

It seems NASA chose the Curiosity rover’s destination wisely: The craft appears to have landed right in an ancient streambed. Tasked with searching for signs of life-friendly environments on Mars, the rover can now cross off “find evidence for water” from its life-friendly to-do list, NASA announced in a press conference September 27.

NASA sent Curiosity to Gale Crater because data from orbiting spacecraft suggested the site had a good chance of having once been wet. Still, the speed with which the discovery came seems to have surprised the team.

“It is exactly the reason we chose this landing site,” said project scientist John Grotzinger of Caltech.

The best evidence for ancient rushing water comes from the rocks Curiosity has paused to investigate while wheeling toward Mount Sharp, an enormous pile of sediment rising from the crater’s center. These rocks, called conglomerates, are made of pebbles cemented together by once-wet sediments.

In other words, they’re rocks made of rocks.

Curiosity glimpsed its first conglomerate at the landing site, where retrorocket engines dusted off the planet’s reddish veneer and revealed the speckled bedrock beneath. “There’s a layer there that seems to have rocks embedded in it,” said Mike Malin of Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego. The feature is now named “Goulburn,” after geologic deposits in northern Canada.

Then, after stretching its wheels, the rover encountered another site called “Link,” where more conglomerate rocks were found. The pebbles there and elsewhere point toward a watery transport mechanism, said Rebecca Williams of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Ariz. Smooth and polished, roughly 1 centimeter across — the size of a plain M&M candy — the pebbles couldn’t have been transported by anything except water. “These are too large to be transported by wind,” Williams said. “The consensus is that these are water-transported gravels.”

Eventually, the rover found a rock called Hottah (named for a Canadian lake), which juts out of the Martian dust at an angle, jagged edges pointed skyward. “To us, it just looked like somebody came along the surface of Mars with a jackhammer and lifted up a sidewalk,” Grotzinger said.

The 10- to 15-centimeter thick outcrop was once submerged, he said. “And we can characterize that water as being a vigorous flow, on the surface of Mars.”

The interpretation is robust, says geologist Joseph Michalski, also of the Planetary Science Institute. “There aren’t very many ways by which you can produce rounded pebbles like that.”

But the water’s source — whether melting ice, rainfall, or groundwater — and its duration on the surface are still open questions.

Scientists think the Martian streambed grew from a canyon that funneled water into Gale Crater. Roughly 18 kilometers long, about 600 meters across and 30 meters deep, the canyon — called Peace Vallis — cut into the crater rim, sweeping sediments to the crater floor and forming a floodplain. Had Curiosity landed roughly 3.5 billion years ago, she might have found herself in a stream, “from ankle to hip deep, and maybe moving a few feet a second,” said William Dietrich of the University of California, Berkeley.

And while large, rounded pebbles certainly point to fast-flowing water, they don’t indicate anything about the flow’s duration, Michalski says. “You may have had punctuated activity, or it could have been sustained for a shorter period,” he says. ““It doesn’t mean that it had to stay wet for millions of years.”

So, is it mission accomplished? Game over for the rover?

Not quite.

The rover is still tasked with searching for signs of a life-friendly environment, and with exploring the rocky record contained in the layers of Mount Sharp. In addition to water, the rover will look for organic carbon — from which life could be built — and molecules that could serve as an energy source. “We’ve got a hall pass for the water observation,” Grotzinger said. “Now we’re going to move on to the chemical building blocks of life and the elemental chemistry and the mineralogy.”


http://www.sciencenews.org/view/download/id/345442/name/___
The jagged rock outcrop on Mars known as Hottah contains rounded pebbles that were shaped and transported by water. These and similar pebbles spied by the Curiosity rover provide the best evidence yet for an ancient, vigorously flowing stream on the Martian surface. Credit: JPL-Caltech/NASA

[zombie67]

How to make Hot Ice!!! Crazy


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aC-KOYQsIvU

[Duke of Buckingham]

Our amazing world: Incredible beauty and the darkness that threatens it

By Daniel Taylor

“…and God saw that it was good.”

In the book of Genesis we are given a description of the creation of our world. Found throughout is the phrase “…and God saw that it was good,” referencing his creation. As creatures of God’s creation, this one phrase provides a profoundly deep view into our own minds and spirits.

There exists a number sequence known under such names as Phi, the Golden Ratio, the Divine Proportion, etc., and is found throughout nature and the universe. Leonardo of Pisa (known as Fibonacci) discovered it in 1202 when studying the breeding pattern of rabbits. The number of pairs of rabbits increased from 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, and so on. Each new number in the series is the sum of the two before it. The ratio of each pair equals Phi (1.618…)

http://www.oldthinkernews.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/romanesco.jpg
Romanesco brocolli is a vivid example of phi in nature

Here is where we make the connection: Our perception of beauty is directly related to the golden ratio. It is something that is in all of us – integrated with our physiology – just as natural law exists in the heart of humanity. Artists have used the “Divine Proportion” for centuries to portray beauty and works that are pleasing to behold. The human body itself is proportioned according to the golden ratio. The heavens above also display this sequence.

Marketers know that the golden ratio provides a very useful tool in presenting visually pleasing products to potential buyers. A study from one business journal reported that “…research showed that there is the golden ratio effect existing on stimulus preference which is in favor of the golden ratio…” Web designers also utilize this principle.

http://www.oldthinkernews.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/FIBONACCI-SPIRAL.jpg
The Fibonacci spiral

Recent discoveries have revealed that the divine proportion is present at the smallest levels of our existence. In 2010, the golden ratio was found even in the quantum world. The study found,

“…interaction between spins causing them [atoms] to magnetically resonate. For these interactions we found a series (scale) of resonant notes: The first two notes show a perfect relationship with each other. Their frequencies (pitch) are in the ratio of 1.618…, which is the golden ratio famous from art and architecture…”

http://www.oldthinkernews.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/neutrino-phi1.jpg
Particle tracks (moving from bottom to top) showing multiple electron-positron pairs created from the energy of a high-energy gamma ray photon produced by a neutrino collision. (University of Birmingham)

In the above photo, you can see an electron-positron particle shower. In the process of pair creation the particle tracks clearly follow a pattern strikingly similar to the Fibonacci spiral.

http://www.oldthinkernews.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/mona-lisa-phi-212x300.jpg
The golden ratio as seen in the famous Mona Lisa

In this photo the Fibonacci spiral is shown over the famous Mona Lisa portrait painted by Leonardo da Vinci. This painting displays the golden ratio extensively.

When we see beauty, we know that it is good. As we will see, there are those that find spiritual ecstasy in the complete opposite.

“Dark ecstasy is the spirituality of the Illuminati“

“Dark ecstasy is the spirituality of the Illuminati, and a force that has, to a lesser degree, been implanted into humans, whereby humans have a capacity to develop spiritual euphoria surrounding artistic experiences of genuine sadomasochism, death and murder, war, pain, and so forth. Dark ecstasy’s spiritual euphoria becomes addictive, and it is triggered by art-forms in the world. It is the opposite experience as one has when ocean surf transports one to spiritual joy and levity.”

This is Jeffery Grupp’s explanation of the phenomenon he calls “Dark ecstasy”. It is a manifestation of evil that is universal throughout the history of humanity. Archetypal imagery of evil is the polar opposite of Phi. It is obsessed with death, twisted, a-symmetrical, and disturbing to view for a normal person. This work of “art” displaying a decapitated, rotting cow head covered in flies is described by its creator Damien Hirst as “…possibly the most exciting thing he has ever made…”

The elite of the world are obsessed with this type of artwork. It is a visual representation of their inner world.

“…For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great [is] that darkness!” – Matthew 6:21-23

An article written by David Hamilton discusses the perversion of modern art and the elite that are driving the trend. Hamilton writes, “Historically, there were qualities that denoted an idea of civilisation that gave meaning to culture: confidence and a sense of belief in one’s own people that generated a sense of permanence. This was reflected by the arts elite of the day.” Hamilton continues, “There was a self-belief in our society’s values and a desire to receive them from our ancestors and transmit them to our descendants.”

He concludes, “…now it seems this process is being jettisoned for a vague future that is being artificially constructed by cultural elites.”

It is appropriate that such works of art display death and distortion so prominently, as the elite are engaged in a revolution against the natural order. The perversion of the masses is essential for their survival. This abhorrent element of humanity seeks to spread their disease to the wider spectrum of society, because “normal man” represents a grave danger to their pathological system.

Andrew M. Lobaczewski’s 1998 book entitled Political Ponerology sheds light on the pathocrats dark philosphy, stating, “…the biological, psychological, moral, and economic destruction of this majority of normal people is a “biological” necessity to the pathocrats…”

[Duke of Buckingham]

Interesting

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2012/10/05/obama-romney-should-talk-climate-change-debate/?WT_mc_id=SA_CAT_SP_20121009

[Duke of Buckingham]

The 2012 Nobel Prize in Physics
The 2012 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded jointly to Serge Haroche and David J. Wineland for experimental methods that enable measuring and manipulation of individual quantum systems.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=the-nobel-prize-in-physics-12-10-09&WT.mc_id=SA_DD_20121009


The 2012 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
The 2012 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded jointly to John B. Gurdon and Shinya Yamanaka for the discovery that mature cells can be reprogrammed to become pluripotent.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=the-2012-nobel-prize-in-physiology-12-10-08&WT.mc_id=SA_DD_20121009

Brain Connectivity Predicts Reading Skills
Children could benefit from personalized lessons based on brain scans.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=brain-connectivity-predicts-reading-skills&WT.mc_id=SA_CAT_MB_20121010

[Duke of Buckingham]

NASA's Ironman-Like Exoskeleton Could Give Astronauts, Paraplegics Improved Mobility and Strength

ScienceDaily (Oct. 12, 2012) — Marvel Comic's fictional superhero, Ironman, uses a powered armor suit that allows him superhuman strength. While NASA's X1 robotic exoskeleton can't do what you see in the movies, the latest robotic, space technology, spinoff derived from NASA's Robonaut 2 project may someday help astronauts stay healthier in space with the added benefit of assisting paraplegics in walking here on Earth.

NASA and The Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC) of Pensacola, Fla., with the help of engineers from Oceaneering Space Systems of Houston, have jointly developed a robotic exoskeleton called X1. The 57-pound device is a robot that a human could wear over his or her body either to assist or inhibit movement in leg joints.

In the inhibit mode, the robotic device would be used as an in-space exercise machine to supply resistance against leg movement. The same technology could be used in reverse on the ground, potentially helping some individuals walk for the first time.

"Robotics is playing a key role aboard the International Space Station and will continue to be critical as we move toward human exploration of deep space," said Michael Gazarik, director of NASA's Space Technology Program. "What's extraordinary about space technology and our work with projects like Robonaut are the unexpected possibilities space tech spinoffs may have right here on Earth. It's exciting to see a NASA-developed technology that might one day help people with serious ambulatory needs begin to walk again, or even walk for the first time. That's the sort of return on investment NASA is proud to give back to America and the world."

Worn over the legs with a harness that reaches up the back and around the shoulders, X1 has 10 degrees of freedom, or joints -- four motorized joints at the hips and the knees, and six passive joints that allow for sidestepping, turning and pointing, and flexing a foot. There also are multiple adjustment points, allowing the X1 to be used in many different ways.

X1 currently is in a research and development phase, where the primary focus is design, evaluation and improvement of the technology. NASA is examining the potential for the X1 as an exercise device to improve crew health both aboard the space station and during future long-duration missions to an asteroid or Mars. Without taking up valuable space or weight during missions, X1 could replicate common crew exercises, which are vital to keeping astronauts healthy in microgravity. In addition, the device has the ability to measure, record and stream back, in real-time, data to flight controllers on Earth, giving doctors better feedback on the impact of the crew's exercise regimen.

As the technology matures, X1 also could provide a robotic power boost to astronauts as they work on the surface of distant planetary bodies. Coupled with a spacesuit, X1 could provide additional force when needed during surface exploration, improving the ability to walk in a reduced gravity environment, providing even more bang for its small bulk.

Here on Earth, IHMC is interested in developing and using X1 as an assistive walking device. By combining NASA technology and walking algorithms developed at IHMC, X1 has the potential to produce high torques to allow for assisted walking over varied terrain, as well as stair climbing. Preliminary studies using X1 for this purpose have already started at IHMC.

"We greatly value our collaboration with NASA," said Ken Ford, IHMC's director and CEO. "The X1's high-performance capabilities will enable IHMC to continue performing cutting-edge research in mobility assistance while expanding into the field of rehabilitation."

The potential of X1 extends to other applications, including rehabilitation, gait modification and offloading large amounts of weight from the wearer. Preliminary studies by IHMC have shown X1 to be more comfortable, easier to adjust, and easier to put on than previous exoskeleton devices. Researchers plan on improving on the X1 design, adding more active joints to areas such as the ankle and hip, which will, in turn, increase the potential uses for the device.

Designed in only a few years, X1 came from technology developed for Robonaut 2 and IHMC's Mina exoskeleton.

NASA's Game Changing Development Program, part of NASA's Space Technology Program, funds the X1 work. NASA's Space Technology Program focuses on maturing advanced space technologies that may lead to entirely new approaches for space missions and solutions to significant national needs.

For additional information about IHMC, visit: http://www.ihmc.us

For information about the X1 and Robonaut, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/robonaut

http://images.sciencedaily.com/2012/10/121012141957-large.jpg
Project Engineer Shelley Rea demonstrates the X1 Robotic Exoskeleton. (Credit: Image courtesy of Robert Markowitz)

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Felix Baumgartner : Live Jump from the Edge of the Space ( 4:17 Minutes freefall )

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcvKCDsAHLw&feature=plcp

[Duke of Buckingham]

A Simple Way to Reduce the Excess of Antibiotics Prescribed to Kids

By Katherine Harmon | October 18, 2012 |

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2012/10/18/a-simple-way-to-reduce-the-excess-of-antibiotics-prescribed-to-kids/?WT_mc_id=SA_CAT_HLTH_20121023

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Sandy is already the largest hurricane to ever hit the U.S. mid-Atlantic and Northeast regions. How does it compare with Katrina , which struck the Gulf Coast on Aug. 29, 2005, and is considered the most destructive hurricane in U.S. history? And what about Irene , which came ashore on North Carolina on Aug. 27, 2011, and caused record flooding across eastern New York and Vermont after several subsequent landfalls as a tropical storm? Here are some telling numbers. And see the links below for some of the best sites for tracking Sandy yourself.
[More] (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=sandy-vs-katrina-and-irene)

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Out to Crunch: U.S. Energy Department Unleashes Its Titan Supercomputer
http://www.scientificamerican.com/media/inline/doe-titan-supercomputer_1.jpg
TITANIC: When fully brought up to speed Titan will be capable of more than 20 quadrillion calculations per second, or 20 petaflops. One of Titan's roles will be to help Oak Ridge researchers visualize reactor core simulations. Image: Courtesy of Oak Ridge National Laboratory

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=doe-titan-supercomputer&WT.mc_id=SA_CAT_TECH_20121030

[Duke of Buckingham]

Freshwater Fish Are Dying at Alarming Rates

North American freshwater fishes are going extinct at rates that concern scientists

By Carrie Madren

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=freshwater-fish-dying-alarming-rates&WT.mc_id=SA_CAT_EVO_20121112

[Duke of Buckingham]

Hurricane Sandy: An Unprecedented Disaster

Meteorologists and scientists have long warned that an extreme storm could leave the Northeast reeling. Sandy's October 29 impact unfortunately proved them right

November 7, 2012

http://www.scientificamerican.com/report.cfm?id=hurricane-sandy-2012&WT.mc_id=SA_CAT_SP_20121112

[Duke of Buckingham]

Hunt for Life under Antarctic Ice Heats Up

On the heels of a Russian drilling effort that reached Lake Vostok, British and American teams also aim to penetrate ancient subglacial lakes
By Quirin Schiermeier and Nature magazine

Nestled in a steep fjord beneath three kilometers of Antarctic ice, the lost world of Lake Ellsworth has haunted Martin Siegert’s dreams ever since he got involved in subglacial research a dozen years ago. Finally, the time has come for him to explore its mysterious waters.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=hunt-for-life-under-antarctic-ice-heats-up

[Duke of Buckingham]

Planting Seeds of Dementia

A cascade of misfolded proteins may trigger Alzheimer's

By Carrie Arnold

Researchers have untangled some of the neurological events that may ultimately lead to Alzheimer's disease. Two new studies show that a protein implicated in this form of dementia can infect other neurons to spread disease across the brain. These problematic proteins clump together, which can lead to cognitive problems.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=planting-seeds-of-dementia&WT.mc_id=SA_CAT_MB_20121128

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Meat of the Matter: Are Our Modern Methods of Preserving and Cooking Meat Healthy?

Why steaks could be in, but hot dogs are still out

By Ferris Jabr

John Durant really likes meat, but he does not keep much of it in his refrigerator—there is not enough room. Instead he stores his meat in a large white freezer chest in his shared Manhattan apartment. Durant, 29, opens the chest and pulls out some frozen chunks of venison wrapped in butcher paper.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=meat-of-the-matter-modern-methods-preserving-cooking-meat-healthy&WT.mc_id=SA_CAT_EVO_20121203

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Mysterious Atmospheric River Soaks California, Where Megaflood May Be Overdue

By Mark Fischetti | November 30, 2012 |

Northern California is experiencing the first days of what weather forecasters are warning will be a long series of torrential rainstorms that could cause serious flooding across the northern one-third of the state. The relentless storms are being driven by a feature in the atmosphere you have probably never heard of: an atmospheric river.

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2012/11/30/mysterious-atmospheric-river/?WT_mc_id=SA_CAT_ENGYSUS_20121206

[Duke of Buckingham]

Galaxy Grande: Milky Way May Be More Massive Than Thought

Hubble observations of a speedy galaxy weigh on the Milky Way and indicate that our galaxy is at least a trillion times as massive as the sun

By Ken Croswell

Although scientists know the masses of the sun and Earth, it's a different story for the galaxy. Mass estimates range widely: At the low end, some studies find that the galaxy is several hundred billion times as massive as the sun whereas the largest values exceed two trillion solar masses. Astronomers would have an easier task if the galaxy consisted solely of stars. But a huge halo of dark matter engulfs its starry disk and vastly outweighs it. Now remarkable observations of a small galaxy orbiting our own have led to a new number.

http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/63375main_image_feature_202_jw4.jpg
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=galaxy-grande-milky-way-milky-way-may-be-more-massive-than-thought&WT.mc_id=SA_CAT_physics_20121207

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California Meteor Broke Speed Record for Atmospheric Entry


By John Matson | December 20, 2012

Meteor astronomer Peter Jenniskens must move quickly to trap evidence of a fresh meteorite fall. In 2008, a small asteroid roughly three meters across struck Earth’s atmosphere over northern Sudan, producing a brilliant fireball in the sky. The asteroid’s orbit had been tracked before striking Earth, upping the chances that searchers would be able to locate pieces of the meteorite on the ground. So Jenniskens traveled to the Nubian Desert to recover fragments, as did dozens of searchers from the University of Khartoum.

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/files/2012/12/jenniskens7HR-300x220.jpg
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2012/12/20/california-meteor-broke-speed-record-for-atmospheric-entry/?WT_mc_id=SA_CAT_physics_20121221


Now go and crunch a bit of Asteroids.

http://asteroidsathome.net/boinc/

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Intrepid Museum, Home of Shuttle Enterprise, Reopens after Hurricane Sandy Closure


By Miriam Kramer and SPACE.com

Most of the damage was in the visitor's welcome center, which still isn't open. Nearly two meters of water flooded the building, while the tip of Enterprise's vertical stabilizer tore off when an inflatable pavilion fell down around it


http://www.scientificamerican.com/media/inline/intrepid-museum-home_1.jpg.pagespeed.ce.TZw0OhlYQa.jpg
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=intrepid-museum-home&WT.mc_id=SA_CAT_SPC_20121227

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New Machine Bridges Classical and Quantum Computing

So-called boson-sampling computers could serve as a stopgap until the development of more capable quantum computers

By Charles Q. Choi and TechNewsDaily

A new type of machine could rival quantum computers in exceeding the power of classical computers, researchers say.

Quantum computers rely on the bizarre properties of atoms and the other construction blocks of the universe. The world is a fuzzy place at its very smallest levels — in this realm where quantum physics dominates, things can seemingly exist in two places at once or spin in opposite directions at the same time.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/media/inline/new-computer-bridges-classical-and-quantum_1.jpg

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=new-computer-bridges-classical-and-quantum&WT.mc_id=SA_CAT_physics_20121228

[Duke of Buckingham]

Nice science news by F$, thanks.

Absolute zero no longer absolute; next up, dividing by zero?

By Rachel Martin, TechHive
Jan 4, 2013 2:36 PM

Welcome to 2013: We broke physics.

A team of physicists at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, Germany , fixed a quantum gas of potassium atoms in a standard lattice configuration using lasers and magnetic fields. A quick adjustment of the magnetic fields forced the atoms to shift to their highest possible energy state, while remaining stationary in the grip of the laser trapping field—and that energy transition caused the temperature of the gas to drop “a few billionths of a Kelvin below absolute zero”.

Absolute zero, designated as such in 1848 by Lord Kelvin, was defined as ...

See More On: http://www.techhive.com/article/2023754/absolute-zero-no-longer-absolute-next-up-dividing-by-zero-.html

http://images.techhive.com/images/article/2013/01/brr-100019816-orig.jpg

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Climate Change May Have Spurred Human Evolution

A record of changing climate in the Olduvai Gorge suggests early humans had to adapt to shifting ecosystems

By Umair Irfan and ClimateWire

Climatewire

An ancient lake whose shores vacillated between lush forests and dry savannahs shows how the changing climate may have shaped humanity's dawn in eastern Africa, according to new research.

Scientists studying organic remains dating back 2 million years in Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania tracked how plant life adapted to the regional climate as it shifted from regular monsoons to scorching dry spells. The researchers published their findings last week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/media/inline/climate-change-may-have-spurred-human-evolution_1.jpg.pagespeed.ce.ggiFk_I456.jpg
HUMAN EVOLUTION: Climate change may have helped shape human evolution, according to a new study. Image: Flickr/William Warby

See more at http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=climate-change-may-have-spurred-human-evolution&WT.mc_id=SA_CAT_EVO_20130107

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Oil Sands Raise Levels of Cancer-Causing Compounds in Regional Waters

From carcinogens to acid rain, tar sands development is raising levels of industrial pollution across the north

By David Biello

FORT MCMURRAY—Air monitoring equipment litters northern Alberta. From Fort Chipewyan south towards Edmonton there are 17 sites measuring air quality, but here the monitoring outpost sits across the Athabasca River from the highway that connects the mining town with the oil mines to the north, and just down the road from the new multi-million dollar recreation center. Machines, such as the electronic nose or the laser-wielding robot that measures atmospheric ozone 10 kilometers up known as the sun photometer, constantly monitor the concentrations of pollution in the air. Data about acid rain-forming sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides levels feeds into a Web site updated every five minutes. Overseeing all this technology is Kelly Baragar, an air monitoring specialist for more than two decades who has worked in Middle Eastern deserts and Indonesian jungles before arriving here in the cold, boreal forest that is undergoing a rapid transformation into a working landscape of oil extraction.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/media/inline/oil-sands-raise-levels-of-carcinogens-in-regional-waters_1.jpg.pagespeed.ce.hbDPMjrZoy.jpg
AIR POLLUTION: Emissions from oil sands operations, like the mini-refinery pictured here, have raised levels of potentially toxic contamination in regional waters. Image: © David Biello

More on: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=oil-sands-raise-levels-of-carcinogens-in-regional-waters&WT.mc_id=SA_CAT_SP_20130114


How Humans Will Evolve on Multigenerational Space Exploration Missions [Preview]

How future generations will make the voyage from our earthly home to the planets and beyond—and what it means for our species

By Cameron M. Smith

http://www.scientificamerican.com/media/inline/imported/starship-humanity_2.jpg.pagespeed.ce.rvE5a7NCK1.jpg
Image: Tavis Coburn
More on: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-humans-will-evolve-multi-generational-space-exploration-missions&WT.mc_id=SA_CAT_SP_20130114

[Duke of Buckingham]

The Mind’s Compartments Create Conflicting Beliefs

How our modular brains lead us to deny and distort evidence

By Michael Shermer


If you have pondered how intelligent and educated people can, in the face of overwhelming contradictory evidence, believe that evolution is a myth, that global warming is a hoax, that vaccines cause autism and asthma, that 9/11 was orchestrated by the Bush administration, conjecture no more. The explanation is in what I call logic-tight compartments—modules in the brain analogous to watertight compartments in a ship.

The concept of compartmentalized brain functions acting either in concert or in conflict has been a core idea of evolutionary psychology since the early 1990s. According to University of Pennsylvania evolutionary psychologist Robert Kurzban in ...

More on: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-minds-compartments-create-conflicting-beliefs&WT.mc_id=SA_CAT_MB_20130116

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Fortified by Global Warming, Deadly Fungus Poisons Corn Crops, Causes Cancer

A carcinogenic mold, its growth exacerbated by the warming climate, reached record highs in 2012

By Mollie Bloudoff-Indelicato

http://www.scientificamerican.com/media/inline/deadly-fungus-poisons-corn-crops_1.jpg.pagespeed.ce.T5-Ybd1WI6.jpg
Image: Ewok Jorduman/Flickr

Last year’s drought increased the spread of a carcinogenic mold called aspergillus (Aspergillus flavus), a fungal pathogen that poisons cattle, kills pets and has infected the 2012 corn crop, rendering significant portions of the harvest unfit for consumption.

Whereas the deadly organism mainly affects countries like China and developing African nations, many U.S. states have experienced an increase in corn contamination since 2011. Farmers are likely to see more of ...

More on: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=deadly-fungus-poisons-corn-crops&WT.mc_id=SA_CAT_ENGYSUS_20130117

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Brains of “Super Agers” Look Decades Younger

A key attention region may underlie some octogenarians' unusual abilities

By Melinda Wenner Moyer

http://www.scientificamerican.com/media/inline/imported/brains-of-andldquosuper-agersandrdq_1.jpg.pagespeed.ce.tuYqhfSxOu.jpg

As people age, their brain tends to shrink and their memory gets worse. But what if this deterioration weren't inevitable? New research suggests not only that some elderly individuals retain sharp memory skills but also that their brain remains unscathed. Although scientists do not yet know what is responsible for this special resiliency—or how to help people acquire it—a brain region involved in attention may offer an important clue.

Researchers at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine identified 12 individuals older than 80 years—whom they ...

More on: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=brains-of-andldquosuper-agersandrdq&WT.mc_id=SA_CAT_BS_20130118

[Duke of Buckingham]

Chaos in the Brain

by Lewis Dartnell

Very interesting reading http://www.amattos.eng.br/CURIOSIDADES/Ciencia/Chaos_future_and_brain/chaos_and_brain.htm

[Duke of Buckingham]

NASA Beams Mona Lisa to Moon with Laser

Scientists beamed a picture of Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece to a spacecraft orbiting the moon—the first laser communication of its kind

By Miriam Kramer and SPACE.com

http://www.scientificamerican.com/media/inline/nasa-beams-mona-lisa-to-moon_1.jpg.pagespeed.ce.aH1NICmQn5.jpg
Image: NASA

Call it the ultimate in high art: Using a well-timed laser, NASA scientists have beamed a picture of Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece, the Mona Lisa, to a powerful spacecraft orbiting the moon, marking a first in laser communication.

The laser signal, fired from an installation in Maryland, beamed the Mona Lisa to the moon to be received 240,000 miles (384,400 km) away by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has been orbiting the moon since 2009. The Mona Lisa transmission, NASA scientists said, is a major advance in laser communication for interplanetary spacecraft.

"This is the first time anyone has achieved ...

More on: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=nasa-beams-mona-lisa-to-moon&WT.mc_id=SA_CAT_TECH_20130122

[Duke of Buckingham]

Eat Less by Altering Your Food Memories

Hunger is affected by how much you think you ate

By Jason Castro

If you made a New Year’s resolution a few weeks ago, you probably decided to get fit or lose weight – two goals that pretty unavoidably involve a pledge to eat less. Perhaps you’ve stuck with it so far, through some combination of brute will, guilt, and the deployment of winning slogans at spots of greatest temptation. But unless you’re one of the rare successful long-term dieters, your assault on adiposity will be short lived. Sooner or later, you’ll find your way back to foods that are sweet, fat, and synthetically tinted.

Why do we eat bad stuff, and too much of it?

More on: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=eat-less-by-altering-your-food-memories&WT.mc_id=SA_CAT_MB_20130123

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Why Hasn't the Whole Universe Collapsed into an Enormous Black Hole? [video]

Scientific American contributing editor George Musser answers viewer questions submitted to YouTube's Spacelab Channel

By Eric R. Olson



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4q5Zkv4Kibk&feature=player_embedded

Submit your questions on this page http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=universe-blackhole-collapse&WT.mc_id=SA_CAT_SPC_20130131
and see it answered by an expert on

http://www.scientificamerican.com/assets/img/logo_new.jpg

[Duke of Buckingham]

Bright Screens Could Delay Bedtime

Using a tablet or computer in the late evening disrupts the body's melatonin production

By Stephani Sutherland

If you have trouble sleeping, laptop or tablet use at bedtime might be to blame, new research suggests. Mariana Figueiro of the Lighting Research Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and her team showed that two hours of iPad use at maximum brightness was enough to suppress people's normal nighttime release of melatonin, a key hormone in the body's clock, or circadian system. Melatonin tells your body that it is night, helping to make you sleepy. If you delay that signal, Figueiro says, you could delay sleep. Other research indicates that “if you do that chronically, for many years, it can lead to disruption of the circadian system,” sometimes with serious health consequences, she explains.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/media/inline/imported/bright-screens-could-delay-bedtime_1.jpg

More on http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=bright-screens-could-delay-bedtime&WT.mc_id=SA_CAT_BS_20130201

http://www.scientificamerican.com/assets/img/logo_new.jpg

[zombie67]

About That Overpopulation Problem

Research suggests we may actually face a declining world population in the coming years.

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2013/01/world_population_may_actually_start_declining_not_ exploding.html

[Duke of Buckingham]

Magic Revealed: Cups Trick Found to Be More Effective Than Thought

Neuroscientist Stephen Macknik and colleagues have determined that the famous illusion in which balls seemingly jump from cup to cup manipulates our minds more with distraction than with social cues

By Charles Q. Choi and Inside Science News Service

This story was originally published by Inside Science News Service. http://www.insidescience.org/

http://www.scientificamerican.com/media/inline/magic-revealed-cups-trick-found-to-be-more-effective-than-thought_1.jpg
Neuroscientists are studying classic "magic" tricks, like the classic "cups and balls" illusion. Image: Flickr/Wahlander



(ISNS) -- Scientists analyzing how magicians Penn & Teller perform one of the oldest known illusions now reveal that some aspects of the magic trick are even more effective at manipulating audiences than the magicians predicted.

These findings not only shed light on basic processes such as cognition, but could help advance the art of magic, researchers suggested.

In recent years, neuroscientists have increasingly been analyzing magicians' performances to gain insights on the human mind.

"We realized that magicians were among the best people at manipulating attention and awareness, far better than scientists," said cognitive neuroscientist Stephen Macknik, director of the laboratory of behavioral neurobiology at the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, Ariz. "So we've been poaching their techniques, bringing them back to the labs to increase our rate of discovery."

The latest magic trick Macknik and his colleagues investigated is the classic cups and balls illusion. Examples ascribed to ancient Roman conjurers date back to 3 B.C., and some claim it goes back further to ancient Egypt.

The illusion nowadays commonly involves three upside-down cups and three balls, Magicians can make the balls seemingly jump from cup to cup, disappear from one cup and appear in another, turn into other items and so on. (The modern swindler's version is the shell game.)

To learn more about this illusion, the researchers enlisted the aid of the famous duo Penn & Teller. Seven volunteers watched 10-12-second-long video clips of Teller performing the illusion in front of a NOVA scienceNOW TV crew at the duo's theater in Las Vegas.

The balls in the illusion are typically brightly colored, while the cups are usually opaque. Penn & Teller practice a version with three opaque and then three transparent cups.

"It's a great act, and the trick still works even with transparent cups, because they're just that good — people still can't follow all the movements and see how the trick is done," Macknik said.

"I've seen them do this trick for more than 20 years," said vision scientist Flip Phillips at Skidmore College, in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. "The best part of the whole routine is that, despite the fact that they are telling you what they are doing — they're showing you what they're doing — you're still amazed because you just can't fight the deception."

Teller devised this variation while fiddling with an empty water glass and wadded-up paper napkins for balls at a Midwestern diner. He turned the glass upside down and put a paper ball on top, then tilted the glass so that the ball fell into his other hand. The falling ball was so compelling that it drew his own attention away from his other hand, which was deftly and secretly loading a second ball under the glass. Teller found that the sleight happened so quickly he himself did not realize he had loaded the cup. He surmised he missed it because the falling ball captured his attention.

In the experiments, the volunteers reported when they saw balls get removed from, or placed under, cups by pressing buttons. The researchers also used cameras pointed at the eyes of the volunteers to track their gazes.

The researchers found that while the falling ball did draw audience attention, other aspects of the trick were actually stronger at making the illusion work. For instance, audiences were fooled more often when the magician attempted to drop a ball that was stuck to a cup.

"A lot of times the intuitions we have about the way things work aren't the way things work," said Phillips, who did not take part in this research. "This isn't to put down Teller — Teller's intuition is good. There is research we did on a famous sleight of hand known as the French drop where Teller's intuition on how to sell the trick is perfectly correct."

[Duke of Buckingham]

Hundreds Reported Injured in Blast from Meteor Strike over Russia [video]

By John Matson | February 15, 2013

A meteor fireball lit up the morning sky over Chelyabinsk in central Russia, producing a shock wave that shattered windows and injured an estimated 500 1,000 people.** Although much of the parent object likely burned up in the atmosphere, Russian authorities say that several meteorite fragments have already been recovered, according to the Interfax news agency.

A preliminary analysis posted to the Web site of the Russian Academy of Sciences estimates that ...

More on: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2013/02/15/hundreds-reported-injured-in-blast-from-meteor-strike-video/?WT_mc_id=SA_CAT_BS_20130215


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIMKQihoYRI&feature=player_embedded

About the Author: John Matson is an associate editor at Scientific American focusing on space, physics and mathematics. Follow on Twitter @jmtsn.

[Duke of Buckingham]

Black Hole Spins at Nearly the Speed of Light

http://images.nationalgeographic.com/wpf/media-live/photos/000/648/cache/how-black-holes-spin-illustration_64813_600x450.jpg

Andrew Fazekas
for National Geographic News
Published March 1, 2013

A superfast black hole nearly 60 million light-years away appears to be pushing the ultimate speed limit of the universe, a new study says.

For the first time, astronomers have managed to measure the rate of spin of a supermassive black hole—and it's been clocked at 84 percent of the speed of light, or the maximum allowed by the law of physics.

More on: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/03/130301-black-hole-speed-of-light-einstein-science-astronomy-space/

http://images.nationalgeographic.com/wpf/media-live/photos/000/648/cache/how-black-holes-spin-observation_64814_200x150.jpg

[Duke of Buckingham]

Baby may be cured of HIV
Only viral traces remain after prompt treatment of newborn, suggesting no working virus is left in the girl’s body

By Nathan Seppa
Web edition: March 4, 2013


An infant born with HIV has cleared her body of the virus with the help of three medications started shortly after birth, scientists reported March 3 at the Conference on Retroviral and Opportunistic Infections in Atlanta.

On its face, the case looks like the first time an infant has ever wiped out the pathogen as well as the first time a person has been cured with drugs. The virus was thwarted in the girl, now 2 1/2 years old, with the help of more drugs than a newborn usually gets.

But some researchers caution that it remains unclear whether the virus had taken hold and infected the child or whether the child merely carried the virus from her mother.

More on: http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/348710/description/Baby_may_be_cured_of_HIV

[Duke of Buckingham]

Commercial Space Race Intensifies as Antares Rocket Creeps Up on Falcon 9

SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket currently is NASA's cargo hauler to the International Space Station, but Orbital Sciences is set for an April test flight of its Antares rocket

By Devin Powell and Nature magazine

The Falcon 9 rocket, which made its fifth successful flight on 1 March, has stolen the spotlight in the commercial space race. Built by SpaceX, a young company based in Hawthorne, California, the rocket has become NASA’s choice for hauling cargo to the International Space Station (ISS). But it may soon have competition from a rocket that has kept a low profile (see ‘Battle of the rockets’).

More... (http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=90f5e0bee4733836b4407f01fa9c1eed) LINK

http://www.scientificamerican.com/assets/img/logo_new.jpg

[Duke of Buckingham]

Melting Arctic Ice Will Make Way for More Ships--and More Species Invasions

A new study shows immense increases in shipping are likely over the North Pole and Arctic Ocean in the coming years, alerting scientists who study invasive species

By Lisa Palmer

The rare ships that have ventured through the harsh, icebound Arctic Ocean require reinforced hulls and ice-breaking bows that allow them to plow through dense ice as much as two meters deep, and face hazardous conditions in remote locations for long periods of time. Arctic sea ice now is melting so rapidly each summer due to global warming, however, that ships without ice-breaking hulls will be able to cross previously inaccessible parts of the Arctic Ocean by 2050. And light-weight ships equipped to cut through one meter of ice will be able to travel over the North Pole regularly in late summer, according to a new study published March 4 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Plus.

More... (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=melting-arctic-sea-ice-means-more-shipping-and-more-invasive-species) LINK

http://www.scientificamerican.com/assets/img/logo_new.jpg

[Duke of Buckingham]

Atacama Large Millimeter Array
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/ca/Atacama_Large_Millimeter_Array_%28logo%29.jpg

Organisation Multi-national
Location Llano de Chajnantor Observatory
Atacama Desert, Chile
Coordinates 23°01′9.42″S 67°45′11.44″W
Altitude 5,058.7 m (16597 ft)
Telescope style at least 50 identical 12 m reflectors connected by fiber-optic cables
Website Official ALMA site


The Atacama Large Millimeter/sub-millimeter Array (ALMA, Spanish and Portuguese word for "soul") is an array of radio telescopes in the Atacama desert of northern Chile. Since a high and dry site is crucial to millimeter wavelength operations, the array is being constructed on the Chajnantor plateau at 5000 metres altitude. Consisting of 66 12-meter and 7-meter diameter radio telescopes observing at millimeter and sub-millimeter wavelengths, ALMA is expected to provide insight on star birth during the early universe and detailed imaging of local star and planet formation.

ALMA is an international partnership between Europe, the United States, Canada, East Asia and the Republic of Chile. Costing more than a billion US dollars, it is the most expensive ground-based telescope currently under construction. ALMA began scientific observations in the second half of 2011 and the first images were released to the press on 3 October 2011. The project is scheduled to be fully operational by March 2013.

March 13th will mark the inauguration of the ALMA Telescope in northern Chile. And EarthSky will be covering the event live and on site.

EarthSky was recently selected to attend the inauguration of the world’s most powerful telescope as part of a small group of journalists and media representatives. Stay updated through Facebook and on our website.

Inauguration link: http://www.almaobservatory.org/inauguration/

Learn about ALMA in: http://earthsky.org/space/worlds-biggest-astronomy-project-alma-telescope

[Duke of Buckingham]

Astronomer Locates Previously Unseen Neighbor to the Sun

By John Matson | March 11, 2013 |

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/files/2013/03/Luhman_map_3-2012.jpg

When NASA launched the WISE satellite in 2009, astronomers hoped it would be able to spot loads of cool, dim objects known as brown dwarfs. Bigger than a planet, a brown dwarf is not quite a star, either—it is too small to sustain the nuclear fusion reactions that turn hydrogen to helium. But it may burn to some degree, using a heavy isotope of hydrogen called deuterium as fusion fuel.

Because brown dwarfs are so dim, it is entirely possible that some of them lie very close to the sun—as close as any known star—and have yet to be discovered. But more than three years after WISE (short for the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer) launched, the map of the sun’s immediate vicinity has remained largely unchanged. Until now.

About the Author: John Matson is an associate editor at Scientific American focusing on space, physics and mathematics. Follow on Twitter @jmtsn.

More on: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2013/03/11/astronomer-locates-previously-unseen-neighbor-to-the-sun/?WT_mc_id=SA_CAT_SPCPHYS_20130314

[Duke of Buckingham]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuxFXHircaI

[Duke of Buckingham]

Deus ex Cicada: Are Predatory Bird Populations Influenced by Cicadas’ Odd Life Cycles?

Bird population crashes seem to correlate with the strange 13-year and 17-year cycles of periodical cicadas. Some researchers suggest that the dissonant insects actually orchestrate the behavior of their predators

By Charles Q. Choi

http://www.scientificamerican.com/media/inline/are-predatory-bird-populations-influenced-by-cicadas-odd-life-cycles_1.jpg

As the first day of spring approaches a scientific mystery will soon return with a roar— the 2013 return of the east coast b rood of cicadas, or Brood II. Now a team of scientists hint they may have a solution as to why this brood and its fellows bizarrely emerge only after lulls more than a decade long—to control their surroundings in ways that may lead to crashes in numbers of predatory birds.

Periodical cicadas are the longest-lived insects known. After childhoods spent underground living off the juices of tree roots, broods of red-eyed adults surface in precise cycles— 13 years long in the southeastern U.S. and 17 years long in the northeastern part of the country.

More on: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=are-predatory-bird-populations-influenced-by-cicadas-odd-life-cycles

[Duke of Buckingham]

New View of Primordial Universe Confirms Sudden "Inflation" after Big Bang

The Planck space telescope's picture of the cosmic microwave background sheds fresh light on the first instants following the birth of the universe and suggests that it's about 80 million years older than previously thought

By Mark Peplow and Nature magazine

http://www.nature.com/polopoly_fs/7.9618.1363863233!/image/Planck_CMB_node_full_image.jpg

The Planck space telescope has delivered the most detailed picture yet of the cosmic microwave background, the residual glow of the Big Bang.

Scientists unveiling the results from the €600 million European Space Agency (ESA) probe said that they shed fresh light on the first instants of our Universe’s birth. They also peg the age of the Universe at 13.81 billion years — slightly older than previously estimated.

“For cosmologists, this map is a goldmine of information,” says George Efstathiou, director of the Kavli Institute for Cosmology at the University of Cambridge, UK, one of Planck’s lead researchers.

More on: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=new-view-of-primordial-universe-confirms-sudden-inflation-after-big-bang



Landslides detected from afar

Seismic fingerprints reveal that rock avalanches have occurred

By Erin Wayman

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/download/id/349106/name/_

A computer and a comfortable chair may be all that’s necessary to investigate catastrophic landslides in the farthest reaches of the world. Researchers have developed a way to remotely detect the events using energy unleashed by landslides, just as geologists identify earthquakes using waves of energy.

The technique provides a three-dimensional look at a landslide’s trajectory down a slope. As a result, it may help scientists unravel the complicated physics governing these natural disasters, the researchers ...

More on: http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/349105/description/Landslides_detected_from_afar

[Duke of Buckingham]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/assets/img/logo_new.jpg
http://www.scientificamerican.com/openinnovation/assets/img/innocentive_header.jpg

Solve pressing science, technological, and policy problems and make innovation happen. Apply your expertise, stretch your creative boundaries, and win cash awards ranging from $5,000 to $1 million — all the while helping advance human progress and making the world a better place...

Need a Challenge Solved? »
Become a Solver »

All Challenge postings and submissions are managed by InnoCentive.

More on http://www.scientificamerican.com/openinnovation/?WT.mc_id=SA_innocentive_pavilion_email_B

Help solve the world's toughest challenges. Win cash prizes! register now on https://webmail.netcabo.pt/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://links.email.scientificamerican.com/ctt?kn=16%26ms=NDEyMzk4MTAS1%26r=MzYyMTI2NTIxNTES1 %26b=0%26j=MTgzMDEyMTY2S0%26mt=1%26rt=0

[Duke of Buckingham]

http://www.sciencenews.org/code/images/logo_top.png
http://www.sciencenews.org/code/images/logo_bottom.png

Alzheimer plaque components fight inflammation
In mice, bits of proteins can treat condition resembling multiple sclerosis

By Nathan Seppa
Web edition: April 3, 2013

Tiny components of amyloid plaques, the notorious protein clumps found littering the brains of people with Alzheimer’s disease, might fight inflammation. Researchers report that several of these sticky protein fragments, or peptides, glom onto inflammatory compounds and reverse paralysis in mice that have a condition similar to multiple sclerosis. A fragment of tau protein, which shows up in other brain deposits in Alzheimer’s patients, has a similar effect.

When tested on blood taken from three MS patients, the tau peptide weeded out some inflammatory culprits there, too, researchers report in the April 3 Science Translational Medicine.

More on: http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/349357/description/Alzheimer_plaque_components_fight_inflammation

[Duke of Buckingham]

Penis size does matter
Women tend to consider men with lengthier members more visually attractive
By Rachel Ehrenberg
Web edition: April 8, 2013

A perennial topic of locker room banter and sex columns has caught the attention of scientists: Do women find bigger penises more attractive? The answer, it turns out, is yes. But it’s not a purely bigger-is-better relationship. The attractiveness of a larger penis is intertwined with height and body shape, new research suggests.

Much research has been devoted to the male genitalia of insects, beasts, fish and fowl. But man has fallen by the wayside, says Brian Mautz, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Ottawa in Canada who led the new work. The handful of studies that have examined whether penis length in Homo sapiens affects attractiveness have looked at penis size alone, rather than size as part of a package of traits. And research that has relied on direct questioning of women has yielded mixed results: Depending on the study, women prefer longer penises or wider penises, or think penis size is unimportant.

More on: http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/349520/description/Penis_size_does_matter

[Duke of Buckingham]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/assets/img/logo_new.jpg


"Way Too Bright" Supernova Eludes Astronomers

A 2010 supernova, one of the brightest ever seen, has yielded conflicting interpretations

By John Matson

http://www.scientificamerican.com/media/inline/superluminous-supernova-new-type_1.jpg
SPOT ON: Supernova PS1-10afx as it appeared in 2010, with the background light of the sky subtracted. Image: Courtesy R. Chornock et al.

All supernovae are bright. When a star ends its life in a cataclysmic explosion, it emits a burst of energy and light that can outshine the rest of the galaxy in which it resides. But some supernovae are a little too bright—at least from the standpoint of the researchers trying to figure out what caused them.

A supernova discovered in August 2010 at the Pan-STARRS 1 telescope in Hawaii falls into that category. The supernova, PS1-10afx, is so far away that its light has taken nine billion years—more than half the age of the universe—to reach Earth. And at that distance, its apparent glow implies that the supernova shone with the luminosity of 100 billion suns at the source. But whether PS1-10afx is a superluminous cataclysm that defies explanation or a somewhat humdrum supernova that only appears extraordinary because of a chance cosmic alignment depends on whom you ask. In newly published studies, two teams of researchers have taken opposing positions on this question.

More on: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=superluminous-supernova-new-type

[zombie67]

Not so much news, but science video...


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8TssbmY-GM

[Duke of Buckingham]

New Hypothesis Explains Why We Sleep [Preview]

During sleep, the brain weakens the connections among nerve cells, apparently conserving energy and, paradoxically, aiding memory
By Giulio Tononi and Chiara Cirelli

Every night, while we lie asleep, blind, dumb and almost paralyzed, our brains are hard at work. Neurons in the sleeping brain fire nearly as often as they do in a waking state, and they consume almost as much energy. What is the point of this unceasing activity at a time when we are supposedly resting? Why does the conscious mind disconnect so completely from the external environment while the brain keeps nattering on?

See more on:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=new-hypothesis-explains-why-we-sleep&WT.mc_id=SA_CAT_EVO_20130722

http://www.scientificamerican.com/media/inline/imported/perchance-to-prune_3.jpg

[Duke of Buckingham]

How Pesticides Can Cause Parkinson's

Foreign chemicals may prevent the brain from disposing of its own toxic waste

By Melinda Wenner Moyer

Many studies over the past decade have pointed to pesticides as a potential cause of Parkinson's disease, a neurodegenerative condition that impairs motor function and afflicts a million Americans. Yet scientists have not had a good idea of how these chemicals harm the brain. A recent study suggests a possible answer: pesticides may inhibit a biochemical pathway that normally protects dopaminergic neurons, the brain cells selectively attacked by the disease. Preliminary research also indicates that this pathway plays a role in Parkinson's even when pesticides are not involved, providing an exciting new target for drug development.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/media/inline/imported/how-pesticides-can-cause-parkinsons_1.jpg

More on: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-pesticides-can-cause-parkinsons&WT.mc_id=SA_CAT_MB_20130724

[zombie67]

"may prevent"..."potential cause"..."suggests a possible answer"..."pesticides may inhibit"

Science in the news is almost always junk. And when reporters use BS words like those, run away.

Seriously everyone, think about this: Have you ever seen or read a news article about something you are actually intimately involved in? And if so, how much of the story has was accurate? My personal experience is that the news report is screwed up and wrong for almost all of the pertinent facts!

The point: If they cannot get right the one thing thing that you do know something about, why do you think they are getting right all other the stuff that you are not an expert on?


Have you ever seen a TV program, concerning a topic about which you were actually knowledgeable, spew forth anything other than total BS? I don't think I can recall one :-( It's scary! --Malcolm Hoar

Edit: P.S. Duke, this is not a slam on you. You find interesting science stories and share them with us, and that's good! I am just being grumpy about the sloppy fourth estate.

[John P. Myers]

"may prevent"..."potential cause"..."suggests a possible answer"..."pesticides may inhibit"


I agree with you 100%. I've never heard facts being stated by a scientist, or anyone else, using words like "may, potential, suggests, possible, can...etc." Any single occurrence of any one of those words renders it not a fact, but a guess, hunch, hypothesis, or (more likely) propaganda. Never get science news from a non-scientific source*.

*Back in the 80's, Scientific American was actually scientific. Now it's just commercialized garbage with a dash of paranoia, propaganda and fear-mongering with writers who hold no scientific degree in anything whatsoever.

[Duke of Buckingham]

Edit: P.S. Duke, this is not a slam on you. You find interesting science stories and share them with us, and that's good! I am just being grumpy about the sloppy fourth estate.

I always like polemic articles that makes people start posting on it, it is a rare opportunity of deepen things. :)

About the article, I see it as being very carefully once the pesticide companies are very important on the USA economics and very powerful to have as enemy.

I can understand the unusual care that this article has and that for itself is the best answer for our fears.

This is not the first article, on the scientific community about pesticides harming the environment as we had in bee/pesticide case. Scientific American is trying to avoid going to court and having an endless fighting with a giant that includes some pharmaceutical companies. That is how I see it.

The tones of pesticides that go to the rivers and from there to the ocean is absolutely alarming as the plastics that are visible and therefor subject to a better and more objective analysis, the pesticides are hidden on the body of every living things till is to late.

We are harming the environment so bad and on so many ways that now is difficult to say with accuracy what is doing what. Is in that fault that the lawyers and companies scientist come to confuse things a bit more speaking of cause and effect.

I am no scientist but I am very alert to the way our world is going ...

We need to start thinking if we need so many pesticides and so many plastic bags as many other things.

[Duke of Buckingham]

A good one about pesticides on human health.

Human Health Issues
Local Poison Control: 1-800-222-1222
Questions on Pesticides?

National Pesticide Information Center (NPIC)
1-800-858-7378
Exit EPA disclaimer

Quick Resources

Human Health Risk Assessments
Pesticides and Food
Residue Limits on Food

Pesticides are designed to (in most cases) kill pests. Many pesticides can also pose risks to people. However, in many cases the amount of pesticide people are likely to be exposed to is too small to pose a risk. To determine risk, one must consider both the toxicity or hazard of the pesticide and the likelihood of exposure. A low level of exposure to a very toxic pesticide may be no more dangerous than a high level of exposure to a relatively low toxicity pesticide, for example.

More on: http://www.epa.gov/pesticides/health/human.htm a very good reading.

Go EPA GO, sometimes you do a good job.

[Duke of Buckingham]

Spacecraft Sees Giant 'Hole' In the Sun

A space telescope aimed at the sun has spotted a gigantic hole in the solar atmosphere — a dark spot that covers nearly a quarter of our closest star, spewing solar material and gas into space.

The so-called coronal hole over the sun's north pole came into view between July 13 and 18 and was observed by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, or SOHO. NASA released a video of the sun hole as seen by the SOHO spacecraft, showing the region as a vast dark spot surrounded by solar activity.

Coronal holes are darker, cooler regions of the sun's atmosphere, or corona, containing little solar material. In these gaps, magnetic field lines whip out into the solar wind rather than looping back to the sun's surface. Coronal holes can affect space weather, as they send solar particles streaming off the sun about three times faster than the slower wind unleashed elsewhere from the sun's atmosphere, according to a description from NASA.

More on: http://www.space.com/22059-sun-hole-photo-nasa-video.html

[Mumps]

And it's been theorized that, if a hole of that magnitude were to open up pointing at the earth, it would be the end of civilization as we know it.

[Duke of Buckingham]

Astronomers Discovery a Graveyard for Comets

Aug. 2, 2013 — A team of astronomers from the University of Anitoquia, Medellin, Colombia, have discovered a graveyard of comets. The researchers, led by Anitoquia astronomer Prof. Ignacio Ferrin, describe how some of these objects, inactive for millions of years, have returned to life leading them to name the group the 'Lazarus comets'.

The team publish their results in the Oxford University Press journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Comets are amongst the smallest objects in the Solar System, typically a few km across and composed of a mixture of rock and ices. If they come close to the Sun, then some of the ices turn to gas, before being swept back by the light of the Sun and the solar wind to form a characteristic tail of gas and dust.

Most observed comets have highly elliptical orbits, meaning that they only rarely approach the Sun. Some of these so-called long period comets take ...

More on: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/08/130802080248.htm

[Duke of Buckingham]

Astronomers Discovery a Graveyard for Comets

Aug. 2, 2013 — A team of astronomers from the University of Anitoquia, Medellin, Colombia, have discovered a graveyard of comets. The researchers, led by Anitoquia astronomer Prof. Ignacio Ferrin, describe how some of these objects, inactive for millions of years, have returned to life leading them to name the group the 'Lazarus comets'.

The team publish their results in the Oxford University Press journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Comets are amongst the smallest objects in the Solar System, typically a few km across and composed of a mixture of rock and ices. If they come close to the Sun, then some of the ices turn to gas, before being swept back by the light of the Sun and the solar wind to form a characteristic tail of gas and dust.

Most observed comets have highly elliptical orbits, meaning that they only rarely approach the Sun. Some of these so-called long period comets take ...

More on: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/08/130802080248.htm


Bad EDIT on this thread. Simply comes empty, I had to do this way to join the image.

http://images.sciencedaily.com/2013/08/130802080248-large.jpg?1375449008

[Duke of Buckingham]

Hacking the Internet of Everything
Soon, nearly every device will be online. That is both a beautiful and a dangerous thing
By Peter Haynes and Thomas A. Campbell

SA Forum is an invited essay from experts on topical issues in science and technology.

“We live in a connected world” is a well-worn axiom. Even so, few people realize the true extent of that interconnectivity. Networking giant Cisco Systems estimates that by 2015 as many as 15 billion devices will be connected to the Internet—more than double the world’s population. One forecast suggests that the number of such devices will reach 50 billion by 2050, and that is almost certainly an underestimate. Many of those machines will interact with each other without our intervention, and often without our knowledge. When that happens, the Internet of Everything will have truly arrived.

More on: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=hacking-internet-of-everything

[Duke of Buckingham]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/assets/img/logo_new.jpg

The Europa Report: A Report
By Britney Schmidt | August 3, 2013 |

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/files/2013/08/PIA00502.jpg

I have to say, being asked to review a film for Scientific American has to be one of the most randomly awesome things that’s happened to this scientist, especially since the film is about Europa. As a UCLA PhD, most of my friends were graphics and production guys, so I’ve got to try to put in my former Los Angelino-$0.02.

As someone totally, completely UTTERLY obsessed with Europa, I’ve thought ...

More on: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2013/08/03/the-europa-report-a-report/?WT_mc_id=SA_CAT_BS_20130809

[Duke of Buckingham]

http://www.sciencenews.org/code/images/logo_top.png
Meteorite that fell last year contains surprising molecules
Compounds in space rocks like the one that broke up over California may have helped seed life on Earth
By Andrew Grant
Web edition: September 9, 2013
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/download/id/353102/name/Sparking_Life
Chemical analyses of Sutter's Mill meteorite fragments (one shown) suggest that space rocks hold the molecules necessary for life to develop. Credit: Kevin Heider/Wikimedia Commons

A space rock that lit up the California sky last year has given scientists an unprecedented look at the complex chemistry that probably took place during the solar system’s infancy. Meteorites similar to this one likely delivered the raw materials to Earth that assembled into the molecules of life.

Scientists have been analyzing pieces of the Sutter’s Mill meteorite since it burst apart over northern California on April 22, 2012 (SN: 1/26/13, p. 5). When Arizona State University chemist Sandra Pizzarello and colleagues melted away some minerals with acid, a plethora of ...

More on: http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/353090/description/Meteorite_that_fell_last_year_contains_surprising_ molecules

[Duke of Buckingham]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/assets/img/logo_new.jpg
The Continuing Mystery of the Moon Illusion [Video]
By Philip Yam | September 16, 2013 | Comments2


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXkYjL_7jME&feature=player_embedded#t=2

The harvest moon is almost upon us—specifically, September 19. It’s the full moon closest to the autumnal equinox, and it has deep significance in our cultural histories. Namely, it enabled our ancestral farmers to toil longer in the fields. (Today, electricity enables us to toil longer in the office—thanks, Tom Edison.)

One enduring belief is ...

More on: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2013/09/16/the-continuing-mystery-of-the-moon-illusion-video/?WT_mc_id=SA_CAT_MB_20130918

[Duke of Buckingham]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/assets/img/logo_new.jpg
What Is the Wave Function? - Instant Egghead
Sep 19, 2013

At the heart of quantum mechanics is a mysterious equation known as the wave function. It helps explain the behavior of elementary particles, but also challenges the notion that there's only one reality. SA editor Michael Moyer explains.

More on: http://www.scientificamerican.com/video.cfm?id=what-is-the-wave-function---instant2013-09-19&WT.mc_id=SA_CAT_BS_20130920

[Duke of Buckingham]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/assets/img/logo_new.jpg

Labor Day: It’s About Time

By Krystal D'Costa | August 30, 2013 |

The first Monday in September is a federal holiday in the United States. It marks Labor Day—a tribute to contributions made by American workers to the growth and development of the country (or at least those in a position to contribute without being exploited).

The history of labor day is the history of labor—and laborer rights. Not too long ago, American workers were subject to horrible working conditions. Twelve, fourteen, even eighteen hour workdays were ...

More on: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/anthropology-in-practice/2013/08/30/labor-day-its-about-time/

[Duke of Buckingham]

The Washington Post
Health & Science

Why, in the Jurassic era, an Earth day may have been only 23 hours long.
By Ivan Amato, Published: September 23

... “We naively think there always has been 24 hours per day,” says Thomas O’Brian, chief of the Time and Frequency Division of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). “But that is not the case.” ...

More on: http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/why-in-the-jurassic-era-an-earth-day-may-have-been-only-23-hours-long/2013/09/23/a75c548a-f2dc-11e2-ae43-b31dc363c3bf_story.html

[cineon_lut]

http://rememberthe13th.com/

Anyone got any ideas what this is about?

[DrPop]

http://rememberthe13th.com/

Anyone got any ideas what this is about?

I really don't know, bu tlooks like we'll find out in 1 day and 9 hours! :D Seems interesting to me that they would make the announcement sooner than they originally planned, whatever it is. Usually stuff gets pushed back, not moved up!

[cineon_lut]

I really don't know, bu tlooks like we'll find out in 1 day and 9 hours! :D Seems interesting to me that they would make the announcement sooner than they originally planned, whatever it is. Usually stuff gets pushed back, not moved up!

I hope it's not a bs site. Seeing as nasa sites in general are down due to furlough so I can't check for legitimacy


Vic (mobile)

[c303a]

Maybe they beat SETI to an alien discovery?

[cineon_lut]

Maybe they beat SETI to an alien discovery?

Hahah that's the only reason I posted it here. Figured it was somehow relevant. :)


Vic (mobile)

[John P. Myers]

A new website called RememberThe13th.com is claiming to be an announcement from NASA that on November 13, 2013, NASA will announce a ‘Major Discovery’ that will ‘Shake the World’. The interesting thing about this ‘announcement is that the site is not on NASA’s servers, which are offline due to the historic government shutdown, now in it’s third day.

The domain, RememberThe13th.com, according to DomainTools.com, has a Creation date: 01 Oct 2013 16:16:00

In NASA’s history of warnings, this one coming from namecheap.com appears to be the ultimate prank that will be difficult for NASA to refute given that their site NASA.gov is currently offline. Whether this is criminal fraud in causing alarm to potentially millions of people, remains to be seen. Its possible that desperate people are doing desperate things to attract attention and dupe people into some kind of commerce.

While this is potentially dangerous, it shows the lengths that government operatives and/or private individuals will go, to cause chaos and discredit the alternative media community. Anyway, do your own research and come to your own conclusions about whether this is the ‘real deal’ or not.

Ask yourself, “Would NASA make an announcement of historic proportions and ask the world to wait until November 13, 2013?”

Anyway, chalk this one up to more of the same – discredit the Alternative Media at any cost…While alien life is most certainly real, it appears this website is not.

[c303a]

That had to be an alien conspiracy that set up that site. They just wanted to see how many humans they could be duped into going to. Careful, now they have your IP address and will come for you!:-ss:-ss:-ss:confused::confused::confused:

[Duke of Buckingham]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/assets/img/logo_new.jpg

A Way to the Most Abundant Energy

Viable solar energy has been a long-sought-after goal, but with new and affordable technologies, we might soon be able to make the switch

By Richard Perez

Editor’s note: The following is the introduction to a special e-publication called The Dawn of Solar Power (click the link to see a table of contents). Published in August 2013, the collection draws articles from the archives of Scientific American.

We have come a long way in taming the sun’s chaotic energy since 19th century efforts to create a solar motor. Today we can efficiently heat water and buildings and even generate substantial transmittable power all from this abundant light source.

Our ability to make use of this power source has ...

More on: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=a-way-to-the-most-abundant-energy

[Duke of Buckingham]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/assets/img/logo_new.jpg

United Nations to Adopt Asteroid Defense Plan

Earth is not prepared for the threat of hazardous rocks from space, say astronauts who helped formulate the U.N. measures

By Clara Moskowitz

http://www.scientificamerican.com/media/inline/un-asteroid-defense-plan_1.jpg

When a meteor exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia in February, the world’s space agencies found out along with the rest of us, on Twitter and YouTube. That, says former astronaut Ed Lu, is unacceptable—and the United Nations agrees. Last week the General Assembly approved a set of measures that Lu and other astronauts have recommended to protect the planet from the dangers of rogue asteroids.

The U.N. plans to set up an “International Asteroid Warning Group” for member nations to share information about potentially hazardous space rocks. If astronomers detect an asteroid that poses a threat to Earth, the U.N.’s Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space will help coordinate a mission to launch a spacecraft to slam into the object and deflect it from its collision course.

Lu and other members of the Association of Space Explorers (ASE) recommended ...

More on: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=un-asteroid-defense-plan

[Duke of Buckingham]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/assets/img/logo_new.jpg

Astronomers Puzzle Over Newfound Asteroid That Acts Like a Comet [Video]

An oddball cometlike asteroid could explain how rocky bodies develop wispy comet tails—or just add more confusion

By John Matson

http://www.scientificamerican.com/media/inline/main-belt-comet-asteroid_1.jpg

The distinction between comets and asteroids is in principle a clear one, encoded right in the words themselves. Both terms come from Greek roots—“comet” descends from a word meaning “long-haired” and “asteroid” means, roughly, “starlike.” So there it is: comets are fuzzy, and asteroids are discrete pinpricks of light. The definitions hint at compositional differences as well: comets are icy, which leads them to come apart when they draw near the sun, whereas rocky asteroids are somewhat more robust.

In recent years, though, astronomers have seen ...

More on: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=main-belt-comet-asteroid

[Duke of Buckingham]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/assets/img/logo_new.jpg

Comet from the Oort Cloud Careens toward the Sun

This month Comet ISON will fly by the sun in an encounter that could destroy the object, or elevate it to greatness

By Clara Moskowitz

It’s make or break time for Comet c/2012 S1 (ISON), a ball of ice hurtling toward the inner solar system that will make its closest approach to the sun this month. Whether ISON will flare into a “great comet” or fizzle out is still an open question, but scientists say either way, ISON offers an unprecedented opportunity to understand the ingredients and history of the solar system.

Comet ISON was discovered in September 2012 by two Russian astronomers using telescopes in the International Scientific Optical Network (ISON). The comet, made mostly of ...

More on: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=comet-ison-sun-approach

[John P. Myers]

:) i've been following this comet ever since it's discovery. I really hope it survives it's loop around the sun. If so, it should be the brightest comet anyone has ever seen. Perhaps brighter than even the moon.

[cineon_lut]

:) i've been following this comet ever since it's discovery. I really hope it survives it's loop around the sun. If so, it should be the brightest comet anyone has ever seen. Perhaps brighter than even the moon.

Me too. If it survives past Nov. 28, it will be epic. It'll make me go buy a new f1.4 prime lens for my astrophotography.

[Duke of Buckingham]

http://en.es-static.us/upl/2012/10/ISON18thDec5pm.jpeg

[John P. Myers]

"If the heat does not kill ISON, the sun's gravity may rip it apart. But recent calculations show ISON will survive..If predictions prove correct, the comet should be visible to the naked eye in Earth's early morning skies in early December and throughout the night beginning in January." The apparent magnitude could reach -13, making it just a tad brighter than the moon (-12.74).

[Duke of Buckingham]

"If the heat does not kill ISON, the sun's gravity may rip it apart. But recent calculations show ISON will survive..If predictions prove correct, the comet should be visible to the naked eye in Earth's early morning skies in early December and throughout the night beginning in January." The apparent magnitude could reach -13, making it just a tad brighter than the moon (-12.74).

Thanks for the information JPM.

Outburst lights up Comet ISON; it's now visible to naked eye

By Joe Rao Space.com

http://media1.s-nbcnews.com/j/streams/2013/November/131114/2D9687893-131114-isonphoto-hmed-1155a-files.blocks_desktop_medium.jpg
Mike Hankey / www.mikesastrophotos.com
Astrophotographer Mike Hankey sent in a photo of Comet ISON, taken through his telescope on Sunday from Auberry, Calif., near Fresno. He has been imaging ISON regularly since Sept 21 and noticed a more prominent jet in recent days.

Get ready for a stellar show. The much-anticipated Comet ISON is now visible to the naked eye, according to reports from many observers.

Comet ISON — the potential "comet of the century" — has suddenly brightened in an outburst of activity, with just two weeks to go before it literally grazes the surface of the sun.

In recent months, Comet ISON has repeatedly befuddled forecasters trying to anticipate just how bright it will ultimately become. Earlier this week...

More on: http://www.nbcnews.com/science/outburst-lights-comet-ison-its-now-visible-naked-eye-2D11591258

[Duke of Buckingham]

Comet ISON’s month of perihelion has finally arrived! On November 28th, ISON will hurtle around the Sun at an astonishing speed and hopefully emerge unscathed so that it will be visible in our night skies throughout December. Watch this space!

This page is amazing giving by the second the distances to earth and the sun and also the speed of the comet, a lot of other information is available. Exciting to see the numbers rolling fast.

http://www.cometison2013.co.uk/perihelion-and-distance/

[Duke of Buckingham]

Comet ISON looks fantastic in latest pictures — maybe too fantastic?
Alan Boyle, Science Editor NBC News
Nov. 18, 2013 at 8:07 PM ET

http://media4.s-nbcnews.com/j/streams/2013/November/131118/2D9727403-131118-coslog-ison1-345p.blocks_desktop_large.jpg
E. Jehin / TRAPPIST / ESO
A composite image from the European Southern Observatory's TRAPPIST telescope in Chile shows Comet ISON streaking toward the sun on Nov. 15. The image combines four different 30-second exposures of the moving comet in different wavelengths. That's why the background stars appear as multicolored, slightly misaligned dots.

To the delight of astrophotographers, Comet ISON has gone through a surprisingly quick round of brightening in the run-up to next week's crucial swing around the sun — but some researchers suggest there's a dark side to the shining spectacle. Is ISON's rapid change a signal that it's starting to break apart?

The debate adds drama to observations of what some have hoped would turn into the "comet of the century." More than a year ago ...

More on: http://www.nbcnews.com/science/comet-ison-looks-fantastic-latest-pictures-maybe-too-fantastic-2D11619011

[cineon_lut]

R.I.P. Ison


From the tracking website: Update: Despite there being great hope for Comet ISON, it appears it disappeared behind the Sun today never to emerge again. Comet ISON has been destroyed by the intense heat and activity of our star, the Sun.
Thanks for being a visitor to www.cometison2013.co.uk, Best regards, Nick.

[myshortpencil]

Why was there ever "great hope" that this small comet could survive a 217-mile-per-second trip around the sun at a distance of ~700,000 miles with temperatures of 5000 degrees? POOF!! Vaporized in a nanosecond.

[John P. Myers]

R.I.P. Ison


From the tracking website: Update: Despite there being great hope for Comet ISON, it appears it disappeared behind the Sun today never to emerge again. Comet ISON has been destroyed by the intense heat and activity of our star, the Sun.
Thanks for being a visitor to www.cometison2013.co.uk, Best regards, Nick.

Well that sucks :(

[Duke of Buckingham]

It went in a blaze of glory.
http://wpmedia.news.nationalpost.com/2013/11/cometison2.gif?w=620

http://wpmedia.news.nationalpost.com/2013/11/ison_soho-sdo_nov28_still_1-1.jpg?w=620&h=464

[Duke of Buckingham]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/assets/img/logo_new.jpg
Milky Way’s Black Hole Is Shooting Particle Jets
X-ray and radio observations offer the best evidence yet that, as long suspected, high-energy particles stream from the heart of our galaxy
By Clara Moskowitz

A torrent of energetic particles appears to be spewing from the center of our Milky Way Galaxy, coming from the gigantic black hole that lies at its heart, according to a new study.

Such jets are common throughout the universe, and most supermassive black holes are thought to produce them. When matter falls into these behemoths, some material also is accelerated away, usually in two straight beams that fly out along the black hole’s spin axis.

The Milky Way’s giant black hole, called Sagittarius A* (pronounced “Sagittarius A-star”) has long been theorized to ...

More on: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=milky-way-black-hole-jet

http://www.dvice.com/sites/dvice/files/styles/blog_post_media/public/10968395126_1e3c4e486f_h.jpg

[Duke of Buckingham]

http://images.volcanodiscovery.com/uploads/pics/etna9.jpg
http://www.volcanodiscovery.com/etna/news.html

[Duke of Buckingham]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/assets/img/logo_new.jpg
Safe Limit for Global Warming Is Lowered Dramatically by Experts
Carbon taxes and nuclear power will be necessary to cut CO2 emissions quickly enough to avert disastrous climate change, they say
By John Rennie

Unless significant, steady reductions in the emissions of carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels begin extremely soon, the Earth might be much closer to potentially catastrophic warming than is widely believed. So argues climatologist James Hansen of the Columbia University Earth Institute and an international team of colleagues in a new analysis published today in the journal PLOS One. Their paper further underscores other recent studies showing that even small delays in shrinking the industrial output of carbon dioxide (CO2) could steeply complicate not only attempts to temper climate change but also any attempts by future generations to adapt to it.

Without abrupt action to restrict higher emissions "it will become exceedingly difficult to keep warming below a target smaller than 2° C" ...

More on: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=safe-limit-for-global-warming


Dangerous Global Warming Closer than You Think, Climate Scientists Say
Two new reports lay out the case for fast action and increased awareness
By David Biello

Abrupt climate change is not only imminent, it's already here. The rapid dwindling of summer Arctic sea ice has outpaced all scientific projections, which will have impacts on everything from atmospheric circulation to global shipping. And plants, animals and other species are already struggling to keep up with rapid climate shifts, increasing the risk of mass extinction that would rival the end of the dinosaurs. So warns a new report from the U.S. National Research Council.

That's exactly why longtime climate scientist James Hansen and a panoply of scientists and economists are urging in another new paper that current efforts to restrain global warming are woefully inadequate. In particular, global negotiations to limit global warming to no more than 2 degrees Celsius risk ...

More on: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=dangerous-climate-change-imminent

[Duke of Buckingham]

http://images.volcanodiscovery.com/fileadmin/photos/indonesia/merapi/merapi_2006/merapi_d6432.jpg
Volcanic activity had a burst for this end of the year.
http://www.volcano-news.com/erupting_volcanoes.html

[Duke of Buckingham]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/assets/img/logo_new.jpg
How Long Have Humans Dominated the Planet?
A call goes out for a new global effort to puzzle out humanity's ecological history over the last 50,000 years or more
By David Biello

Want to know when the Anthropocene started exactly? It will only cost an entirely revamped scientific effort in archaeology, ecology and paleontology, among other disciplines, at an unprecedented planetary scale, according to a new paper calling for such a scheme.

The putative start date for what scientists have begun to call the Anthropocene—a newly defined epoch in which humanity is the dominant force on the planet—ranges widely. Some argue that humans began changing the global environment about 50,000 years back, in the Pleistocene epoch, helping along ...

More on: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=length-of-human-domination

[Duke of Buckingham]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/assets/img/logo_new.jpg
When a Medical Test Reveals an Unwelcome Surprise
A White House bioethics commission calls for standards on “incidental findings”
By Dina Fine Maron

In a split second someone can be transformed into a patient-in-waiting.

A genetic scan ordered to test for one suspected condition picks up an elevated risk for a different, unexpected disease. Or a brain scan for a concussion detects a suspicious shadow. There’s no guarantee that those abnormalities may develop into something. There may not even be a treatment or therapy for the resulting condition. The pressing question then is: Should the patient be told about ...

More on: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=when-a-medical-test

[Duke of Buckingham]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/assets/img/logo_new.jpg
Booster of Red Blood Cells Synthesized for First Time
The technical feat involved stringing together all the amino-acid building blocks in erythropoietin, but it's unclear if the team produced a properly folded form
By Brendan Borrell and Nature magazine

http://www.scientificamerican.com/media/inline/booster-of-red-blood-cell_1.jpg

In a tour de force of biological chemistry, scientists have pieced together an entire protein hormone from scratch, and demonstrated that it works just as well in mice as the natural version. If verified, the complete synthesis of erythropoietin, a hormone that stimulates the production of red blood cells, would mark a new stage in the production and study of biological therapeutics.

No one is more pleased with the achievement—a decade in the making—than Samuel Danishefsky, a biological chemist at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, who ...

More on: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=booster-of-red-blood-cell

[Duke of Buckingham]

Neanderthal Woman's Genome Reveals Unknown Human Lineage
By Charles Q. Choi, LiveScience Contributor | December 18, 2013 01:01pm ET

http://i.livescience.com/images/i/000/060/498/iFF/denisova-cave-entrance.jpg

The existence of a mysterious ancient human lineage and the genetic changes that separate modern humans from their closest extinct relatives are among the many secrets now revealed in the first high-quality genome sequence from a Neanderthal woman, researchers say.

The Neanderthal woman whose toe bone was sequenced also reveals ...

More on: http://www.livescience.com/42056-neanderthal-woman-genome-sequenced.html

[Duke of Buckingham]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/assets/img/logo_new.jpg
Iconic Apollo 8 "Earthrise" Photo Re-created 45 Years Later [Video]
A new video simulation helps viewers experience the moments when the image was captured and what it was like inside the spacecraft at the time
By Robert Z. Pearlman and LiveScience
http://www.scientificamerican.com/assets/img/global_elements/TechMediaNetwork.png

It is one of the most famous photos ever taken — the Earth rising over the moon's horizon as seen firsthand by the 1968 Apollo 8 crew. And yet, more than four decades later, details about how the photo was captured are still being uncovered.

Four days shy of the photo's 45th anniversary, NASA on Friday (Dec. 20) released a new simulation of the events that led to the creation of the image known as "Earthrise." The new video was created using topographic data from ...

More on: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=iconic-apollo-8-earthrise-photo-recreated-45-years-later

http://www.scientificamerican.com/media/inline/iconic-apollo-8-earthrise-photo-recreated-45-years-later_1.jpg
"Earthrise," as photographed by the Apollo 8 crew on Christmas Eve 1968, laid over NASA's 2013 re-creation using Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) data. Image: NASA/GSFC

[Duke of Buckingham]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/assets/img/logo_new.jpg
The 13 Most Obvious Scientific Findings of 2013
Here's a sampling of the unsurprising research of 2013—with a few notes on why scientists bothered
By Stephanie Pappas and LiveScience

http://www.scientificamerican.com/media/inline/the-13-most-obvious-findings_1.jpg

Common sense is no replacement for science; plenty of "everyone knows" knowledge has had its legs cut out from under it by a well-designed study. Nevertheless, some research turns up results that don't exactly shock and awe.

Such no-duh research usually has a serious underlying purpose, from the study of why people cheat to the roots of racism. Researchers have to understand the basics of everyday phenomena in order to understand them, after all.

Here's a sampling of the unsurprising research of 2013 — with a few notes on why scientists bothered.

More on: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-13-most-obvious-findings

[Duke of Buckingham]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/assets/img/logo_new.jpg
What You Should and Shouldn’t Worry about after the Fukushima Nuclear Meltdowns
Fresh meltdowns at the devastated nuclear facility are unlikely but years of slow, dangerous labor to repair the existing damage are guaranteed
By David Biello

http://photo.tepco.co.jp/library/131211_01/131211_02.jpg
The old saying goes where there's smoke, there's fire, but steam is a different story, even in the case of a nuclear power plant that suffered multiple meltdowns. Despite fresh worries about a new meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi complex in Japan, the steam that set off this concern is merely a result of atmospheric conditions—and a reactor that is still hot from having melted down in 2011.

Think of it as seeing your breath in cold weather. The damaged reactors at Fukushima are still hot, nearly three years after the disaster, thanks to the ongoing radioactive decay of the damaged nuclear fuel. This is why used nuclear fuel sits...

More on: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=what-to-worry-about-after-fukushima-nuclear-disaster

[Duke of Buckingham]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/assets/img/logo_new.jpg
Our Brains Have a Map for Numbers
It is as if there is a number line in our heads
By Emilie Reas

“Come on. Get out of the express checkout lane! That’s way more than twelve items, lady.”

Without having to count, you can make a good guess at how many purchases the shopper in front of you is making. She may think she’s pulling a fast one, but thanks to the brain’s refined sense for quantity, she’s not fooling anyone. This ability to perceive numerosity – or number of items – does more than help prevent express lane fraud; it also builds the foundation for our arithmetic skills, the economic system and our concept of value.

Until recently, it’s remained a puzzle how the brain ...

More on: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=our-brains-have-a-map-for-numbers&WT.mc_id=SA_CAT_MB_20140115

[Godric]

Astronomers have found the first direct evidence of cosmic inflation, the theorized dramatic expansion of the universe that put the "bang" in the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago, new research suggests.

If it holds up, the landmark discovery — which also confirms the existence of hypothesized ripples in space-time known as gravitational waves — would give researchers a much better understanding of the Big Bang and its immediate aftermath.


"If it is confirmed, then it would be the most important discovery since the discovery, I think, that the expansion of the universe is accelerating," Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb, who is not a member of the study team, told Space.com, comparing the finding to a 1998 observation that opened the window on mysterious dark energy and won three researchers the 2011 Nobel Prize in physics.


A team led by John Kovac, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, is announcing the results today (March 17), unveiling two manuscripts that have not yet been submitted to peer-reviewed journals. Nature released a video describing the cosmic inflation discovery earlier

Source: (http://www.space.com/25078-universe-inflation-gravitational-waves-discovery.html?cmpid=514630_20140317_20193664)



http://img7.uploadhouse.com/fileuploads/19169/19169207df31034a5166e73616ad4bc5d6cdd1ab.jpg

[Duke of Buckingham]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/sciam/includes/themes/sciam/images/logo.jpg


Gravitational Waves from Big Bang Detected
A curved signature in the cosmic microwave background light provides proof of inflation and spacetime ripples
Mar 17, 2014 |By Clara Moskowitz

Physicists have found a long-predicted twist in light from the big bang that represents the first image of ripples in the universe called gravitational waves, researchers announced today. The finding is direct proof of the theory of inflation, the idea that the universe expanded extremely quickly in the first fraction of a nanosecond after it was born. What’s more, the signal is coming through much more strongly than expected, ruling out a large class of inflation models and potentially pointing the way toward new theories of physics, experts say. More on: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/gravity-waves-cmb-b-mode-polarization/?&WT.mc_id=SA_BS_20140321

http://www.scientificamerican.com/sciam/cache/file/095662F4-A604-4ADF-80D93B024A971AEA_article.jpg?05DD6
Proof of gravitational waves created by cosmic inflation is shown here in this image of the cosmic microwave background radiation collected by the BICEP2 experiment at the South Pole. The proof comes in the form of a signature called B-mode polarization, a curling of the orientation, or polarization, of the light, denoted by the black lines on the image. The color indicates small temperature fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background that correspond to density fluctuations in the early universe.
BICEP2 Collaboration

[Godric]

Well then - The perfect storm is brewing - National topics with everything at once and with the last 3 weeks, interesting times ; it has been such a fast escalating.

"Public forums are having a field day debating why NASA has suddenly made the announcement that they are shutting down the live feed to the international space station (ISS) in two weeks. Speaking of the Vatican and dark matter, our videographer asks if something is coming our way that they don’t want us to see. Is this shutdown because of all the UFO’s recently seen on ISS livestream (2nd vid below)? Does it have anything to do with the fact that the ISS is jointly run between the US and Russia?"


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjrUJchRew0

Source: (http://www.ufo-blogger.com/2014/03/censorship-nasa-is-preparing-to-shut.html)

[Duke of Buckingham]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/sciam/includes/themes/sciam/images/logo.jpg


Mysterious Disappearance of Malaysia Air Flight 370 Highlights Flaws in Aircraft Tracking
Air traffic controllers lost contact with the jetliner at the junction of several international air traffic control regions—the kind of fringe location where radar coverage is known be spotty
Mar 20, 2014 |By Larry Greenemeier

There is no shortage of theories about what may have happened to missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. Some depict the flight crew of the Boeing 777-200ER into heroes battling and eventually succumbing to an onboard fire. Others paint them as hijackers and kidnappers stealing off with a commercial aircraft and hundreds of hostages. Veracity of such speculation aside, they all point to one problem—the futility of tracking transoceanic aircraft across international borders when their data transmission systems and transponders cease to function. More on: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/mysterious-malaysia-air-flight-370-highlights-flaws-in-aircraft-tracking/?&WT.mc_id=SA_TECH_20140325

http://www.scientificamerican.com/sciam/cache/file/C71C42B0-73DA-4586-99F4ED0FB51A8BF3_article.jpg?DC410
This map depicts several International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) flight information regions (FIRs). Air traffic controllers lost contact with Malaysia Airline Flight 370 near the region where Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam and Singapore FIRs intersect (marked by the red dot).
Courtesy of the International Civil Aviation Organization

[Duke of Buckingham]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/sciam/includes/themes/sciam/images/logo.jpg


How Do You Hide a Boeing 777?
Three weeks into the search for Flight 370, clues to its whereabouts remain scarce while fanciful theories explaining the disappearance abound
Mar 24, 2014 |By Erik Schechter

Satellite imagery might yet locate Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which went missing during a nighttime flight on March 8. Over the weekend, the governments of France and China said they had identified debris, possibly from the civilian airliner, in the southern Indian Ocean. Australian officials issued a similarly hopeful statement Thursday, but despite the best efforts of search teams, no confirmed wreckage has been found so far (although the Malaysian government certainly believes that MH370 went down in the area).

The seeming disappearance of a 64-meter-long Boeing 777-200ER in midair has encouraged speculation from the conspiratorial to the fantastical regarding MH370’s fate. None of these elaborate theories ... More on: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-do-you-hide-a-boeing-777/?&WT.mc_id=SA_BS_20140328

http://www.scientificamerican.com/sciam/cache/file/463F440E-F391-4C22-AAFDB02E5A84BFD6_article.jpg?D74E0
A Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 takes off from Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) October 2013.
Credit: Paul Rowbotham/Wikimedia Commons

[Godric]

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/04/07/technological-breakthrough-u-s-navy-says-it-can-now-convert-seawater-into-fuel/


US experts have found out how to extract carbon dioxide and hydrogen gas from seawater. Then, using a catalytic converter, they transformed them into a fuel by a gas-to-liquids process. They hope the fuel will not only be able to power ships, but also planes.





For the first time we’ve been able to develop a technology to get CO2 and hydrogen from seawater simultaneously, that’s a big breakthrough,” she said, adding that the fuel “doesn’t look or smell very different.





Drawbacks? Only one, it seems: researchers warn it will be at least a decade before US ships are able to produce their own fuel on board.




Once it becomes a reality and feasible for the civilian population I wonder what kind of maritime type communities might evolve (waterworld?) and how long before the salt tax is implemented?

[zombie67]

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/04/07/technological-breakthrough-u-s-navy-says-it-can-now-convert-seawater-into-fuel/
and how long before the salt tax is implemented?

Sorta the reverse of a salary....get it? ;)

[Fire$torm]

Let's see. Global Corps and Governments have been hording large caches of fresh water. Many have been doing this for years, maybe decades. Now the military wants dibs on the sea water.

This is going to work out just dandy for the "little guy". Globally speaking.

[Slicker]

LOL. I used to teach my third graders how to turn water into hydrogen and oxygen with a battery, a couple wires and some test tubes. Good to know that it has taken the US government 30 years to finally read a 3rd grade science book and consider it a huge discovery. Next thing you know, they will discover that they can separate the salt from seawater via evaporation. I sure hope the government run health care system won't mean that we have to go back to being treated via medical science from the 80's as well.

[Mumps]

Keep in mind, the "exciting" part of this is separating sea water into Hydrogen and CO2, not simply Hydrogen and Oxygen. After separating the Hydrogen from the Oxygen, they need another step to reclaim the CO2 that seawater traps in order to basically recreate "gasoline" from the seawater. Diesel fueled engines don't do very well at burning Hydrogen/Oxygen mixes as fuel, so getting the Carbon element, as well as the liquification part, from the same source is where the trick is.

[Duke of Buckingham]

Gobekli Tepe: The World’s First Temple?
Predating Stonehenge by 6,000 years, Turkey's stunning Gobekli Tepe upends the conventional view of the rise of civilization
By Andrew Curry
Smithsonian Magazine
November 2008

Six miles from Urfa, an ancient city in southeastern Turkey, Klaus Schmidt has made one of the most startling archaeological discoveries of our time: massive carved stones about 11,000 years old, crafted and arranged by prehistoric people who had not yet developed metal tools or even pottery. The megaliths predate Stonehenge by some 6,000 years. The place is called Gobekli Tepe, and Schmidt, a German archaeologist who has been working here more than a decade, is convinced it's the site of the world's oldest temple.


Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/gobekli-tepe-the-worlds-first-temple-83613665/#Jrc3j3v5iCOtsI7x.99
Follow us: @SmithsonianMag on Twitter

[Godric]

Glow In The Dark Roads Make Debut In Netherlands


http://img3.uploadhouse.com/fileuploads/19277/192778538717f88d5cad23b76708087f73c20c40.jpg


Glow in the dark lane markings have debuted in Netherlands, they've been described as fairytale like. They're created by mixing a photo luminescent powder in with the paint that glows in the dark for up to 10 hours after charging in the daylight.


Light-absorbing glow-in-the-dark road markings have replaced streetlights on a 500m stretch of highway in the Netherlands. Studio Roosegaarde promised us the design back in 2012, and after cutting through rather a lot of government red tape we can finally see the finished product.
One Netherlands news report said, "It looks like you are driving through a fairytale," which pretty much sums up this extraordinary project. The design studio like to bring technology and design to the real world, with practical and beautiful results.


http://img6.uploadhouse.com/fileuploads/19277/19277886604edb6c5fbd79197bcbde9e090a6bf5.jpg

The glow in the dark design also includes weather warnings, they appear at certain temperature levels. I like the look and it makes sense to utilize technology like this to warn about upcoming hazardous road conditions, it will probably end up saving some lives.

http://img5.uploadhouse.com/fileuploads/19277/192778851c24de37b749ff8dc1b717bc10b1ff75.jpg


Back in October 2012, Daan Roosegaarde, the studio's founder and lead designer, told us: "One day I was sitting in my car in the Netherlands, and I was amazed by these roads we spend millions on but no one seems to care what they look like and how they behave.
I started imagining this Route 66 of the future where technology jumps out of the computer screen and becomes part of us."

I'm not sure about it becoming part of us, lol. Sometimes it can be very difficult to see the lane markings when it's dark or stormy out. I wonder how the paint will hold up, it will be interesting to see if the use of this paint takes off outside of the Netherlands.
Full article


This technology will eventually also be used on streetlights in the Netherlands, and will end up saving money on by lowering energy use.



The Sunday Telegraph reported that, back in 2011, England’s Highway Agency shut off a significant amount of the country’s streetlights overnight in order to meet a carbon emissions goal. The mass turn-off ended up saving the agency about $668,000 (or £400,000). Another of the country’s councils estimated that setting one-third of England’s streetlights to either turn off during a certain period of time, or allowing them to be dimmed, would save around $1,337,000 (or £800,000) per year.

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/180446-eerie-glow-in-the-dark-roads-replace-streetlights-in-netherlands-to-save-money-energy

[Justgeo1]

That could be very helpful in foggy conditions or anytime it's hard to see the road. Might be nice to have in the Seattle area... if it doesn't wash off too fast... :P

[c303a]

That could be very helpful in foggy conditions or anytime it's hard to see the road. Might be nice to have in the Seattle area... if it doesn't wash off too fast... :P

Does Seattle have enough sunshine to get the paint to show? I remember being at Ft. Lewis and seeing an awful lot of rain and fog. :p:p:p

[Godric]

All I can think of is TRON!
And this would be my ride....
http://img8.uploadhouse.com/fileuploads/19283/19283608d078651c13fade9991b31618e60dd197.jpg

:cool:

[Duke of Buckingham]

All I can think of is TRON!
And this would be my ride....
http://img8.uploadhouse.com/fileuploads/19283/19283608d078651c13fade9991b31618e60dd197.jpg

:cool:

A ride
http://cl.jroo.me/z3/H/k/K/d/a.aaa-Thats-Why-You-Shouldnt-Ride-.jpg

[Godric]

A ride
http://cl.jroo.me/z3/H/k/K/d/a.aaa-Thats-Why-You-Shouldnt-Ride-.jpg
X_X
=))=))=))

[Godric]

Technology Changing So Quickly, The Old Is Forgotten

This made me feel old, the current generation of preteens don't even know about Walkmans.
http://img1.uploadhouse.com/fileuploads/19284/19284361931668555512465dec886ffdd34bc4c6.gif



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uk_vV-JRZ6E#t=108

[Justgeo1]

Does Seattle have enough sunshine to get the paint to show? I remember being at Ft. Lewis and seeing an awful lot of rain and fog. :p:p:p

Too true, unless the paint saves all the energy from our short summers, it might not work up here in the Pacific Northwet! :)

[Duke of Buckingham]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/sciam/includes/themes/sciam/images/logo.jpg


Twin Earth May Be Better Than Earth for Life
By Michael Moyer | April 17, 2014

Pseudo-Earths are out there. That’s the message of today’s exciting announcement that a planet about the same size as Earth lives in its star’s habitable zone—the temperate region around a star where liquid water might flow. “For me, the impact is to prove that such planets really do exist,” said David Charbonneau, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Nature.

It’s an article of faith that the planets most likely to harbor life are ... More on: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2014/04/17/superhabitable-world/

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/files/2014/04/quintana4HR.jpg
Artist's vision of Kepler-186f
Image courtesy NASA Ames/SETI Institute/JPL-Caltech

[Godric]

Realistically, the universe is too vast and it's probably not too far off in our distant future that we find out there are many Earth-Twins, and not too far off from that time, we may find they are booming with life.

[Godric]

"Humans have been enjoying alcohol for thousands of years in a variety of forms, but one aspect has always remained constant: it was liquid. Inventor Mark Phillips has created a product that could revolutionize what we think about cocktails and gives a whole new meaning to ‘dry martini’: powdered alcohol. The product, called Palcohol, has just gained approval from the U.S. Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB).
http://img9.uploadhouse.com/fileuploads/19305/19305529fe94d40cfdfd3b27c0697602e52f85b9.jpg




To turn Palcohol into your favorite adult beverage, you just add the powdered alcohol (which comes in a package sort of like a sugar packet) to five ounces of water. It currently comes in six varieties: rum, vodka, cosmopolitan, mojito, margarita, and lemon drop. Swapping out the water for a different mixer (such as soda or juice) can personalize the drink to suit an individual’s taste preference.


Many are excited because Palcohol could be discretely brought in to places where liquor is not available or exorbitantly priced, such as sporting events, concerts, movie theaters, airplanes, cruise ships, and the like. However, it is for this precise reason that many are opposing its availability.


One of the first questions to be brought up regarding the product was if it could be snorted. The short answer is yes, but it’s a terrible idea. The Palcohol website says this about snorting: “We have seen comments about goofballs wanting to snort it. Don't do it! It is not a responsible or smart way to use the product. To take precautions against this action, we've added volume to the powder so it would take more than a half of a cup of powder to get the equivalent of one drink up your nose. You would feel a lot of pain for very little gain. Just use it the right way."

Read more and see the update at http://www.iflscience.com/chemistry/powdered-alcohol-coming-us#eOQbL9rCrpG1DSLY.99



I am glad they made so it couldn't be abused by adding extra powder otherwise I could see all kinds of things going bad.

[Fire$torm]

....I am glad they made so it couldn't be abused by adding extra powder otherwise I could see all kinds of things going bad.

Some people are just plain crazy.

Short Story:

My very 1st full time job was in a machine shop. We made lots of different parts using 20~40 ton punch presses, multi-spindle indexing bar stock milling machines, etc...

Anyhoot, I worked in the "Deburring & Degreasing" dept. with another guy fresh out of the army, I'll call him Fred (as I don't remember names well). The shops small parts immersion/vapor degreaser used Trichloroethylene (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trichloroethylene). One day Fred says he wants to get high but he doesn't have any weed. Soooo, Fred walks over to the degreaser's vapor chamber, the section of the machine that heats the trichlor to vaporize it, opens it and starts inhaling the trichlor!!!

[Justgeo1]

Some people are just plain crazy.

Short Story:

My very 1st full time job was in a machine shop. We made lots of different parts using 20~40 ton punch presses, multi-spindle indexing bar stock milling machines, etc...

Anyhoot, I worked in the "Deburring & Degreasing" dept. with another guy fresh out of the army, I'll call him Fred (as I don't remember names well). The shops small parts immersion/vapor degreaser used Trichloroethylene (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trichloroethylene). One day Fred says he wants to get high but he doesn't have any weed. Soooo, Fred walks over to the degreaser's vapor chamber, the section of the machine that heats the trichlor to vaporize it, opens it and starts inhaling the trichlor!!!


And that crap is so nasty! It will strip paint off of your car or anything else it touches and the skin off your body! When I worked in a shop, my job was dealing with all the hazmat crap... I hated trying to handle that stuff... breathing it could kill!

[Duke of Buckingham]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/sciam/includes/themes/sciam/images/logo.jpg
Antibiotic Resistance Is Now Rife across the Entire Globe
A first-ever World Health Organization assessment of the growing problem calls for rapid changes to avoid the misery and deaths of a potential "post-antibiotic era"
Apr 30, 2014 |By Dina Fine Maron

http://www.scientificamerican.com/sciam/cache/file/453A5179-65A3-4EF0-9F0C3D7831CDEB08_article.jpg?22269
Image: FDA

Dangerous antibiotic-resistant bacteria and other pathogens have now emerged in every part of the world and threaten to roll back a century of medical advances. That’s the message from the World Health Organization in its first global report on this growing problem, which draws on drug-resistance data in 114 countries.

“A post antibiotic-era—in which common infections and minor injuries can kill—far from being an apocalyptic fantasy, is instead a very real possibility for the 21st century,” wrote Keiji Fukuda, WHO’s ...

Read More on http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/antibiotic-resistance-is-now-rife-across-the-globe/?&WT.mc_id=SA_EVO_20140505

[John P. Myers]

Which is why hand sanitizers should not exist. Corporations push that crap on people to profit on the demise of humanity. Not only does it's use create more resistant bacteria, but it also weakens your immune system since you're having to fight bacteria less often causing you to be sick longer, and die more easily from the more serious infections. Cuts and scrapes will also heal more slowly. Save your life by throwing that shit in the trash.

Sent from my Galaxy S4 using Tapatalk Pro

[cineon_lut]

Some people are just plain crazy.

Short Story:

My very 1st full time job was in a machine shop. We made lots of different parts using 20~40 ton punch presses, multi-spindle indexing bar stock milling machines, etc...

Anyhoot, I worked in the "Deburring & Degreasing" dept. with another guy fresh out of the army, I'll call him Fred (as I don't remember names well). The shops small parts immersion/vapor degreaser used Trichloroethylene (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trichloroethylene). One day Fred says he wants to get high but he doesn't have any weed. Soooo, Fred walks over to the degreaser's vapor chamber, the section of the machine that heats the trichlor to vaporize it, opens it and starts inhaling the trichlor!!!

Good Lord. that is awful. I used to use it back in the late 90s as a film cleaning substance--until it got banned in CA. Replaced with Perchloroethylene.

[Duke of Buckingham]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/sciam/includes/themes/sciam/images/logo.jpg
Is Meditation Overrated?
The scientific evidence is scant for many of the practice's widely touted benefits
May 1, 2014 |By Melinda Wenner Moyer
http://www.scientificamerican.com/sciam/cache/file/C637ECC9-FE7A-4C41-A715CCAB4788AAEC_article.jpg?0C103
Many people who meditate believe that the practice makes them healthier and happier, and a growing number of studies suggest the same. Yet some scientists have argued that much of this research has been poorly designed. To address this issue, Johns Hopkins University researchers carefully reviewed published clinical trials and found that although meditation seems to provide modest relief for anxiety, depression and pain, more high-quality work is needed before the effect of meditation on other ailments can be judged.

Madhav Goyal, an assistant professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins, and his colleagues identified ...

More on http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-meditation-overrated/?&WT.mc_id=SA_MB_20140507


Bitcoin Vies with New Cryptocurrencies as Coin of the Cyber Realm
As hundreds of “altcoin” knockoffs are minted online, bitcoins no longer dominate as the principal form of digital currency
Apr 29, 2014 |By Morgen E. Peck

At a bitcoin conference in Miami this January, Jeffrey Tucker, a laissez-faire economist and libertarian icon, made an unexpected observation. “There are people in this room who would think bitcoin is a little old-fashioned,” he quipped. Well, that was fast. After all, it was only five years ago that bitcoin appeared on the scene and provided the world with the first open-source, decentralized alternative to government controlled currencies. And it’s really only in the last year that bitcoin has begun to gain traction as a payment option.

Now bitcoin faces competition. Hundreds of bitcoin knockoffs—“altcoins,” as they are commonly called—have been built.

The software that underpins bitcoin is ...

More on http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bitcoin-vies-with-new-cryptocurrencies-as-coin-of-the-cyber-realm/
http://www.scientificamerican.com/sciam/cache/file/D5E244BC-716D-4B00-B86F25D62FFD59DC_article.jpg?1230E
Hundreds of bitcoin knockoffs—“altcoins,” as they are commonly called—have been built.
Credit: Casacius via Wikimedia Commons

[Duke of Buckingham]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/sciam/includes/themes/sciam/images/logo.jpg
Sonar Spots Invisible Arctic Oil Spills
Boom in Arctic Ocean drilling means hazardous leaks under ice, hidden from sight—but not from sound
May 7, 2014 |By Josh Fischman
http://www.scientificamerican.com/sciam/cache/file/C4371093-D8F0-4E9A-ADF147D1141FDDCA_article.jpg?3797C
The next big oil spill could be out of sight. Climate warming has packs of Arctic sea ice in retreat, opening up vast areas for oil and gas drilling. That is posing a new problem for spill detectors: There is still a lot of ice in the region, and people cannot see through it. Remember that giant oil slick on the surface of the Gulf of Mexico after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig blowout? Off the north coast of Alaska that kind of slick would likely be shielded by miles of drifting ice. “The risk of a serious oil spill in the Arctic is escalating,” the National Research Council warned in a report just last month. And, the council added, the U.S. is not ready to respond.
One answer could be ...
More on http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/sonar-spots-invisible-arctic-oil-spills/?&WT.mc_id=SA_ENGYSUS_20140508

[Duke of Buckingham]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/sciam/includes/themes/sciam/images/logo.jpg
When Will We Find Dark Matter?
One of the most fundamental but elusive constituents of the cosmos could soon be cornered
May 16, 2014 |By Clara Moskowitz
http://www.scientificamerican.com/sciam/cache/file/2E70449C-07E4-4C2A-A789D55D9D5DB104_article.jpg?490BE
This Fermi map of the Milky Way center shows an overabundance of gamma-rays (red indicates the greatest number) that cannot be explained by conventional sources.
T. Linden, Univ. of Chicago

Scientists are playing a dogged game of hide-and-seek with one of the universe’s most plentiful components: dark matter. So far, dark matter continues to hide as scientists still seek. No one knows what comprises this invisible form of matter, but a leading candidate is a type of particle called a WIMP (weakly interacting massive particle). WIMPs are appealing because although they themselves neither radiate nor reflect light, they might produce other particles that do.

WIMPs might be the same as anti-WIMPs, meaning that they are their own antimatter counterparts. If this is the case, when two WIMPs collide they would destroy each other ...

More on http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/when-will-we-find-dark-matter/?&WT.mc_id=SA_SPC_20140522

[Duke of Buckingham]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/sciam/includes/themes/sciam/images/logo.jpg
The Brazilian Banes: A World Cup Disease Guide
A global network of clinicians assess the most common diseases among travelers to Brazil, and the winner is surprising
May 20, 2014 |By Nsikan Akpan
http://www.scientificamerican.com/sciam/cache/file/A7DA39E1-589C-4BBD-94CCAC2D80FA5048_article.jpg?7AFD3
World Cup fans should pack bug spray when visiting the Arena Amazônia in Manaus, Brasil, which sits squarely in a hotbed for yellow fever and malaria. Source: Portal Da Copa/Creative Commons
Credit: Portal da Copa via Wikimedia Commons

Stadiums quaked as U.S. soccer fans urged their men’s national team toward their successful qualification for the upcoming FIFA World Cup. Many of these supporters will soon descend on Brazil. There they will be joined by an estimated 600,000 revelers from around the globe. Unfortunately, these travelers may catch far more than the beautiful game.

To forewarn tourists of disease threats in Brazil, a new study led by Harvard University scientists has assessed the illnesses most often contracted during journeys to the South American nation. Researchers studied ...

More on http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-brazilian-banes-a-world-cup-disease-guide1/?&WT.mc_id=SA_SP_20140527

[Duke of Buckingham]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/sciam/includes/themes/sciam/images/logo.jpg
A Meta-Law to Rule Them All: Physicists Devise a “Theory of Everything”
“Constructor theory” unites in one framework how information is processed in the classical and quantum realms
May 26, 2014 |By Zeeya Merali

http://www.scientificamerican.com/sciam/cache/file/75C87EC0-B2E2-46EF-8E85FB66BBFB7189_article.png?D7974
Painted portrait of Claude Shannon, the "father of information theory".
Credit: Flickr/thierry ehrmann

“Once you have eliminated the impossible,” the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes famously opined, “whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” That adage forms the foundational principle of “constructor theory”—a candidate “theory of everything” first sketched out by David Deutsch, a quantum physicist at the University of Oxford, in 2012. His aim was to find a framework that could encompass all physical theories by ...

More on http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-meta-law-to-rule-them-all-physicists-devise-a-theory-of-everything/?&WT.mc_id=SA_BS_20140530

[Duke of Buckingham]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/sciam/includes/themes/sciam/images/logo.jpg
Secret Clinical Trial Data to Go Public
Drug companies have begun to share their clinical trial data. The long-overdue shift heralds a new era in medicine
Jun 1, 2014 |By The Editors
http://www.scientificamerican.com/sciam/cache/file/EBC98756-4C22-41D4-A81521583006615E_article.jpg?EF75F
How well does a prescription drug work? It can be hard for even doctors to know. Pharmaceutical companies frequently withhold the results of negative or inconclusive trials. Without a full accounting, a physician who wants to counsel a patient about whether a drug works better than a sugar pill is frequently at a loss. Drug companies share only airbrushed versions of data on safety and usefulness.

As a consequence, regulators can approve drugs that have hidden health hazards. Clinical trials of GlaxoSmithKline's diabetes drug Avandia (rosiglitazone) and Merck's anti-inflammatory Vioxx (celecoxib) revealed an elevated cardiac risk from the drugs, but relevant findings were held back from regulators or never published. Far more drugs have gone to market with critical safety data kept secret. These scandals have tarnished the reputation of the pharmaceutical industry.

Such revelations have made the industry ...

More on http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/secret-clinical-trial-data-to-go-public/?&WT.mc_id=SA_HLTH_20140603

[Duke of Buckingham]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/sciam/includes/themes/sciam/images/logo.jpg
A Learning Secret: Don’t Take Notes with a Laptop
Students who used longhand remembered more and had a deeper understanding of the material
Jun 3, 2014 |By Cindi May

http://www.scientificamerican.com/sciam/cache/file/1B910817-3855-4ADF-B07303CDDD1263FF_article.jpg?96C09
The old fashioned way works better.
Credit: Szepy via iStock

“More is better.” From the number of gigs in a cellular data plan to the horsepower in a pickup truck, this mantra is ubiquitous in American culture. When it comes to college students, the belief that more is better may underlie their widely-held view that laptops in the classroom enhance their academic performance. Laptops do in fact allow students to do more, like engage in online activities and demonstrations, collaborate more easily on papers and projects, access information from the internet, and take more notes. Indeed, because students can type significantly faster than they can write, those who use laptops in the classroom tend to take more notes than those who write out their notes by hand. Moreover, when students ...

More on http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-learning-secret-don-t-take-notes-with-a-laptop/?&WT.mc_id=SA_MB_20140604

[Duke of Buckingham]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/sciam/includes/themes/sciam/images/logo.jpg
Doubt Grows about Gravitational Waves Detection
Two analyses suggest that the signal of big bang ripples announced earlier this year was too weak to be significant
Jun 2, 2014 |By Ron Cowen and Nature magazine

http://www.scientificamerican.com/sciam/cache/file/12BFAA62-E948-4F43-82C85CF11B0A23D0_article.jpg?8E7E0
Preliminary data from the Planck probe on how galactic dust scatters microwave radiation, presented at an April 2013 meeting, are now being used to evaluate the strength of signals from the primordial Universe.
Credit: Planck Collaboration (ESLAB2013)

The astronomers who this spring announced that they had evidence of primordial gravitational waves jumped the gun because they did not take into proper account a confounding effect of galactic dust, two new analyses suggest. Although further observations may yet find the signal to emerge from the noise, independent experts now say they no longer believe that the original data constituted significant evidence.

Researchers said in March that they had found a faint twisting pattern in the polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), the Big Bang’s afterglow, using a South Pole-based radio telescope called BICEP2. This pattern, they said, was evidence for primordial gravitational waves, ripples in the fabric of space-time generated in the early Universe (see 'Telescope captures view of gravitational waves'). The announcement caused a sensation because ...

More on http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/doubt-grows-about-gravitational-waves-detection/?&WT.mc_id=SA_SPC_20140605

[Duke of Buckingham]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/sciam/includes/themes/sciam/images/logo.jpg
The New Environmentalism Will Lead Us to Disaster
So-called ecopragmatists say we can have a “good Anthropocene.” They’re dead wrong
Jun 19, 2014 |By Clive Hamilton
SA Forum ( http://www.scientificamerican.com/section/online-forum/ ) is an invited essay from experts on topical issues in science and technology.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/sciam/cache/file/E398270F-9A7A-4B6E-9C240A6B6CC3F182_article.jpg?A0E11
The argument absolves us all of the need to change our ways, which is music to the ears of political conservatives.
Credit: Doc Searls via Flickr

Fourteen years ago, when a frustrated Paul Crutzen blurted out the word “Anthropocene” at a scientific meeting in Mexico, the famous atmospheric chemist was expressing his despair at the scale of human damage to Earth. So profound has been the influence of humans, Nobelist Crutzen and his colleagues later wrote, that the planet has entered a new geologic epoch defined by a single, troubling fact: The “human imprint on the global environment has now become so large ...

More on http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-new-environmentalism-will-lead-us-to-disaster/?&WT.mc_id=SA_ENGYSUS_20140619

[Duke of Buckingham]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/sciam/includes/themes/sciam/images/logo.jpg
Higgs Boson Looks “Standard,” but Upgraded LHC May Tell a Different Tale
A new run at the Large Hadron Collider in 2015 could show whether the Higgs boson matches the Standard Model of particle physics or opens the door to new theories
Jun 26, 2014 |By Clara Moskowitz

http://www.scientificamerican.com/sciam/cache/file/EA4ED09F-8C3C-4451-8746D432487C9057_article.png?7C415
A proton-proton collision at LHC's CMS experiment shows a candidate Higgs boson decaying into two photons (dashed yellow lines).
Credit: CMS/CERN

If it looks like a Higgs, and acts like a Higgs, it’s probably a standard Higgs boson. That’s the drift from the latest measurements at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC), where physicists have been carefully characterizing the new particle they discovered in 2012. So far, every test at the Geneva accelerator confirms that the new particle closely resembles the Higgs boson described by the Standard Model of particle physics. These results resoundingly confirm the Higgs theory first put forward in 1964 by Robert Brout, François Englert and Peter Higgs—and helped win the latter two the Nobel prize last year. (Brout died in 2011, making him ineligible for the award.)

Scientists are eager to detect deviations...

More on http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/higgs-boson-looks-standard-but-upgraded-lhc-may-tell-a-different-tale1/?&WT.mc_id=SA_BS_20140627

[Duke of Buckingham]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/sciam/includes/themes/sciam/images/logo.jpg
Politics Derail Science on Arsenic, Endangering Public Health
A ban on arsenic-containing pesticides was lifted after a lawmaker disrupted a scientific assessment by the EPA
Jun 30, 2014 |By David Heath and Center for Public Integrity

http://www.scientificamerican.com/sciam/cache/file/207241E6-8D22-4054-AC887341FD609934_article.jpg?BFC3F
Wendy Brennan's granddaughter, Abigail Begin, near the family's water well.
Credit: Amy Temple

This story was published by The Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative news organization in Washington, D.C. It is part of a collaboration among the Center for Public Integrity, Center for Investigative Reporting and Michigan Radio. It was featured on Reveal, a new program from the Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX.

MOUNT VERNON, Maine—Living in the lush, wooded countryside with fresh New England air, Wendy Brennan never imagined her family might be consuming poison every day. But when she signed up for a research ...

More on http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/politics-derail-science-on-arsenic-endangering-public-health/?&WT.mc_id=SA_HLTH_20140701

[Duke of Buckingham]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/sciam/includes/themes/sciam/images/logo.jpg
Extensive Gene Transfers Occur in Complex Cells Way More than Expected
Multiple independent gene transfers are now documented to occur in the evolutionary history of eukaryotic life, not just among prokaryotes
Jul 2, 2014 |By Brian Owens and Nature magazine

http://www.scientificamerican.com/sciam/cache/file/DBCC68AF-3C5D-412B-BE0E3B1A4FC4EF1B_article.jpg?C1576
Bacteria frequently trade genes back and forth with their neighbors, gaining abilities and traits that enable them to adapt quickly to new environments.
Credit: Peter G. Werner via Wikimedia Commons

A single gene from bacteria has been donated to fungi on at least 15 occasions. The discovery shows that an evolutionary shortcut once thought to be restricted to bacteria is surprisingly common in more complex, eukaryotic life.

Bacteria frequently trade genes back and forth with their neighbors, gaining abilities and traits that enable them to adapt quickly to new environments. More complex organisms, by contrast, generally have to make do with the slow process of gene duplication and mutation.

There are a few examples of gene swapping ...
More on http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/multiple-promiscuous-gene-transfers-found-to-occur-in-complex-cells/?&WT.mc_id=SA_EVO_20140707

[Duke of Buckingham]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/sciam/includes/themes/sciam/images/logo.jpg
Experiment Triggers Superhot Plasma Outbursts to Untangle Solar Flare Mystery
Re-creating conditions on the sun’s surface inside a laboratory plasma chamber, scientists find surprising insights into solar outbursts
Jul 10, 2014 |By Clara Moskowitz

http://www.scientificamerican.com/sciam/cache/file/C27B7A1B-1FB7-457B-A7260F06D37A6144_article.jpg?33E8B
The Magnetic Reconnection Experiment (MRX) at the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab can re-create the plasma eruptions on the sun in miniature.
Credit: Clara Moskowitz/Scientific American

The sun is an alien place where matter in a state rarely encountered on Earth roils and twines and sometimes erupts into space. Despite decades of telescope monitoring, scientists lack a fundamental understanding of how and why these outbursts happen. In the past couple of decades physicists have tried re-creating the situation on the sun’s surface in the controlled setting of the laboratory. One study recently wrapped up at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) is turning up intriguing results.

About five kilometers north of the main Princeton campus in New Jersey the plasma lab is a complex of ... Read more on http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/experiment-triggers-superhot-plasma-outbursts-to-untangle-solar-flare-mystery/?&WT.mc_id=SA_BS_20140711

[Duke of Buckingham]

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Proton Spin Mystery Gains a New Clue
Physicists long assumed a proton’s spin came from its three constituent quarks. New measurements suggest particles called gluons make a significant contribution
Jul 21, 2014 |By Clara Moskowitz
http://www.scientificamerican.com/sciam/cache/file/AD8C203D-85D1-4BCF-8884475516F1C0D4_article.jpg?42101
Brookhaven National Laboratory

Protons have a constant spin that is an intrinsic particle property like mass or charge. Yet where this spin comes from is such a mystery it’s dubbed the “proton spin crisis.” Initially physicists thought a proton’s spin was the sum of the spins of its three constituent quarks. But a 1987 experiment showed that quarks can account for only a small portion of a proton’s spin, raising the question of where the rest arises. The quarks inside a proton are held together by gluons, so scientists suggested perhaps they contribute spin. That idea now has support from a pair of studies analyzing the results of proton collisions inside the Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, N.Y.

Physicists often explain spin as a particle’s rotation, but ...

Read more on: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/proton-spin-mystery-gains-a-new-clue1/?&WT.mc_id=SA_BS_20140725

[Duke of Buckingham]

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Rats Experience Feelings of Regret
New study reveals rat’s remorse — another way other animals are like humans
Jul 29, 2014 |By Fikri Birey

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Why did I ever do that?... Credit: Thinkstock

What’s the difference between you and a rat? The list is unsurprisingly long but now, we can cross a universal human experience — feelings of regret — off of it.

A new study shows for the first time that rats regret bad decisions and learn from them. In addition to existentialist suggestions of a rat’s regret — and what that takes away from, or adds to, being “human” — the study is highly relevant to basic brain research. Researchers demonstrated that we can tap into complex internal states of rodents if we hone in on the right behavior and the right neurons. There is a significant literature on what brain regions are representative of certain states, like reward predictions and value calculations, but the study ...

More on http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/rats-experience-feelings-of-regret/?&WT.mc_id=SA_MB_20140730

[Duke of Buckingham]

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Cross-Border Ebola Outbreak a First for Deadly Virus
Weeks ahead remain fraught with uncertainty as pathogen jumps borders and appears in Africa’s largest city
Jul 30, 2014 |By Dina Fine Maron
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William Fischer pictured in front of temporary Ebola treatment center in Guinea.
Credit: Andreas Kurth, courtesy of Fischer

When the physicians found the nine-year-old boy he was scared and barely had a pulse. He had been locked in a house with his mother for four days by community members in a corner of southwest Guinea, the hotbed of Africa’s current Ebola crisis.

The boy’s neighbors were frightened of contracting the virus that causes the highly lethal illness (which kills between 50 and 90 percent of its victims) and did not want to risk coming into contact with either of them.

By the time that Doctors Without Borders came upon their village ...

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When Will We Have a Vaccine for Ebola Virus?
The deadly Ebola outbreak in west Africa highlights the urgent need for a vaccine, and researchers say one may be available in a few years
Jul 29, 2014 |By Annie Sneed
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Color-enhanced electron micrograph of Ebola virus particles
Credit: Wikimedia Commons/PLoS Pathogens

The latest outbreak of Ebola virus in west Africa is the worst ever—as of Monday, it had infected more than 1,200 people and claimed at least 672 victims since this spring. Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone all have confirmed cases. An official at Doctors Without Borders has declared the outbreak as “totally out of control,” according to NBC News. Unfortunately, doctors have no effective vaccines or therapies. Health care workers can only attempt to support patients’ immune systems (regulating fluids, oxygen levels, blood pressure and treating other infections) to help the afflicted fight off the virus as best they can.

A vaccine to help battle future Ebola outbreaks may be just a few years away, however. During the past decade researchers have ...

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[zombie67]

Ebola: As a desease, it is pretty pathetic. Sure, its symptoms are spectacular. But it can't be spread through the air, and requires contact with someone's bodily fluids. So the rate at which it spreads is pathetic. In 2014 outbreak, as of July 2014 more than 1320 cases have been identified globally. For comparison, the plain old flu spreads around the world in seasonal epidemics, resulting in about three to five million yearly cases of severe illness and about 250,000 to 500,000 yearly deaths, rising to millions in some pandemic years. That is about 100+ times as many deaths is a light year as ebola. Now that's a respectable disease! Or look at drowning. From 2005-2009, there were an average of 3,533 fatal unintentional drownings (non-boating related) annually in the United States — about ten deaths per day. An additional 347 people died each year from drowning in boating-related incidents.

(most of that was grabbed from wiki and cdc)

Isn't it odd what grabs our attention?

[Duke of Buckingham]

Ebola: As a desease, it is pretty pathetic. Sure, its symptoms are spectacular. But it can't be spread through the air, and requires contact with someone's bodily fluids. So the rate at which it spreads is pathetic. In 2014 outbreak, as of July 2014 more than 1320 cases have been identified globally. For comparison, the plain old flu spreads around the world in seasonal epidemics, resulting in about three to five million yearly cases of severe illness and about 250,000 to 500,000 yearly deaths, rising to millions in some pandemic years. That is about 100+ times as many deaths is a light year as ebola. Now that's a respectable disease! Or look at drowning. From 2005-2009, there were an average of 3,533 fatal unintentional drownings (non-boating related) annually in the United States — about ten deaths per day. An additional 347 people died each year from drowning in boating-related incidents.

(most of that was grabbed from wiki and cdc)

Isn't it odd what grabs our attention?

That is true zombie67, other point of view about virus is the potential for evolution and some seem to have more than others like flu, as an example. Some virus are potentially very dangerous because of that capability of small changes in their DNA. If Ebola could switch to infect people as an air borne virus that could be very problematic, but I agree with you, in this stage it seems personally dangerous in spite of the means it uses for contaminate new hosts.

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What Do Great Musicians Have in Common? DNA
New study shows it’s a myth that a lot of practice will necessarily bring greatness
Aug 5, 2014 |By Bret Stetka

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Genetics plays a powerful role in shaping our abilities
Credit: Thinkstock

At age 13, jazz great Thelonious Monk ran into trouble at Harlem's Apollo Theater. The reason: he was too good. The famously precocious pianist was, as they say, a “natural,” and by that point had won the Apollo’s amateur competition so many times that he was barred from re-entering. To be sure, Monk practiced, a lot actually. But two new studies, and the fact that he taught himself to read music as a child before taking a single lesson, suggest that he likely had plenty of help from his genes.

The question of what accounts for the vast variability in people’s aptitudes for skilled and creative pursuits goes way back — are experts born with their skill, or do they acquire it? Victorian polymath Sir Francis Galton — coiner of the phrase "nature and nurture" and founder of the “eugenics” movement through which he hoped to improve the biological make-up of the human species through selective coupling — held the former view, noting that certain talents run in families.

Other thinkers, perhaps more ethically palatable than Galton ...

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[Duke of Buckingham]

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Net Loss: Is the Internet Killing Solitude and Downtime?
In his new book, The End of Absence, journalist Michael Harris explains why we should save room for “nothingness”
Jul 15, 2014 |By Clara Moskowitz
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Credit: Thinkstock

When it comes to information and connection, we rarely want for anything these days. And that’s a problem, argues journalist Michael Harris in his new book The End of Absence: Reclaiming What We’ve Lost in a World of Constant Connection (Current, August 2014). Harris suggests that modern technology, especially the smartphone, has taken certain kinds of absence from our lives—it has eliminated our time for solitude and daydreaming, and filled even short moments of quiet with interruptions and distractions. Harris worries that these “absences” have fundamental value in human lives, and maintains that we ought to try to hold on to them.

Certain generations alive today will be the last to remember what life was like before the Internet. It is these generations who are uniquely able to ...

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[Duke of Buckingham]

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Genius, Suicide and Mental Illness: Insights into a Deep Connection
The death of actor Robin Williams has raised questions about creativity, bipolar disorder and possible new treatments against profound despair
Aug 12, 2014
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Bering in Mind
Being Suicidal: What It Feels Like to Want to Kill Yourself
Suicide, an “escape from the self,” is driven by a flash flood of strong emotions, not rational, philosophical thoughts

Does some fine madness plague great artists? Several studies show that creativity and mood disorders are linked, finds Kay Redfield Jamison, a clinical psychiatrist at Johns Hopkins University who battled bipolar disorder since her early adulthood.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/report/genius-suicide-and-mental-illness-insights-into-a-deep-connection/?&WT.mc_id=SA_MB_20140813

[Duke of Buckingham]

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Biology Student Faces Jail Time for Publishing Scientist's Thesis on Scribd
The thesis, about amphibian taxonomy, was posted with the intention of helping fellow students with their fieldwork, but prosecutors say the move was criminal
Aug 14, 2014 |By David Reay and Nature News Blog
Originally posted on the Nature news blog
Posted on behalf of Michele Catanzaro

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A poisonous Cauca frog
A poisonous Cauca frog and focus of the thesis by Diego Gómez Hoyos.
Credit: Mauricio Rivera Correa via Wikimedia Commons

A Colombian biology student is facing up to 8 years in jail and a fine for sharing a thesis by another scientist on a social network.

Diego Gómez Hoyos posted the 2006 work, about amphibian taxonomy, on Scribd in 2011. An undergraduate at the time, he had hoped that it would help fellow students with their fieldwork. But two years later, in 2013, he was notified that the author of the thesis was suing him for violating copyright laws. His case has now been taken up by the Karisma Foundation, a human rights organization in Bogotá, which has launched a campaign called “Sharing is not a crime”.

“It is a really awful, disturbing case ...

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Dinosaur Feathers Came before Birds and Flight
A long-cherished view of how and why feathers evolved has now been overturned
By Richard O. Prum and Alan H. Brush

on http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/dinosaur-feathers-came-before-birds-and-flight/?&WT.mc_id=SA_EVO_20140818

[Duke of Buckingham]

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1,000-Robot Swarm Created by Researchers
The tiny troupe could shed light on collective behavior in animals and humans
Aug 14, 2014 |By Mark Zastrow and Nature magazine

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Tiny robots called Kilobots can form different shapes by collective action.
Credit: MICHAEL RUBINSTEIN/HARVARD UNIVERSITY

Scientists have created a swarm of over a thousand coin-sized robots that can assemble themselves into two-dimensional shapes by communicating with their neighbours.

At 1,024 members, this man-made flock — described in the August 15 issue of Science — is the largest yet to demonstrate collective behaviour. The self-organization techniques used by the tiny machines could aid the development of 'transformer' robots that reconfigure themselves, researchers say, and they might shed light on how complex swarms form in nature.

The puck-shaped robots, called Kilobots, cost roughly $20 each and are programmed with a simple set of rules and an image of the shape to be formed. To begin with, the robots are ...

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More Parents Nixing Anti-Bleeding Shots for Their Newborns
Vitamin K injections, given after birth, can prevent potentially fatal hemorrhaging in infants, but anti-vax parents are extending their fears into a general rejection of all shots
Aug 19, 2014 |By Tara Haelle

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A tiny percentage of parents have always declined the shot but the numbers are growing, according to a new study.
Credit: Thinkstock

All babies lack sufficient vitamin K at birth, putting them at risk for severe bleeding in the brain or intestines until they get the vitamin by eating solid foods, typically around six months of age. The vitamin is essential for blood clotting, and a vitamin K injection after birth eliminates this bleeding risk.

A tiny percentage of parents have always declined the shot but the numbers are growing, according to a new study. The research also found ...

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[Duke of Buckingham]

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Is Fluoride in Private Wells Causing an IQ Decline?
Excess fluoride, which may damage both brain and bone, is leaching out of granite and into Maine's drinking water—and potentially other New England states
Aug 20, 2014 |By Dina Fine Maron

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Credit: NYC.gov

Locals call it the “Switzerland of Maine” for its breathtaking mountains and picturesque waters, yet Dedham is just one of a cadre of communities in The Pine Tree State where tap water may not be as safe as it appears.

Like the majority of the state, many of Dedham’s denizens rely on private wells for the water they drink, bathe in and perhaps use to make infant milk formula. But the water trickling from the tap—unlike water from its public water sources—goes untested and is not subject to any state or federal guidelines. And although homeowners are encouraged to get their water regularly tested to ensure that worrisome levels of bacteria or naturally occurring minerals have not crept in, many residents do not follow that advice.

Yet newly available data, released in recent months, indicates that in some 10 communities ...

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The New Science of Human Origins
Awash in fresh insights, scientists have had to revise virtually every chapter of the human story
By Kate Wong

Through the Post Box, up the Dragon's Back, down the Chute and over to the Puzzle Box. Last fall the world followed, via tweets, blogs and videos, as scientists negotiated these fancifully named landmarks of the underground system of caves known as Rising Star just outside Johannesburg, South Africa. The tight squeezes and steep drops made for difficult, dangerous work. The researchers, however, had their eyes on the prize: fossilized remains of an extinct member of the human family. Paleoanthropological fieldwork is usually done in secret, but this time the scientists posted thrilling multimedia missives along the way for all to see.

Cavers had spotted the bones in September while surveying the lesser-known caves of the famed Cradle of Humankind region. Researchers were certain the bones were ...

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[Duke of Buckingham]

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Special Evolution Issue: Humanity’s Journey
Editor in Chief Mariette DiChristina introduces the September 2014 issue of Scientific American
Aug 19, 2014 |By Mariette DiChristina

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Mariette DiChristina
Credit: Nick Higgins

As I type, I am in the cavernlike McCarran Airport in Las Vegas. Frank Sinatra is crooning through the speakers. People are bustling along with their bags, tucking into a sandwich before boarding for their flights and, of course, foolishly dropping their hard-earned money into the ringing, glowing slot machines. I've just come from giving a keynote at the Amaz!ng Meeting, the annual gathering of evidence-based thinkers run by the James Randi Educational Foundation. The irony of the location for such a meeting is not lost on me. At. All.

Not for the first time, I'm marveling at how some seemingly unremarkable primates evolved into ...

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The New Science of Human Origins
Awash in fresh insights, scientists have had to revise virtually every chapter of the human story

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On http://www.scientificamerican.com/editorial/evolution-rewritten/?WT.mc_id=SA_EVO_20140825

[Duke of Buckingham]

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Multitasking Gene May Help Drone Operators Control Robotic Swarms
A genetic variant that keeps dopamine levels high could lead to personalized training and also benefit personnel in ERs and air traffic control towers
Aug 26, 2014 |By Jeremy Hsu
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Munitions are loaded onto a drone at a Nevada air base. Controlling these drones, especially in battle, can pose a complex challenge.
Credit: U.S. Air Force

For thousands of years generals such as Caesar and Napoleon have molded citizens into soldiers en masse by using the same drills and training techniques for everyone. A recent study suggests how genetic testing could enable more personalized training for today's drone operators who remotely control missile-armed Predators and Reapers.

The small study, funded by the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory, looked at how different variants of the catechol-O-methyltransferase, or COMT, gene affected people’s multitasking performances. The gene makes an enzyme that breaks down certain neurochemicals such as ...

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Do You Know a Fat Dog When You See One?

By Julie Hecht | August 26, 2014 |

We’ve all met dogs with a small head and large body who bear a striking resemblance to the people with shrunken heads from the movie Beetlejuice. Some dogs naturally come with this particular head-to-body ratio, but for others, it’s often man-made.

Yes. Some dogs are overweight. Peter Sandøe, professor of bioethics at the University of Copenhagen, estimates that about one third of companion dogs in developed countries are overweight. On top of that, Sandøe suggests that “more than one in 20 is obese.”

Over in the UK, fat dogs are receiving ...

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[Duke of Buckingham]

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Strange Neutrinos from the Sun Detected for the First Time
An underground neutrino detector has found particles produced by the fusion of two protons in the sun’s core
Aug 27, 2014 |By Clara Moskowitz
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The Borexino neutrino detector uses a sphere filled with liquid scintillator that emits light when excited. This inner vessel is surrounded by layers of shielding and by about 2,000 photomultiplier tubes to detect the light flashes.
Borexino Collaboration

Deep inside the sun pairs of protons fuse to form heavier atoms, releasing mysterious particles called neutrinos in the process. These reactions are thought to be the first step in the chain responsible for 99 percent of the energy the sun radiates, but scientists have never found proof until now. For the first time, physicists have captured the elusive neutrinos produced by the sun’s basic proton fusion reactions.

Earth should be teeming with such neutrinos—calculations suggest about 420 billion of them stream from the sun onto every square inch of our planet’s surface each second—yet ...

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Can Humans Cause Earthquakes? - Instant Egghead
August 25, 2014 |

We're digging deeper into Earth's crust than we ever have before, pulling water up and pumping it down. As Scientific American editor David Biello explains, these are just a few of the many ways humans are triggering severe seismic activity.

More on http://www.scientificamerican.com/video/can-humans-cause-earthquakes-inst2013-02-14/?&WT.mc_id=SA_ENGYSUS_20140828

[Duke of Buckingham]

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Jupiter's Moon Europa Has Plate Tectonics like Earth Does
The discovery could buoy bids for a mission to the Jovian moon
Sep 8, 2014 |By Alexandra Witze and Nature magazine
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Some of the scars on the Jovian moon Europa could be the result of subducting plates.
Credit: Ted Stryk/Galileo Project/JPL/NASA

If you have got an idea for how to study Europa, then NASA wants to hear from you.

The agency has no official plans for a mission to the Jovian moon, whose icy crust covers a watery ocean in which life could theoretically exist. But spurred by intense congressional interest and several recent discoveries, NASA is seeking ideas for instruments that could fly on a mission to Europa. The possibilities range from a stripped-down probe that would zip past the moon, to a carefully designed Jupiter orbiter that would explore ...

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NASA to Send 3-D Printer to Space
The machine is expected to let astronauts create parts to order
Sep 10, 2014 |By Alexandra Witze and Nature magazine
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Engineers test a 3D printer under microgravity conditions aboard a modified aircraft in parabolic flight.
Credit: Made In Space

In one small step towards space manufacturing, NASA is sending a 3D printer to the International Space Station. Astronauts will be able to make plastic objects of almost any shape they like inside a box about the size of a microwave oven — enabling them to print new parts to replace broken ones, and perhaps even to invent useful tools.

The launch, slated for around September 19, will be the first time that a 3D printer flies in space. The agency has already embraced ground-based 3D printing as a fast, cheap way to make ...

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[Duke of Buckingham]

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No, Humans Have Not Stopped Evolving
For 30,000 years our species has been changing remarkably quickly. And we're not done yet
By John Hawks

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http://www.scientificamerican.com/magazine/sa/2014/09-01/

Humans are willful creatures. No other species on the planet has gained so much mastery over its own fate. We have neutralized countless threats that once killed us in the millions: we have learned to protect ourselves from the elements and predators in the wild; we have developed cures and treatments for many deadly diseases; we have transformed the small gardens of our agrarian ancestors into the vast fields of industrial agriculture; and we have dramatically increased our chances of bearing healthy children despite all the usual difficulties.

Many people argue that our technological advancement—our ability to defy and control nature—has made humans exempt from natural selection and that human evolution has ...

More on: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/no-humans-have-not-stopped-evolving/?&WT.mc_id=SA_EVO_20140915


Is an Unusual Virus Spreading in the Midwest?
The CDC is closely monitoring the outbreak of a rare respiratory infection afflicting people in Illinois and Missouri. Just how bad is it, and what can be done to stop the spread?
Sep 11, 2014 |By Nicholas St. Fleur

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Credit: BANANASTOCK

A severe respiratory illness is knocking the wind out of Midwesterners, sending hundreds of children coughing and wheezing to the hospital. The primary suspect in the outbreak is the seldom seen Enterovirus D68 (EV-D68), kin to the common cold’s viral culprit.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has identified EV-D68 in 19 of 22 intensive care patients from Missouri and 11 of 14 in Illinois. EV-D68 targets the upper respiratory tract and causes breathing difficulties. First discovered in the 1960s, EV-D68 has rarely been reported ...

More on: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-an-unusual-virus-spreading-in-the-midwest/?&WT.mc_id=SA_EVO_20140915

[Duke of Buckingham]

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Fact or Fiction?: The Ebola Virus Will Go Airborne
Why do some viruses go airborne? Will the pathogen causing the west African outbreak be one of them?
Sep 16, 2014 |By Dina Fine Maron

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Credit: Photodisk

Could Ebola go airborne? That’s the fear set off last week by a New York Times op-ed entitled “What We’re Afraid to Say about Ebola” from Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. Although clinicians readily agree that the Ebola virus leaps from one person to the next via close contact with blood and other bodily fluids, Osterholm warned that the risk of airborne transmission is “real” and “until we consider it, the world will not be prepared to do what is necessary to end the epidemic.”

But interviews with several infectious diseases experts reveal that whereas such a mutation—or more likely series of mutations—might physically be possible, it’s highly unlikely. In fact, there’s almost no historical precedent for ...

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Vaginal Microbe Yields Novel Antibiotic
A new drug is one of thousands of drug-like molecules that may be produced by our microbiome
Sep 11, 2014 |By Erika Check Hayden and Nature magazine

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The antibiotic lactocillin was isolated from a Lactobacillus bacterium .
Credit: BSIP SA / Alamy

Bacteria living on human bodies contain genes that are likely to code for a vast number of drug-like molecules — including a new antibiotic made by bacteria that live in the vagina, researchers report in this week's issue of Cell.

The drug, lactocillin, hints at the untapped medical potential of this microbial landscape.

“They have shown that there is a huge ...

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[Duke of Buckingham]

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How Diversity Makes Us Smarter
Being around people who are different from us makes us more creative, more diligent and harder-working
Sep 16, 2014 |By Katherine W. Phillips

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Edel Rodriguez

The first thing to acknowledge about diversity is that it can be difficult. In the U.S., where the dialogue of inclusion is relatively advanced, even the mention of the word “diversity” can lead to anxiety and conflict. Supreme Court justices disagree on the virtues of diversity and the means for achieving it. Corporations spend billions of dollars to attract and manage diversity both internally and externally, yet they still face discrimination lawsuits, and the leadership ranks of the business world remain predominantly white and male.

It is reasonable to ask what good diversity does us. Diversity of expertise confers benefits that ...

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Virtual-Reality Headset Is Reinventing Exposure Therapy
Researchers are using the Oculus Rift to test immersion treatments for PTSD and phobias
Sep 16, 2014 |By Corinne Iozzio

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COURTESY OF OCULUS

Albert “Skip” Rizzo of the University of Southern California began studying virtual reality (VR) as psychological treatment in 1993. Since then, dozens of studies, his included, have shown the immersion technique to be effective for everything from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and anxiety to phobias and addiction. But a lack of practical hardware has kept VR out of reach for clinicians. The requirements for a VR headset seem simple—a high-resolution, fast-reacting screen, a field of vision that is wide enough to convince patients they are in another world and a reasonable price tag—yet such a product has proved elusive. Says Rizzo, “It's been 20 frustrating years.”

In 2013 VR stepped into the consumer spotlight in the form of a prototype head-mounted display called ...

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How Big Bang Gravitational Waves Could Revolutionize Physics
If the recent discovery of gravitational waves emanating from the early universe holds up under scrutiny, it will illuminate a connection between gravity and quantum mechanics and perhaps, in the process, verify the existence of other universes
By Lawrence M. Krauss

In March a collaboration of scientists operating a microwave telescope at the South Pole made an announcement that stunned the scientific world. They claimed to have observed a signal emanating from almost the beginning of time. The putative signal came embedded in radiation left over from the action of gravitational waves that originated in the very early universe—just a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a second after the big bang.

The observation, if confirmed, would be one of the most important in decades. It would allow us to test ideas about how the universe came ...

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[Fire$torm]

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How Big Bang Gravitational Waves Could Revolutionize Physics
If the recent discovery of gravitational waves emanating from the early universe holds up under scrutiny, it will illuminate a connection between gravity and quantum mechanics and perhaps, in the process, verify the existence of other universes
By Lawrence M. Krauss

In March a collaboration of scientists operating a microwave telescope at the South Pole made an announcement that stunned the scientific world. They claimed to have observed a signal emanating from almost the beginning of time. The putative signal came embedded in radiation left over from the action of gravitational waves that originated in the very early universe—just a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a second after the big bang.

The observation, if confirmed, would be one of the most important in decades. It would allow us to test ideas about how the universe came ...

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Now this is cool stuff indeed :-bd

[Duke of Buckingham]

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Gut Bacteria May Play a Role in Autism
Evidence is mounting that intestinal microbes exacerbate or perhaps even cause some of autism's symptoms
Aug 14, 2014 |By Melinda Wenner Moyer

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Bacteroides fragilis
Credit: CNRI/SCIENCE SOURCE

Autism is primarily a disorder of the brain, but research suggests that as many as nine out of 10 individuals with the condition also suffer from gastrointestinal problems such as inflammatory bowel disease and “leaky gut.” The latter condition occurs when the intestines become excessively permeable and leak their contents into the bloodstream. Scientists have long wondered whether the composition of bacteria in the intestines, known as the gut microbiome, might be abnormal in people with autism and drive some of these symptoms. Now a spate of new studies supports this notion and suggests that restoring proper microbial balance could alleviate some of the disorder's behavioral symptoms.

At the annual meeting of the American Society for Microbiology held in May in Boston, researchers at Arizona State University reported ...

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India Spacecraft Successfully Arrives at Mars
The Mangalyaan probe, the country's first mission to another world, has entered the Red Planet's orbit
Sep 24, 2014 |By Sanjay Kumar and Nature magazine

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Artist rendering of the Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), informally called Mangalyaan (Sanskrit: मङ्गलयान, English: Mars-craft) is a Mars orbiter that was successfully launched on 5th November 2013 by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO).
Credit: Nesnad via Wikimedia Commons

India joined the distinguished club of Mars explorers on 24 September, as its Mangalyaan probe maneuvered into the red planet's orbit according to plan. Until then, only the United States, the former Soviet Union and the European Space Agency had conducted missions that successfully reached Mars. India's space program is the first to do so on its first attempt.

“History has been created today,” declared Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) mission control room in Bangalore. “The odds were stacked against us but we have prevailed and have achieved the near impossible,” he added.

As the news of the probe's successful insertion into orbit poured in, the ISRO control room ...

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One more to F$.

Betting Against Gravitational Waves: Q&A with Cosmologist Neil Turok
Failure to discover primordial spacetime ripples could open the way for a physicist’s alternative theory
Sep 23, 2014 |By Clara Moskowitz

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The BICEP2 telescope at the South Pole.
Steffen Richter, Harvard University

Many physicists were disheartened at the news that the apparent discovery of gravitational waves from the big bang was likely an error. But a cosmologist from the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario felt a bit vindicated.

Neil Turok has been betting all along that primordial gravitational waves—ripples in the fabric of spacetime—would never be seen. Turok expressed little surprise that new results from the Planck satellite observing light from the big bang show that the supposed observation of gravitational waves from the South Pole’s BICEP2 experiment in March was probably contaminated by a haze of dust in our galaxy.

Gravitational waves, if confirmed, would be proof that the baby universe ...

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Transparent Rats Give Scientists Clear View to Innards
New technique turns rodent bodies transparent
Sep 16, 2014 |By Julia Calderone

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Credit: Thomas Fuchs

One thing is clear: peering inside animals leads to scientific discovery. In the 1960s and 1970s genetic and developmental biology research exploded after laboratories began studying naturally transparent critters, such as the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans and the zebra fish Danio rerio. With them, scientists could watch young cells develop into a full organism. Now, for the first time, they can see through mammalian bodies, thanks to a technique that can make mice and rats— and perhaps larger animals—clear.

Scientists have been able to render tissues such as the mammal brain transparent, but the procedure ...

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Extrapolation Gone Wrong: the Case of the Fermat Primes
By Evelyn Lamb | September 26, 2014 | Comments3
The views expressed are those of the author and are not necessarily those of Scientific American.

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/roots-of-unity/files/2014/09/Pierre_de_Fermat-224x300.jpg
Sorry, Pierre, but not all Fermat numbers are primes. Image: Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Samuel Arbesman recently wrote about incorrect mathematical conjectures. I wanted to add one of my favorites, which came up in my math history class a couple weeks ago. Unlike the disproven conjectures Arbesman wrote about, which fail only for very large numbers, this one fails at 5.

Pierre de Fermat was an amateur number theorist who is now most famous (or perhaps infamous) for a note he scribbled in a margin that led to a 400-year quest to prove what is known as Fermat’s Last Theorem.

Fermat’s conjecture about primes, however, was resolved more quickly, in under a century. Fermat noticed that 221+1, which equals 5, is prime, 222+1, or 17, is prime, and more generally, 22n+1 is prime when n=0,1,2,3, or 4. Numbers of the form Fn=22n are now called Fermat numbers, and ...

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Weak Nuclear Force Shown to Give Asymmetry to Biochemistry of Life
"Left-handed" electrons have been found to destroy certain organic molecules faster than their mirror versions
Sep 26, 2014 |By Elizabeth Gibney and Nature magazine

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Life is made largely of molecules that are different than their mirror images.
Credit: Brett Weinstein via Flickr

Physicists have found hints that the asymmetry of life — the fact that most biochemical molecules are ‘left-handed’ or ‘right-handed’ — could have been caused by electrons from nuclear decay in the early days of evolution. In an experiment that took 13 years to perfect, the researchers have found that these electrons tend to destroy certain organic molecules slightly more often than they destroy their mirror images.

Many organic molecules, including glucose and most biological amino acids, are ‘chiral’. This means that they are different than their mirror-image molecules, just like a left and a right glove are. Moreover, in such cases ...

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Could Life Survive in the Universe's Far-Distant Future?
Some say its glory days are long gone, but the universe has life in it yet. Brand-new types of celestial phenomena will unfold over the coming billions and trillions of years
By Donald Goldsmith

Time's seemingly inexorable march has always provoked interest in, and speculation about, the far future of the cosmos. The usual picture is grim. Five billion years from now the sun will puff itself into a red giant star and ...

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Blood-Red Moon: Total Lunar Eclipse Photos from Readers
Scientific American readers snapped these views of the October 8 total lunar eclipse from the United States and Australia
October 12, 2014 |By Clara Moskowitz

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Petra de Ruyter · 8 days ago
Lunar Eclipse 8:10:2014 Albury Australia
Awesome experience! Is almost the same experience that you have viewing a total eclipse of the sun. Reminds me of how early astronomers discovered that the Earth was round. Beautiful to see the curvature of the Earth on the Moon.

A coppery moon graced skies around the world early Wednesday morning, and many Scientific American readers got a great view. Below are some of the best reader photos of the October 8, 2014 total lunar eclipse, when the moon briefly passed into the shadow Earth cast. During a total lunar eclipse, the sun and moon are 180 degrees apart, on either side of our planet. The sun's bending rays travel through our atmosphere to reach the darkened moon, giving it a reddish hue. These impressive photos came from around the United States and Australia.

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Quarantines and Travel Bans: Could They Work to Thwart Ebola?
What rules are in place to prevent pandemics?
October 16, 2014 |By David Biello

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TRAVEL BAN: Should those suspected of harboring Ebola be prevented from traveling?
Courtesy of NASA

Thomas Eric Duncan’s family has been imprisoned in a borrowed home for a few weeks now, purportedly under police guard. This quarantine is an attempt to keep any Ebola virus from spreading further after their loved one died of the disease on October 8.

That quarantine has not been applied to hospital workers who came into contact with Duncan on either ...

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Why Have Our Brains Started to Shrink?
—via e-mail
Oct 16, 2014

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Christopher Stringer, a paleoanthropologist and research leader on human origins at the Natural History Museum in London, replies:

Indeed, skeletal evidence from every inhabited continent suggests that our brains have become smaller in the past 10,000 to 20,000 years. How can we account for this seemingly scary statistic?

Some of the shrinkage is very likely related to the decline in humans' average body size during the past 10,000 years. Brain size is scaled to body size because ...

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What’s Your Favorite Vintage Gadget?
Share your nostalgia for a long-obsolete device with other Scientific American readers
October 15, 2014 |By Larry Greenemeier

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Atari 800 XL Rijeka P&P
Wikimedia Commons/Roberta F.

Few technologies of the past 25 years have had more of an impact on our lives than the cell phone. Twenty years ago, a friend offered to lend me hers because I was having car trouble. She was worried I would get stuck on the side of the highway on my way home from work with no way of calling for help. Such concern about being unable to communicate now seems quaint. Like many people, I’m rarely without my smartphone these days, and it does a whole lot more than call for roadside assistance.

Such progress makes me nostalgic for the gadgets of yesterday that once ...

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Did Jesus Save the Klingons?
If or when we make contact with extraterrestrials, the effect on our religious sensibilities will be profound, says astronomer David Weintraub
October 16, 2014 |By Clara Moskowitz

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freeimages.com/msaluste

The discovery of life beyond Earth would be a triumph for science but might wreak havoc on certain religions. Some faiths, such as evangelical Christianity, have long held that we are God’s favorite children and would not easily accommodate the notion that we would have to share the attention; others, such as Roman Catholicism, struggle with thorny questions such as whether aliens have original sin.

Now that researchers have discovered more than 1,500 exoplanets beyond the solar system, the day when scientists detect signs of life on one of them may be near at hand. Given this new urgency, Vanderbilt University astronomer David Weintraub decided to find out what ...

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[Duke of Buckingham]

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Are U.S. Hospitals Prepared for the Next Ebola Case?
Health care emergency management expert Kristin Stevens tells us what went wrong in Dallas, and how we can do better
October 23, 2014 |By Clara Moskowitz

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CDC Global via <a href=https://www.flickr.com/photos/cdcglobal/14723720857/in/set-72157646018355339>Flickr</a>

The first U.S. Ebola patient who walked into an emergency room last month posed a major test for the chosen hospital, Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas. The hospital made some now-notorious missteps, including failing to diagnose Ebola virus the first time the patient, Thomas Eric Duncan, arrived as well as allowing two nurses who treated him to become infected.

In the aftermath of the case the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has updated its guidelines for health care workers’ protective gear, called personal protective equipment (PPE), which was probably at fault for the nurses’ infections. Hospitals around the country are on alert for more cases of the Ebola virus, which has ..

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The Hobbit: 10 Years Later
In October 2004 paleontologists announced a new human species called Homo floresiensis. Ever since then debate has raged on whether it truly is a new species or merely a diseased Homo sapiens
Oct 23, 2014

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New analyses reveal the mini human species to be even stranger than previously thought and hint that major tenets of human evolution need revision

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How to Silence Cyberbullying
Cyberbullies take advantage of the unique psychology of online communities to attack, intimidate and hurt others. Here is what makes trolls tick— and how to stop them
By Elizabeth Svoboda

When 25-year-old Caitlin Seida dressed up as Lara Croft from the movie Tomb Raider one Halloween, she posted a picture of herself enjoying the night's festivities on Facebook. At most, she figured a few friends might see the photograph and comment.

The picture remained in Seida's social circle for more than three years. Then one day in 2013 a friend sent Seida a link with a cryptic note: “You're Internet famous.” Clicking the link took her to a site called the International Association of Haters, where her Halloween photo—which she had posted publicly by mistake—bore the oversized caption “Fridge Raider.” Hundreds of commenters dragged Seida through the mud for wearing a skimpy costume ...

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Motor Chills EV Drivers’ Anxiety about Going the Distance
By Larry Greenemeier | October 22, 2014 | Comments2

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/files/2014/10/2-in-1-Motor-blog-Kumar.jpg
Lead developer Satheesh Kumar holds components of his team's 2-in-1 electric motor. Image courtesy of Nanyang Technological University.

An air-conditioned cabin is the best way to drop a car’s fuel efficiency on a hot day. This is true of electric vehicles (EV) as much as it is for gas-guzzlers. Researchers in Singapore, who know something about hot-weather driving, say they’ve found a way to help an EV to run up to 20 percent longer between recharges during air-conditioning use.

Their idea: a “2-in-1 electric motor” that consolidates the air-conditioning compressor into the same housing as the main traction motor powering the vehicle’s wheels. This creates efficiencies and frees up additional space for auxiliary batteries to power ...

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[Duke of Buckingham]

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Not Everyone Wants to Be Happy
Americans are obsessed with happiness, but other cultures see things differently
October 28, 2014 |By Jennifer Aaker and Emily Esfahani Smith

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Don't worry, be unhappy
Credit: Thinkstock

Everyone wants to be happy. It's a fundamental human right. It's associated with all sorts of benefits. We, as a society, spend millions trying to figure out what the key to personal happiness is. There are now even apps to help us turn our frowns upside down. So everyone wants to be happy—right?

Well, maybe not.

A new research paper by Mohsen Joshanloo and Dan Weijers from Victoria University of Wellington, argues that the desire for personal happiness, though knitted into the fabric of American history and culture, is held in less esteem by other cultures. There are many parts of the world that are more suspicious of personal happiness ...

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Cocoa Constitutents Fend Off Senior Moments—the Memory of a 30-Year-Old?
By Gary Stix | October 26, 2014 | Comments4

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/talking-back/files/2014/10/memory-dust-300x200.jpg
Memory dust?

Scott Small, a professor of neurology at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons, researches Alzheimer’s, but he also studies the memory loss that occurs during the normal aging process. Research on the commonplace “senior moments” focuses on the hippocampus, an area of the brain involved with formation of new memories. In particular, one area of the hippocampus, the dentate gyrus, which helps distinguish one object from another, has lured researchers on age-related memory problems.

In a study by Small and colleagues published Oct. 26 in Nature Neuroscience, naturally occurring chemicals in cocoa increased dentate gyrus blood flow. Psychological testing showed that the pattern recognition abilities of a typical 60-year-old on a high dose of the cocoa phytochemicals in the 37-person study matched those of a 30-or 40-year old after three months. The study received support from ...

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Evidence Builds for Dark Matter Explosions at the Milky Way’s Core
Unexplained gamma rays streaming from the galactic center may have been produced by dark matter, but more mundane explanations are also possible
October 28, 2014 |By Clara Moskowitz

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This Fermi map of the Milky Way center shows an overabundance of gamma-rays (red indicates the greatest number) that cannot be explained by conventional sources.
T. Linden, Univ. of Chicago

So far, dark matter has evaded scientists’ best attempts to find it. Astronomers know the invisible stuff dominates our universe and tugs gravitationally on regular matter, but they do not know what it is made of. Since 2009, however, suspicious gamma-ray light radiating from the Milky Way’s core—where dark matter is thought to be especially dense—has intrigued researchers. Some wonder if the rays might have been emitted in explosions caused by colliding particles of dark matter. Now a new gamma-ray signal, in combination with those already detected, offers further evidence that this might be the case.

One possible explanation for dark matter is that it is made of theorized “weakly interacting massive particles,” or WIMPs. Every WIMP is thought to be both matter and antimatter, so when two of them meet ...

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Unmanned Supply Rocket Explodes Seconds after Liftoff
Orbital Sciences’s Antares rocket burst into flames mere moments into its mission to send a cargo-carrying spacecraft to resupply the International Space Station. NASA reported no injuries to personnel
October 28, 2014 |By Mike Wall and SPACE.com

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An Orbital Sciences Antares rocket exploded shortly after lifting off on a private cargo mission to the International Space Station, on October 28, 2014, from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.
NASA TV

A private Orbital Sciences-built cargo launch to the International Space Station ended in a fiery explosion just seconds after liftoff Tuesday night (Oct. 28).

Orbital's unmanned Antares rocket exploded in a brilliant fireball shortly after launching from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia at 6:22 p.m. EDT (2222 GMT), crashing back down to the launch pad in a flaming heap. The Antares was carrying Orbital's unmanned Cygnus spacecraft, which was toting 5,000 pounds (2,268 kilograms) of food, scientific experiments and other supplies on this flight — the third cargo mission to the space station under a $1.9 billion contract the company holds with NASA. You can see photos of the Antares rocket explosion here.

A NASA spokesman described the explosion as a "catastrophic anomaly" during a NASA TV webcast. While the assessment and investigation ...

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The Science of Death and Zombies
Forget about eating braaains—there's no coming back from the dead. But it's possible for minds to be taken over
Oct 30, 2014

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Ask the Experts
Can You Escape Zombies If You Smell Like Death?
A chemist explains why a "death cologne" could protect you if the ravenous undead attack this Halloween.

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Inside the 4 U.S. Biocontainment Hospitals That Are Stopping Ebola [Video]
Four small but well-equipped wards across the U.S. provide a front line of treatment for highly infectious diseases and bioterrorism attacks
October 24, 2014 |By Katherine Harmon Courage

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A hospital ICU room.
Credit: Quinn Dombrowski via flickr

When a new, highly infectious disease lands on U.S. shores, four unique treatment centers stand ready to contain and treat it. Sprinkled across the east coast, Midwest and Rocky Mountain west, these "biocontainment units" inside larger facilities have been funded and tapped by the federal government to take patients who could otherwise fuel a devastating epidemic.

These centers made the news in August as Ebola patients began to arrive in the U.S. Of these, three patients have been treated at Emory University Hospital (Kent Brantly, Nancy Writebol and a doctor who ...

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Let’s Talk about Ebola Survivors and Sex
As more patients recover from the infection, what risk do they pose to their sexual partners?
October 31, 2014 |By Dina Fine Maron

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Credit: Flickr/Peachy92

Wear a condom: That has been the standard—and strong—advice from public health officials trying to thwart the spread of HIV or syphilis. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has spent decades trying to get people to put them on. But now health workers are pushing the latex prophylactic for a different reason: Ebola recovery.

People are surviving the disease. Doctors Without Borders, which oversees many Ebola clinics in west Africa, is sending home recovered Ebola patients with a stack of condoms, and health workers are urging them to only engage in protected sex for at least three months after recovery. The virus has been found in the semen and vaginal fluids of convalescents for weeks or ...

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Anarchic Autism Genetics Gain a Touch of Clarity
By Gary Stix | October 30, 2014 |

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Two new studies demonstrate the promise and pitfalls of the industrial-scale gene-processing technologies that define the meaning of the much-ballyhooed Big Data.

Bad news first. One of the two reports published in Nature provided a four-digit estimate of the number of genes involved with autism. [I’m obligated to break here to say that Scientific American is part of the Nature Publishing Group.]

My science skeptic friends would say that this is also ...

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The Philosophical Implications of the Urge to Urinate
The state of our body affects how we think the world works
November 4, 2014 |By Daniel Yudkin

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Are we truly free?
Credit: thegreekphotoholic via Thinkstock

If one thing’s for sure, it’s that I decided what breakfast cereal to eat this morning. I opened the cupboard, Iperused the options, and when I ultimately chose the Honey Bunches of Oats over the Kashi Good Friends, it came from a place of considered judgment, free from external constraints and predetermined laws.

Or did it? This question—about how much people are in charge of their own actions—is among the most central to the human condition. Do we have free will? Are we in control of our destiny? Do we choose the proverbial Honey Bunches of Oats? Or does the cereal—or some other mysterious force in the vast and unknowable universe—choose us?

The Greek playwright Sophocles ...

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How the Brain Creates a Chronology of Consciousness
Several brain structures contribute to “mind time,” organizing our experiences into chronologies of remembered events
By Antonio Damasio

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DAVID MUIR Getty Images

We wake up to time, courtesy of an alarm clock, and go through a day run by time—the meeting, the visitors, the conference call, the luncheon are all set to begin at a particular hour. We can coordinate our own activities with those of others because we all implicitly agree to follow a single system for measuring time, one based on the inexorable rise and fall of daylight. In the course of evolution ...

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New Experiment Aims to Crack Neutrino Mass Mystery
These particles should not have mass, but they do. By sending neutrinos through the ground from Illinois to Minnesota, physicists hope to learn why
November 4, 2014 |By Clara Moskowitz

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A 50-foot-square block of the NOvA far detector is pivoted at the laboratory in Ash River, Minnesota, where it will detect oscillating neutrinos.
Fermilab

Neutrinos are everywhere in the universe, but we cannot see them or feel them and can almost never stop them. They stream through our bodies by the trillions every second, flitting through the spaces between our atoms with nary a collision. These ghostly particles were created in abundance during the big bang, and stars like the sun pump out more all the time. Yet for all their plentitude, neutrinos may be the most mysterious particles in the cosmos.

For decades physicists thought neutrinos weighed nothing, and they were shocked in 1998 to discover that the particles do have very small, but nonzero, masses. Exactly how much mass they have ...

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Crash Analysis: How SpaceShipTwo’s Feathered Tails Work
By Clara Moskowitz | November 3, 2014 | Comments6

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Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo in its "feathered" configuration, with tails upright. Credit: Virgin Galactic

The cause of the deadly crash of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo on Friday remains unknown, but the commercial spaceplane’s feathered reentry system looks to have been involved. Investigators at the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) determined that the vehicle’s copilot moved a lever to “unlock” the feather system earlier than planned, and two seconds after the feathers deployed, the spacecraft disintegrated.

The details of how or why this happened are still unclear. The feather system is normally used after SpaceShipTwo has already climbed to the peak of its parabolic flight path and begun to descend, to help the vehicle slow down and stabilize as it flies back to Earth. In fact, the design was one of ...

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Science Research Needs an Overhaul
The current incentive structure often leads to dead-end studies—but there are ways to fix the problem
November 3, 2014 |By John P. A. Ioannidis

SA Forum is an invited essay from experts on topical issues in science and technology.

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It will take a concerted effort by scientists and other stakeholders to fix this problem.
Credit: Kseniya Ragozina via Thinkstock

Earlier this year a series of papers in The Lancet reported that 85 percent of the $265 billion spent each year on medical research is wasted. This is not because of fraud, although it is true that retractions are on the rise. Instead, it is because too often absolutely nothing happens after initial results of a study are published. No follow-up investigations ensue to replicate or expand on a discovery. No one uses the findings to build new technologies.

The problem is not just what happens after publication—scientists often have trouble choosing the right questions and properly designing studies to answer them. Too many neuroscience studies test too few subjects ...

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Fracking Threatens to Crack Politics
Divisions within Colorado highlight a long-term political issue that affects many states
November 3, 2014 |By David Biello

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Courtesy of USGS

The city of Boulder wants to block fracking in the Rocky Mountain state. The liberal enclave has banned the combination of directional drilling and cracking subterranean rock with high-pressure fluids known as fracking within its city limits. And local Democratic U.S. Rep. Jared Polis wanted to enable other communities in Colorado to follow suit. He began collecting signatures for a ballot measure that would have vested authority in municipalities to enact their own fracking regulations, no matter what the state as a whole decides, to control the controversial practice that frees more oil and gas. For good measure, the Democrat also wanted to ...

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NASA's Plan to Visit an Asteroid Faces a Rocky Start
America's keystone human spaceflight mission for the next decade may be over before it begins
November 10, 2014 |By Lee Billings

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In this artist's rendition, a spacewalking astronaut prepares to retrieve samples from a captured asteroid in high lunar orbit as part of NASA's Asteroid Redirect Mission concept.
Credit: NASA

NASA’s next vehicle designed to carry astronauts to space is set to launch early next month atop a trusty Delta 4 rocket for a crewless test flight. Current plans call for a piloted flight in the new Orion spacecraft in the mid-2020s, when the vehicle will ride atop a new NASA heavy-lift rocket to take astronauts beyond Earth orbit for the first time in a half-century. What’s far less certain in the post–space shuttle era is where they’ll go from there.

If the Obama administration and NASA have their way, the astronauts will be visiting a small asteroid that will have been nudged by a solar-powered robotic probe into a high, stable lunar orbit. During the monthlong mission the astronauts will rendezvous with the asteroid, perform spacewalks to gather samples and then return to Earth. The target asteroid has yet to be announced ...

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New Type of More Problematic Mosquito-Borne Illness Detected in Brazil
A second form of the painful chikungunya virus has appeared in Brazil—one that could more easily spread, including to the U.S.
November 4, 2014 |By Dina Fine Maron

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Aedes albopictus mosquito
Credit: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

When a mosquito-borne disease first arrived in the Western Hemisphere last year, humans were relatively lucky. The disease, which causes crippling joint pain persisting for weeks or even months and for which there is no known therapy or vaccine, hopscotched from the Caribbean islands to eventually land in the U.S. and the rest of the Americas. But the type of chikungunya creeping across the region then was one that could only readily spread via Aedes aegypti, a mosquito that is uncommon in the U.S.

That ecological happenstance provided some modicum of protection. Chikungunya spread by bites from Aedes aegypti was first detected in Saint Martin last year and in the U.S. this summer. ...

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[Duke of Buckingham]

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The Rise of All-Purpose Antidepressants
Doctors are increasingly prescribing SSRIs to treat more than just depression
Oct 16, 2014 |By Julia Calderone

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Antidepressant use among Americans is skyrocketing. Adults in the U.S. consumed four times more antidepressants in the late 2000s than they did in the early 1990s. As the third most frequently taken medication in the U.S., researchers estimate that 8 to 10 percent of the population is taking an antidepressant. But this spike does not necessarily signify a depression epidemic. Through the early 2000s pharmaceutical companies were aggressively testing selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), the dominant class of depression drug, for a variety of disorders—the timeline below shows the rapid expansion of FDA-approved uses.

As the drugs' patents expired, companies stopped funding studies for official approval. Yet doctors have continued ...

Read more on http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-rise-of-all-purpose-antidepressants/?WT.mc_id=SA_MB_20141112

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Dark Matter Black Holes Could Be Destroying Stars at the Milky Way’s Center
If dark matter comes in both matter and antimatter varieties, it might accumulate inside dense stars to create black holes
November 10, 2014 |By Clara Moskowitz

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NASA

Dark matter may have turned spinning stars into black holes near the center of our galaxy, researchers say. There, scientists expected to see plenty of the dense, rotating stars called pulsars, which are fairly common throughout the Milky Way. Despite numerous searches, however, only one has been found, giving rise to the so-called “missing pulsar problem.” A possible explanation, according to a new study, is that dark matter has built up inside these stars, causing the pulsars to collapse into black holes. (These black holes would be smaller than the supermassive black hole that is thought to lurk at the very heart of the galaxy.)

The universe appears to be teeming with invisible dark matter, which can neither be seen nor touched, but nonetheless exerts a gravitational pull on regular matter. Scientists have several ideas for what dark matter might be made of ...

Read more on http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/dark-matter-black-holes-destroying-pulsars/?WT.mc_id=SA_SPC_20141113


Lander Stable on Comet, for Now
The Philae lander settled atop the “head” of the rubber duck–shaped object despite trouble with systems designed to secure the probe to the comet
November 12, 2014 |By Lee Billings

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Philae's primary landing site from 30 km
Credit: ESA

After more than a decade of careful planning and hours of nail-biting tension, this morning an emissary from Earth made history’s first soft landing on a comet. The European Space Agency’s dishwasher-size Philae lander touched down on the craggy surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko shortly after 10:30 A.M. Eastern time, after being released seven hours earlier from its mother ship, the Rosetta orbiter.

“We are there. We are sitting on the surface. Philae is talking to us,” said Philae lander manager Stephan Ulamec during a live Webcast of the landing. “We are on the comet.” The lander seems to be fully operational, ready to begin its unprecedented ...

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Everything You Need to Know about the U.S.–China Climate Change Agreement
A turning point has been reached in the world's bid to curb global warming
November 12, 2014 |By David Biello

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HISTORIC AGREEMENT: President Obama's visit to Beijing has yielded a pact to cut greenhouse gas pollution from the world's two biggest emitting nations.
Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy

The presidents of the world's two most polluting nations agree: something should be done about climate change. And they're just the leaders to do it, per the terms of what President Barack Obama called a "historic agreement" announced November 12 between the U.S. and China. Although neither country has plans to stop burning coal or oil in the near future, both countries now have commitments to reduce the greenhouse gases that result.

"As the world's two largest economies, energy consumers and emitters of greenhouse gases, we have a special responsibility to lead the global effort against climate change," said Obama in a ...

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Ethanol Scheme to Clean Air in Billions of Kitchens Goes Up in Smoke
An effort to build a scheme involving crop rotation, ethanol and clean cookstoves in Mozambique was defeated by bad roads, old trucks, slow carbon credits, civil unrest and tradition
November 11, 2014 |By David Biello

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CLEANER COOKING: The clean cookstove pictured here burning ethanol proved popular in Mozambique, but unsustainable.
Courtesy of Novozymes

In Mozambique, as in much of the world, people cook with charcoal. The dirty fuel causes smoke and soot to billow into their homes. As a result, cardiovascular and lung diseases are rampant from breathing such smoky indoor air—a problem that kills at least two million people worldwide prematurely every year, primarily women and children. Burning charcoal to cook exacerbates pneumonia, emphysema, tuberculosis and even low intelligence, among other human health issues. To solve the problem in the capital city of Maputo, Danish enzyme-maker Novozymes and its partners, like many before them, wanted to introduce a cleaner cookstove.

The ambition did not stop there. Novozymes hoped to bring an entire bio-based economy to the southeast African nation, starting with improved crop rotations that would allow farmers to grow excess cassava. The cassava in turn would be fed to a donated ethanol-brewing facility, built in the town of Dondo. The ethanol would be the fuel in cookstoves, burning ...

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[Duke of Buckingham]

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Dark Matter Black Holes Could Be Destroying Stars at the Milky Way’s Center
If dark matter comes in both matter and antimatter varieties, it might accumulate inside dense stars to create black holes
November 10, 2014 |By Clara Moskowitz

http://www.scientificamerican.com/sciam/cache/file/6AF025A3-7764-419B-BAAFA4E4CBA0F127_article.jpg?27857
NASA

Dark matter may have turned spinning stars into black holes near the center of our galaxy, researchers say. There, scientists expected to see plenty of the dense, rotating stars called pulsars, which are fairly common throughout the Milky Way. Despite numerous searches, however, only one has been found, giving rise to the so-called “missing pulsar problem.” A possible explanation, according to a new study, is that dark matter has built up inside these stars, causing the pulsars to collapse into black holes. (These black holes would be smaller than the supermassive black hole that is thought to lurk at the very heart of the galaxy.)

The universe appears to be teeming with invisible dark matter, which can neither be seen nor touched, but nonetheless exerts a gravitational pull on regular matter. Scientists have several ideas for what dark matter might be made of, but none have been proved. A leading option suggests ...

Read more on http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/dark-matter-black-holes-destroying-pulsars/?WT.mc_id=SA_BS_20141114


A High-Flying Web May Catch the Beginning of Time
This winter an airborne experiment named Spider will probe the earliest remnants of the universe
November 12, 2014 |By Dan Falk

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SPIDER with all of its focal planes installed, in Antarctica in November.
Credit: Jon Gudmundsson

When searching for clues about the physics of the early universe, one has to aim high—and a balloon-borne telescope array known as Spider, set to soar over Antarctica this winter, may succeed where a highly publicized ground-based experiment fell short.

Physicists working on that earthbound experiment, known as BICEP2, announced several months ago that they had found evidence for primordial gravitational waves—ripples in the fabric of space itself, dating back to the universe’s earliest moments. The finding made headlines around the world. After further analysis, however, they admitted their data was inconclusive. The signal they detected could just as likely have been caused by interstellar dust as by the much-sought-after gravitational waves. Scientists working with Spider believe ...

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Mind-Blowing Fossil Preserves Tiny Horse Carrying Unborn Foal
By Kate Wong | November 11, 2014 | Comments2

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Extraordinary 48 million-year-old fossil of a Eurohippus messelensis mare and fetus from Messel, Germany. Imag

BERLIN: The former oil shale mining site of Messel, near Frankfurt, Germany, is well known for its spectacular fossils of organisms that lived between 47 million and 48 million years ago, during the Eocene epoch. But a fossil of the early horse species Eurohippus messelensis, described at this year’s Society of Vertebrate Paleontology meeting in Berlin, stands out even in that illustrious company.

The tiny specimen—full grown, Eurohippus was about the size of a modern fox terrier–preserves a mare and her unborn foal (circled in the image above) in exquisite detail, with many of the bones in anatomical position. Also visible are parts of the uterus, including the placenta and the so-called broad ligament that attaches the uterus to the mare’s lumbar vertebrae and helps support the fetus. The soft tissue is not preserved directly, but as images formed by the ...

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Next Wave of U.S. Supercomputers Could Break Up Race for Fastest
National Labs are now collaborating, not competing, to make the fastest supercomputers, which should enable new types of science to model everything from climate change to materials science to nuclear-weapons performance
November 17, 2014 |By Alexandra Witze and Nature magazine

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The Titan system at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee will soon be surpassed as the fastest supercomputer in the United States.
Credit: OLCF

Once locked in an arms race with each other for the fastest supercomputers, US national laboratories are now banding together to buy their next-generation machines.

On November 14, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Tennessee and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California announced that they will each acquire a next-generation IBM supercomputer that will run at up to 150 petaflops. That means that the machines can perform 150 million billion floating-point operations per second, at least five times as fast as the current leading US supercomputer, the Titan system at the ORNL.

The new supercomputers, which together will cost $325 million, should ...

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5 Hard Questions about Emerging Technologies We Can’t Afford Not to Ask
In the near future access to information and new technology may make profits and privacy obsolete, and force us to redefine the boundaries between humanity and machines
November 12, 2014 |By Kristel van der Elst

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Which economic systems will be most successful in providing equal access to the social and economic benefits of technology?
Credit: U.S. Marine Corps via flickr

SA Forum is an invited essay from experts on topical issues in science and technology.

Editor’s note: This week the World Economic Forum is holding its Global Agenda Council meetings in Dubai. More than 1,000 experts (including Scientific American Editor in Chief Mariette DiChristina) have gathered to discuss big world problems such as climate change, poverty, water shortages, energy and innovation. This is the last in a series of articles by WEF’s Kristel van der Elst, head of Strategic Foresight, on discussions that have taken place in the past year under the Forum’s auspices about ...

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What Impact Will Emerging Technologies Have on Geopolitics?
By Fred Guterl | November 12, 2014 |

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The World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council meetings are going on this week in Dubai. More than 1000 experts (including Scientific American editor-in-chief Mariette DiChristina) have gathered to discuss big world problems such as climate change, poverty, water shortages, energy and innovation. Here we are publishing a series on discussions that have taken place in the past year under the Forum’s auspices about emerging technologies, written by WEF’s Kristel van der Elst, Head of Strategic Foresight (her first was this article on impacts to society). Here is her piece on impacts to geopolitics.

Four geopolitical questions we can’t avoid when we think about emerging technologies

by Kristel van der Elst, World Economic Forum

Not so far in the future, resources might no longer be closely linked to territories, it might be possible to visualize another person’s thoughts and predict the actions and decisions of world leaders before they act. What would this mean for our geopolitical landscape? ...

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Tongue Shocks Hasten Healing
Electrically stimulating the tongue may help repair neural damage
Oct 16, 2014 |By Esther Hsieh

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RADIO

A little-known fact: the tongue is directly connected to the brain stem. This anatomical feature is now being harnessed by scientists to improve rehabilitation.

A team at the University of Wisconsin–Madison recently found that electrically stimulating the tongue can help patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) improve their gait. MS is an incurable disease in which the insulation around the nerves becomes damaged, disrupting the communication between body and brain. One symptom is loss of muscle control.

In a study published in the Journal of Neuro-Engineering and Rehabilitation, Wisconsin neuroscientist ...

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Learning About Your Family’s Elevated Alzheimer’s Risk—as Early as Age 8
By Gary Stix | November 15, 2014 |

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Hugo, a participant in a pioneering Colombian drug trial, along with two nieces, Mariana and Daniela.

A Colombian university is providing regular workshops on brain basics and genetics to grade schoolers from families who face a high risk of developing Alzheimer’s in the prime of life from a rare genetic mutation. The “talleres” set up by the University of Antioquia in Medellin attempt to prepare these youngsters for the all-too-frequent possibility of a mother or father starting to lose their memories just before the age of 50, marking the beginning of a relentless decline that results in their deaths 10 years or so later.

In the course of these educational sessions, the youngsters also learn the unsettling information that they, too, risk becoming the next generation of patients. The Colombian department of Antioquia has the largest group in the world of relatives at risk for familial Alzheimer’s. In this form of the disease, inheritance of a genetic mutation from even one parent means that a person is virtually destined to get Alzheimer’s at an early age. The so-called paisa genetic mutation—nicknamed for the people of Antioquia and surrounding areas—changes the way ...

Read more on http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/talking-back/2014/11/15/learning-about-your-familys-elevated-alzheimers-riskas-early-as-age-eight/

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7 Solutions to Climate Change Happening Now
Even as the world continues to spew more carbon pollution, change has begun—and is accelerating
November 17, 2014 |By David Biello

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Clean Energy Boom: Big dams and little solar panels like these in China are helping produce electricity with less greenhouse pollution, one of several solutions to climate change advancing around the world.
© David Biello

A man who once flew all the way to Copenhagen from Washington, D.C., just to tell journalists that climate change wasn't that big a deal is likely now to return to lead (or at least strongly influence) the environment committee of the U.S. Senate. As Sen. James Inhofe (R–Okla.) said at that time, in December 2009, he came to Copenhagen to "make sure that nobody is laboring under the misconception that the U.S. Senate is going to do something" about climate change. His thinking likely will not change by 2015; in fact, Inhofe has already decried the new U.S.–China climate agreement as a "nonbinding charade."

Even though the U.S. is responsible for the largest share of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the country will not be able to ...

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A Wacky Jet Stream Is Making Our Weather Severe
Extreme summers and winters of the past four years could become the norm
By Jeff Masters

From November 2013 through January 2014, the jet stream took on a remarkably extreme and persistent shape over North America and Europe. This global river of eastward-flowing winds high in the atmosphere dipped farther south than usual across the eastern U.S., allowing the notorious “polar vortex” of frigid air swirling over the Arctic to plunge southward, putting the eastern two thirds of the country into a deep freeze. Ice cover on the Great Lakes reached ...

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Neutrinos on Ice: How to Build a Balloon
By Katie Mulrey | November 15, 2014 | Comments2

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Panorama view of Mount Erebus. (Photo credit: Christian Miki)

Editor’s Note: Welcome to ANITA, the Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna! From October to December, Katie Mulrey is traveling with the ANITA collaboration to Antarctica to build and launch ANITA III, a scientific balloon that uses the entire continent of Antarctica for neutrino and cosmic ray detection. This is the third installment in a series, “Neutrinos on Ice,” documenting that effort.

It has officially been two weeks since we’ve seen the sun set! It’s been surprisingly easy to get into a routine here. We work seven days a week to make sure ANITA will be ready on time ...

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A Day in the Life of an Ebola Worker
Denial, violence and fear make it difficult to stamp out Ebola in west Africa
November 21, 2014 |By Dina Fine Maron

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Community health workers and volunteers are an essential part of the Ebola response in Liberia.
Credit: Morgana Wingard/ UNDP/Flickr

Rebecca Robinson does not wear gloves on the job. A misstep while removing them, she says, could increase the risk of infecting herself with Ebola. Instead, she dons a rain jacket and boots and clutches a bottle of hand sanitizer as she travels by motorbike from house to house in Liberia's capital city of Monrovia. Her objective: to help trace the complex web of Ebola’s spread and to instruct apparently healthy people who may have had contact with an infected person to stay home for 21 days. Such quarantines, the Liberian government says, are a precautionary step to keep the virus from potentially moving even farther afield.

Robinson is one of the thousands of people working to quell the Ebola epidemic in west Africa through an age-old public health practice called contact tracing. She interviews people who may have potentially been exposed to others infected with the virus and ...

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Hydrogen May Prove Fuel of the Future
Will the most common molecule in the universe make for pollution-free cars?
November 18, 2014 |By Julia Pyper and ClimateWire

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Hyundai ix35 hydrogen fuel cell car.
Credit: Revolve Eco-Rally via flickr

First of a three-part series.

Humans have harnessed hydrogen for a variety of applications, from blasting rockets into space to making common household products like toothpaste. Now, after decades of development, hydrogen is about to find its way into the family car.

In June, Hyundai Motor Co. began leasing its Tucson Fuel Cell and has pledged to produce 1,000 units globally by 2015. Toyota Motor Corp. and Honda Motor Co. will start sales of their next-generation fuel cell vehicles (FCVs) next year. Yesterday, Toyota released a video showing the Mirai, its first commercial fuel cell car.

Several other automakers are aiming to release fuel cell cars in 2017.

One benefit is that FCVs ...

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4 Workers Killed at DuPont Chemical Plant
Methyl mercaptan leak appears to be responsible for the deaths at the industrial accident site in Texas
November 18, 2014 |By Andrea Widener and Chemical & Engineering News

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The DuPont facility, located east of Houston, uses methyl mercaptan to manufacture insecticides and fungicides, according to CSB. However, the chemical is more widely known as the additive in natural gas that gives it a distinctive rotten cabbage smell.
Credit: KHOU TV

Investigators from the Chemical Safety & Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) are in Texas probing an apparent chemical leak that killed four workers and injured a fifth at a DuPont plant in La Porte, Texas.

The workers probably died from exposure to methyl mercaptan while responding to a valve leak around 4 AM on Nov. 15, DuPont said in a statement. The community around the plant was not at risk, the company adds.

“Our goal in investigating this accident is to determine the root cause and make recommendations to prevent any similar accidents throughout the industry,” CSB Chairman Rafael Moure-Eraso says.

Methyl mercaptan is a ...

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Can China Cut Coal?
By David Biello | November 25, 2014 | Comments2

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An old coal-fired power plant on the banks of the Yangtze River. © David Biello

On a visit to China a few years back, I asked a local official about pollution controls after enjoying my first sour, gritty taste of the country’s air. China’s new coal-fired power plants and other industrial boilers often came equipped with expensive scrubbers to clean acid rain and smog-forming sulfur dioxide out of the hot mix of gases that went up and out the smokestack. But the scrubbers required energy to run, this official noted, and therefore were shut off except on days when dignitaries (or foreign journalists) visited.

According to Hu Tao, an ecologist and environmental economist who directs the China program ...

Read more on http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2014/11/25/can-china-cut-coal/


Cities to the Rescue
As nations dither on meaningful steps to combat climate change, localities are stepping in with their own measures to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases
Nov 18, 2014 |By David Biello

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The People's Climate March in New York City brought thousands to the streets.
GETTY IMAGES

In the city that never sleeps, the lights burn all night. And New York City needs energy for those lights, as well as for heating, air-conditioning and many other services. To meet these demands, the Big Apple belched nearly 60 million metric tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere in 2005.

Eight years later, despite a rise in population and new construction, emissions of greenhouse gas pollution had dropped by more than 11 million metric tons. How did Gotham manage to go so green? By banning the dirtiest oil used for heating and benefiting from a switch to natural gas for generating electricity.

New York is not alone in taking climate change seriously. Cities across the globe are ...

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Electron Beam Points to Origins of Teotihuacan Stone Faces
New microscope analysis of artifacts from the ancient city also can find fakes in museums
November 20, 2014 |By Josh Fischman

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Courtesy Smithsonian

Dramatic stone masks, iconic finds in the ancient Mexican city of Teotihuacan, were supposed to be made from a jadelike stone. Many researchers also thought the large faces were made on the site of the pre-Columbian metropolis. Instead, they seem to have been made in workshops a great distance to the south of the city. And they are made of softer stone like serpentinite and polished with quartz. Quartz does not appear around Teotihuacan, bolstering the notion that the masks were made far away. “Almost everything that has been written about the making of the Teotihuacan masks is untrue,” says Jane Walsh, an anthropologist at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.

New details about the manufacture of these old and valuable masks are coming to light, thanks to modern technology: a special analytical scanning electron microscope that can identify the atoms and minerals that make up the stone, and show ...

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The Secret to a Successful Thanksgiving: Free Will
Psychologists examine where gratitude comes from
November 25, 2014 |By Piercarlo Valdesolo

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I appreciate that you had a choice
Credit: Thinkstock

Google “successful Thanksgiving” and you will get a lot of different recommendations. Most you’ve probably heard before: plan ahead, get help, follow certain recipes. But according to new research from Florida State University, enjoying your holiday also requires a key ingredient that few guests consider as they wait to dive face first into the turkey: a belief in free will. What does free will have to do with whether or not Aunt Sally leaves the table in a huff? These researchers argue that belief in free will is essential to experiencing the emotional state that makes Thanksgiving actually about giving thanks: gratitude.

Previous research has shown that our level of gratitude for an act depends on three things: ...

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DNA Can Survive Reentry from Space
Genetic blueprints attached to a rocket survived a short spaceflight and later passed on their biological instructions
November 26, 2014 |By Dina Fine Maron

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Credit: Stockbyte Royalty Free Photos

If a cascade of meteors struck Earth billions of years ago, could they have deposited genetic blueprints and forged an indelible link between Earth and another planet?

Perhaps. Although that puzzling question remains unanswered, scientists have uncovered a new clue that suggests it is possible for DNA to withstand the extreme heat and pressure it would encounter when entering our atmosphere from space.

In a new study published today in PLOS ONE, a team of Swiss and German scientists report that they dotted the exterior grooves of a rocket with fragments of DNA to test the genetic material’s stability in space. Surprisingly, they discovered that ...

More on http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/dna-can-survive-reentry-from-space/?WT.mc_id=SA_EVO_20141201

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DNA Can Survive Reentry from Space
Genetic blueprints attached to a rocket survived a short spaceflight and later passed on their biological instructions
November 26, 2014 |By Dina Fine Maron

http://www.scientificamerican.com/sciam/cache/file/F2166FF2-7601-4905-A97356B7E58EE15B_article.jpg?8DD27
Credit: Stockbyte Royalty Free Photos

If a cascade of meteors struck Earth billions of years ago, could they have deposited genetic blueprints and forged an indelible link between Earth and another planet?

Perhaps. Although that puzzling question remains unanswered, scientists have uncovered a new clue that suggests it is possible for DNA to withstand the extreme heat and pressure it would encounter when entering our atmosphere from space.

In a new study published today in PLOS ONE, a team of Swiss and German scientists report that they dotted the exterior grooves of a rocket with fragments of DNA to test the genetic material’s stability in space. Surprisingly, they discovered that ...

Read more on http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/dna-can-survive-reentry-from-space/?WT.mc_id=SA_HLTH_20141202


Is the Blood of Ebola Survivors an Effective Treatment?
By Dina Fine Maron | December 1, 2014 | Comments2

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Credit: PhotoDisc/ Getty Images

When the World Health Organization recently named blood transfusions from Ebola survivors as its priority experimental therapy for the disease ravaging west Africa there was only one major problem: no data indicating that such transfusions work. Blood plasma from survivors contains antibodies that could potentially trigger an immune system response in patients, which would bolster their ability to fight the virus, but clinical data suggesting it has helped patients beat back the virus does not exist.

In the absence of any other approved therapy or vaccine for Ebola, however ...

Read more on http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2014/12/01/is-the-blood-of-ebola-survivors-an-effective-treatment/

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Brain Training Doesn’t Make You Smarter
Scientists doubt claims from brain training companies
December 2, 2014 |By David Z. Hambrick

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Try exercise
Credit: Thinkstock

If you’ve spent more than about 5 minutes surfing the web, listening to the radio, or watching TV in the past few years, you will know that cognitive training—better known as “brain training”—is one of the hottest new trends in self improvement. Lumosity, which offers web-based tasks designed to improve cognitive abilities such as memory and attention, boasts 50 million subscribers and advertises on National Public Radio. Cogmed claims to be “a computer-based solution for attention problems caused by poor working memory,” and BrainHQ will help you “make the most of your unique brain.” The promise of all of these products, implied or explicit, is that brain training can make you smarter—and make your life better.

Yet, according to a statement released by the Stanford University Center on Longevity and the Berlin Max Planck Institute for Human Development, there is no solid scientific evidence to ...

Read more on http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/brain-training-doesn-t-make-you-smarter/?WT.mc_id=SA_MB_20141203


Photons Double Up to Help Us See Beyond the Visible Light Spectrum
Our little-known ability to see infrared light could occur when pairs of photons combine their energies to appear as one "visible" photon
December 2, 2014 |By Katharine Sanderson and Nature magazine

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Although we do not have X-ray vision like Superman, we have what could seem to be another superpower: we can see infrared light — beyond what was traditionally considered the visible spectrum.
Credit: Sam Bald via Flickr

Although we do not have X-ray vision like Superman, we have what could seem to be another superpower: we can see infrared light — beyond what was traditionally considered the visible spectrum. A series of experiments now suggests that this little-known, puzzling effect could occur when pairs of infrared photons simultaneously hit the same pigment protein in the eye, providing enough energy to set in motion chemical changes that allow us to see the light.

Received wisdom, and the known chemistry of vision, say that human eyes can see light with wavelengths between 400 (blue) and 720 nanometres (red). Although this range is still officially known as the 'visible spectrum', the advent of lasers ...

Read more on http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/photons-double-up-to-help-us-see-beyond-the-visible-light-spectrum/?WT.mc_id=SA_MB_20141203

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Alien Yet Familiar: Following Curiosity Across Mars
By Caleb A. Scharf | November 28, 2014 |

822 Martian days after landing, NASA’s Curiosity rover, carrying the Mars Science Laboratory, continues on its extraordinary journey across landscapes that are both utterly alien, and remarkably familiar. Here’s a small update. On November 18th 2014 the rover was in the center of this region (within the Pahrump Hills), continuing across the base area of Mount Sharp, the 18,000 foot central peak within Gale Crater:

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Curiosity at the center. Image from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona)

In the next image you can get an idea of the planned route as it was back in September 2014 (with an improved, slightly more efficient path) – this map also gives a better indication of where Curiosity has come from since its touchdown at Bradbury Landing, and an inkling of the scale of Mount Sharp (insert).

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(NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona)

But the grander perspective comes from seeing Mount Sharp in its full glory, as shown here from a NASA/JPL release in September 2014. The scope of the rover’s journey and ambition is impressive, to say the least.

Read more on http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/life-unbounded/2014/11/28/alien-yet-familiar-following-curiosity-across-mars/


Parsing the Science of Interstellar with Physicist Kip Thorne
By Lee Billings | November 28, 2014 | Comments36

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The supermassive black hole and one of its planets in 'Interstellar.' Credit: Paramount Pictures/Warner Bros.

In an earlier blog post about Christopher Nolan’s latest blockbuster movie, Interstellar, I lauded the film for its ambition, its visuals and the strong performances of its cast. However, I also criticized it for its depiction of interstellar travel and a plot filled with details that didn’t seem to make much sense.

Perhaps because I called some of its science “laughably wrong,” my post drew the attention of Kip Thorne, the Caltech physicist who served as science advisor on the film. Thorne sent me a copy of his new book, The Science of Interstellar, and encouraged me to read it and reconsider my criticisms. The book tells ...

Read more on http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2014/11/28/parsing-the-science-of-interstellar-with-physicist-kip-thorne/

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Launch of Orion Paves the Way for NASA’s Return to Human Spaceflight
The first human-rated U.S. spacecraft since the space shuttle took an unmanned trial run on Friday
December 5, 2014 |By Clara Moskowitz

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The Orion capsule lifts off on a Delta IV Heavy rocket from Cape Canaveral, Fla. December 5, 2014.
Clara Moskowitz/Scientific American

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.— A crowd of thousands on Florida’s Space Coast watched the world’s largest rocket launch the new Orion capsule on its first trip to space. NASA’s replacement for the space shuttle, Orion could one day carry people to an asteroid and even to Mars. Today, however, it flew without a crew on a trial run that should send it around Earth twice, reaching a peak altitude of 5,800 kilometers (15 times higher than the International Space Station)—farther than any human-rated spacecraft has gone in 40 years. The capsule is due to splash down in the Pacific Ocean about four-and-a-half hours after its launch, which took place Friday, a day late after wind, a wayward boat and a fuel valve glitch prevented a first launch attempt on Thursday. Orion finally lifted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station this morning at 7:05 a.m. EST.

“We haven’t had this feeling in a while, since the end of the shuttle program,” Orion flight director Mike Sarafin of the Johnson Space Center in Houston said Wednesday before the liftoff. “We’re launching an American spacecraft from American soil and beginning something new and exploring deep space.” Since the last space shuttle landed in 2011 ...

Read more on http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/launch-of-orion-paves-the-way-for-nasa-s-return-to-human-spaceflight1/?WT.mc_id=SA_BS_20141205

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U.S. Ebola Vaccine Clears Safety Test
The candidate drug will be tested next to see how well it can help prevent infection
December 1, 2014 |By Ewen Callaway and Nature magazine

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Study participant receives NIAID/GSK candidate ebola vaccine
Credit: NIAID via Flickr

An experimental vaccine against Ebola virus seems to be safe and commands a strong immune response against the virus, according to tests in 20 healthy people in the United States. The results of the phase 1 trial are published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

“All in all, I would say it was a successful phase 1 study,” says Anthony Fauci, director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) in Bethesda, Maryland, which co-developed the drug with the London-based drug company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). “The next steps are to move ahead with a larger efficacy trial in West Africa.”

The vaccine is similar to one that is on track to be tested in larger trials in West Africa, which are likely begin early next year. In these phase 2 and phase 3 trials, thousands of people who are ...

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Rooftop Solar Cost Competitive with the Grid in Much of the U.S.
Can solar power compete with fossil fuels?
December 1, 2014

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The cost of electricity derived from residential rooftop solar panels could achieve "price parity" with fossil-fuel-based grid power in 47 U.S. states by 2016 according to a new report from Deutsche Bank.
Credit: Courtesy 64MM, Flickr CC

Dear EarthTalk: I’ve heard that the price of getting solar panels installed on a home is lower than ever, but has it gotten to the point anywhere in the U.S. where it’s actually cheaper than traditional grid power yet?
--Lester Milstein, Boston, MA

Rooftop solar panels on have always been the province of well-to-do, eco-friendly folks willing to shell out extra bucks to be green, but that is all starting to change. According to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), the cost of putting solar panels on a typical American house has fallen by some 70 percent over the last decade and a half. And a recent report from Deutsche Bank shows that solar has already achieved so-called “price parity” with fossil fuel-based grid power in 10 U.S. states. Deutsche Bank goes on to say that solar electricity is on track to be as cheap or cheaper than average electricity-bill prices in all but three states by 2016—assuming,that is, that the federal government maintains the 30 percent solar investment tax ...

Read more on http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/rooftop-solar-cost-competitive-with-the-grid-in-much-of-the-u-s/?WT.mc_id=SA_SP_20141208

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How House Calls Slash Health Care Costs
A MacArthur “genius” grant winner is now formally studying how hot-spotting method cuts expensive emergency room visits and delivers better care
December 5, 2014 |By Dina Fine Maron

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Credit: Getty

Even the most trivial of emergency-room trips can quickly add up. Going in for an upper respiratory infection averages more than $1,000. A urinary tract infection can set patients back thousands of dollars. But before Obamacare came on the scene, New Jersey physician Jeffrey Brenner was already working on innovative ways to slash health-care costs. He scoured health-care billing data at local hospitals and discovered that a small number of “super utilizers” clustered in certain geographic areas were responsible for the bulk of health-care costs in Camden, N.J. He brought together a team of social workers and medical professionals, who made regular house calls to those patients, accompanied them to doctor’s appointments ...

Read more on http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-house-calls-slash-health-care-costs/?WT.mc_id=SA_HLTH_20141209


Ebola Infections Fewer Than Predicted by Disease Models
Improvements in health care and other uncertainties make accurate forecasts difficult
December 8, 2014 |By Seema Yasmin

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Modelers are forced to build some assumptions into their programs because of a lack of data. That’s especially true at the beginning of an epidemic when efforts to stop the outbreak take precedence over accurate data collection and communication.
Credit: USAID via flickr

A few months ago the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention predicted that up to 1.4 million people in Liberia and Sierra Leone could become infected with Ebola by mid-January. In a recent address to the Senate, CDC director Tom Frieden said that worst-case scenario would not pan out.

That is partly because health care workers in the Ebola hot zone are engaged in a battle to contain the epidemic. It is also because of assumptions about human and viral behavior that are built into the mathematical models used to predict the spread of infectious diseases. Assumptions are inherent in these models. “You take islands of data from different places and build bridges of assumptions that link up all these islands,” says Martin Meltzer, senior health economist at the CDC. Meltzer’s model, which predicted ...

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Can Fear Be Erased?
Hormone and gene therapies for anxiety and PTSD could be on the way
December 4, 2014 |By Bret Stetka

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Give oxytocin to people with certain anxiety disorders, and activity in the amygdala—the primary fear center in human and other mammalian brains, two almond-shaped bits of brain tissue sitting deep beneath our temples—falls.
Credit: Amber Rieder, Jenna Traynor, & Geoffrey B Hall via Wikimedia Commons

When University of Bonn psychologist Monika Eckstein designed her latest published study, the goal was simple: administer a hormone into the noses of 62 men in hopes that their fear would go away. And for the most part, it did.

The hormone was oxytocin, often called our “love hormone” due to its crucial role in mother-child relationships, social bonding, and intimacy (levels soar during sex). But it also seems to have a significant antianxiety effect. Give oxytocin to people with certain anxiety disorders, and activity in the amygdala—the primary fear center in human and other mammalian brains, two almond-shaped bits of brain tissue sitting deep beneath our temples—falls.

The amygdala normally buzzes with activity in response to potentially threatening stimuli. When an organism repeatedly encounters ...

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Practice Doesn't Always Make Perfect
Science does not bear out the popular idea that nearly anyone can succeed with enough practice
Oct 16, 2014 |By Nathan Collins

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JASON LEE

It takes many thousands of hours of hard work to get to the top—yet time alone is not enough if you lack the other attributes necessary in your discipline, according to a study published online in July in Psychological Science.

In 1993 psychologist K. Anders Ericsson and his colleagues argued that success was not a matter of talent but rather what they termed deliberate practice, an idea that Malcolm Gladwell popularized as the “10,000-hour rule” in his book Outliers. Still, the role of deliberate practice—activities designed with the goal of improving performance—remained controversial. To try to sort things out, psychologist Brooke N. Macnamara of Princeton University and her colleagues reviewed 157 experimental results connecting total time spent practicing to ability in sports, music, education and other areas. On average, practice time accounted for ...

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What Is This “Atmospheric River” That Is Flooding California?
By Mark Fischetti | December 11, 2014 | Comments5

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The San Francisco Bay Area is getting flooded with relentless rain and strong winds, just like it did a week ago, and fears of rising water are now becoming very serious. Major news stations, weather channels, Web outlets and social media are all suddenly talking about the “atmospheric river” that is bringing deluge after deluge to California, as well as the coast of Washington. What is this thing? How rare is it? And how big of a threat could it be? Here are some answers. And see our graphics, below, taken from a brilliant and prescient feature article written by Michael Dettinger and Lynn Ingram in Scientific American in January 2013.

Not interested? In 1861 an atmospheric river that brought storms for 43 days turned California’s Central Valley into an inland sea 300 miles long and 20 miles wide. Thousands of people died, 800,000 cattle drowned and the state went bankrupt. A similar disaster today ...

Read more on http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2014/12/11/what-is-this-atmospheric-river-that-is-flooding-california/


2 Futures Can Explain Time's Mysterious Past
New theories suggest the big bang was not the beginning, and that we may live in the past of a parallel universe
December 8, 2014 |By Lee Billings

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In the evolution of cosmic structure, is entropy or gravity the more dominant force? The answer to this question has deep implications for the universe's future, as well as its past.
Credit: NASA; ESA; G. Illingworth, D. Magee, and P. Oesch, University of California, Santa Cruz; R. Bouwens, Leiden University; and the HUDF09 Team

Physicists have a problem with time.

Whether through Newton’s gravitation, Maxwell’s electrodynamics, Einstein’s special and general relativity or quantum mechanics, all the equations that best describe our universe work perfectly if time flows forward or backward.

Of course the world we experience is entirely different. The universe is expanding, not contracting. Stars emit light rather than absorb it, and radioactive atoms decay rather than reassemble. Omelets don’t transform back to unbroken eggs and cigarettes never coalesce from smoke and ashes. We remember the past, not the future, and we grow old and decrepit, not young and rejuvenated. For us, time has a clear and irreversible direction. It flies forward like a missile, equations be damned.

For more than a century, the standard explanation for “time’s arrow,” ...

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Mysterious Seafloor Methane Begins to Melt Off Washington State Coast
Researchers probe the oceans off the west coast and see signs of the meltdown of icy methane similar in size to the BP oil spill
December 10, 2014 |By Gayathri Vaidyanathan and ClimateWire

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Warming of the Pacific Ocean off Washington state could destabilize methane deposits on the seafloor and trigger a release of the greenhouse gas to the atmosphere.
Credit: Sam Beebe via Flickr

Warming of the Pacific Ocean off Washington state could destabilize methane deposits on the seafloor and trigger a release of the greenhouse gas to the atmosphere, according to a new study published in Geophysical Research Letters.

In the worst-case scenario, if oceans warm by up to 2.4 degrees Celsius by 2100, the volume of methane release every year by 2100 would quadruple the amount by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the study estimates.

At issue are methane hydrates, which are complexes of methane trapped in frozen ice buried in ocean beds. The hydrates are found throughout the world's oceans and are maintained by cool water and immense pressures. But as the oceans warm, the hydrates get destabilized and methane is released.

Methane is a significant greenhouse gas, with a global warming potential 86 times as potent as CO2 on a 20-year time scale. Some scientists worry that ...

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Bed Bugs, Kissing Bugs Linked to Deadly Chagas Disease in U.S.
Risk may still be low, but findings lead scientists to call for better studies
December 10, 2014 |By Jennifer Frazer

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Triatoma gerstaeckeri collected in Southeast Texas.
Credit: Rodion Gorchakov

Every year, the hearts of millions of Central and South Americans are quietly damaged by parasites. During the night, insects called kissing bugs emerge by the hundreds from hiding places in people’s mud and stick homes to bite their sleeping victims. The bugs defecate near the punctured skin and wriggling wormlike parasites in this poop may enter the wound and head for their victims' hearts. There, in about a third of victims, they damage the organs for decades before causing potentially lethal heart disease. Around 12,000 people worldwide die each year from the ailment, called Chagas disease.

Scientists thought Americans were safe in their sturdier houses. Now some are not so sure. Chagas-infected kissing bugs do enter at least some southern U.S. dwellings and bite people living there, recent studies suggest. And a new study published two weeks ago raises the specter ...

Read more on http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bed-bugs-kissing-bugs-linked-to-deadly-chagas-disease-in-u-s/?WT.mc_id=SA_SP_20141215

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What Rare Disorder Is Hiding in Your DNA?
As comprehensive genetic tests become more widespread, patients and experts mull how to deal with unexpected findings
Dec 16, 2014 |By Dina Fine Maron

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Skip Sterling

Last spring Laura Murphy, then 28 years old, went to a doctor to find out if a harmless flap of skin she had always had on the back of her neck was caused by a genetic mutation. Once upon a time, maybe five years ago, physicians would have focused on just that one question. But today doctors tend to run tests that pick up mutations underlying a range of hereditary conditions. Murphy learned not only that a genetic defect was indeed responsible for the flap but also that she had another inherited genetic mutation.

This one predisposed her to long QT syndrome, a condition that dramatically increases the risk of sudden cardiac death. In people with the syndrome ...

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Exercise Counteracts Genetic Risk for Alzheimer's
Regular physical activity may correct the brain's metabolism to stave off dementia
Oct 16, 2014 |By Emilie Reas

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THINKSTOCK

If you carried a gene that doubled your likelihood of getting Alzheimer's disease, would you want to know? What if there was a simple lifestyle change that virtually abolished that elevated risk? People with a gene known as APOE e4 have a higher risk of cognitive impairment and dementia in old age. Even before behavioral symptoms appear, their brains show reduced metabolism, altered activity and more deterioration than those without the high-risk gene. Yet accumulating research is showing that carrying this gene is not necessarily a sentence for memory loss and confusion—if you know how to work it to your advantage with exercise.

Scientists have long known that exercise can help stave off cognitive decline. Over the past decade evidence has mounted suggesting that this benefit is even greater for those at higher genetic risk for Alzheimer's. For example, two studies by a team in Finland and Sweden found that exercising at least twice a week in midlife lowers one's chance of getting dementia more than 20 years later, and this protective effect is stronger in people with the APOE e4 gene. Several others reported that frequent exercis ...

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NASA Rover Finds Mysterious Methane Emissions on Mars
New results suggest evidence for extraterrestrial life could be near at hand
December 16, 2014 |By Lee Billings

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NASA's Curiosity rover, seen here in a self-portrait from spring 2014, has found conclusive evidence of methane in the atmosphere of Mars. The gas is a potential sign of alien life, though it could also be produced through abiotic mechanisms.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Is there life on Mars? The answer may be blowing in the wind.

NASA’s Curiosity rover has detected fluctuating traces of methane – a possible sign of life – in the thin, cold air of the Martian atmosphere, researchers announced today at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union.

Across Mars and within Gale Crater, where Curiosity is slowly climbing a spire of sedimentary rock called Mount Sharp, the methane exists at a background concentration of slightly less than one part per billion by volume in the atmosphere (ppb). However, for reasons unknown, four times across a period of two months the rover measured much higher methane abundances, at about ten times the background level. Further in-situ studies of the methane emissions could help pin down whether Mars has life, now ...

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Fact or Fiction?: The Explosive Death of Eta Carinae Will Cause a Mass Extinction
We almost certainly have nothing to fear from one of the largest and brightest stars in the sky
December 16, 2014 |By Lee Billings

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The star system Eta Carinae is nearing its death as a supernova.
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA

When we think about “existential” threats, things that could potentially end the lives of everyone on Earth, most of the possibilities come from right here on our own planet—climate change, global pandemics and atomic warfare. Turning a paranoid gaze to the skies, we typically worry about asteroid strikes or perhaps some perilously massive burp from our sun.

But if you trust everything you read on the fringe regions of the internet, you may think the most fearsome heavenly threat may not only be extraterrestrial, but also extrasolar. Some 7,500 light-years away in the constellation of Carina a star called Eta Carinae, at least a hundred times more massive than our own sun, is approaching the point where it will detonate as a supernova. Simply put, Eta Carinae is ...

Read more on http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction-the-explosive-death-of-eta-carinae-will-cause-a-mass-extinction/?WT.mc_id=SA_SPC_20141218

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Will Cuba Now Embrace U.S. Technology?
The president is offering Cuba something the Castro government never asked for: access to U.S.-backed telecommunications services and gadgets
December 18, 2014 |By Larry Greenemeier

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Image of Cuba’s Communist Party headquarters, courtesy of Marco Zanferrari, via Flickr.

Pres. Barack Obama made good Wednesday on a years-old promise to begin to normalizing U.S. relations with Cuba. An authorization for U.S. companies to increase telecommunications connections between the two countries is a key component of the new U.S. policy.

The administration foreshadowed these changes in April 2009 when Obama directed the secretaries of State, Treasury and Commerce to “take the steps required” to let U.S. network providers cut deals to establish fiber-optic cable and satellite links between the U.S. and Cuba. Assuming the Castro regime ...

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For Sale: “Your Name Here” in a Prestigious Science Journal
An investigation into some scientific papers finds worrying irregularities
December 17, 2014 |By Charles Seife

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In the past few years signs of foul play in the peer-reviewed literature have cropped up across the scientific publishing world
Credit: Mike Watson Images/Thinkstock

Klaus Kayser has been publishing electronic journals for so long he can remember mailing them to subscribers on floppy disks. His 19 years of experience have made him keenly aware of the problem of scientific fraud. In his view, he takes extraordinary measures to protect the journal he currently edits, Diagnostic Pathology. For instance, to prevent authors from trying to pass off microscope images from the Internet as their own, he requires them to send along the original glass slides.

Despite his vigilance, however, signs of possible research misconduct have crept into some articles published in Diagnostic Pathology. Six of the 14 articles in the May 2014 issue, for instance, contain suspicious repetitions of phrases and other irregularities. When Scientific American informed ...

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How to Grow Stronger Without Lifting Weights
A study finds improvement from pretending to move muscles
December 23, 2014 |By Clayton Mosher

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Gain, no pain?
Credit: Nastco/Thinkstock

We yearn to believe that we can get fit without effort. We build “ab belts” to electrocute our muscles to give us six-packs. We invent chocolate-chip cookie diets to make us thin while eating fat. We wish to get fit from doing absolutely nothing. We wish to lie in bed, think about going to the gym and then, poof, obtain the body of a Greek god.

Well, a remarkable new study from Brian Clark at Ohio University shows that sitting still, while just thinking about exercise, might make us stronger. Clark and colleagues recruited 29 volunteers and wrapped their wrists in surgical casts for an entire month. During this month, half of the volunteers thought about exercising their immobilized wrists. For 11 minutes a day, 5 days a week, they sat completely still and focused their entire mental effort on pretending to flex their muscles. When the casts were removed ...

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Avoid Backlit Reading Before Bed
Volunteers who read from an iPad before bed took longer to fall asleep and had less restful nights than when they read from a printed book. Dina Fine Maron reports.
December 23, 2014 |By Dina Fine Maron

When you curl up in bed, consider reading an old-fashioned printed book rather than a smartphone or tablet. Your sleep should be deeper and more restful. That’s the finding of a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. [Anne-Marie Chang et al, Evening use of light-emitting eReaders negatively affects sleep, circadian timing, and next-morning alertness]

Researchers had 12 healthy young adults read either a printed book or an iPad for four hours before bed during five consecutive evenings. During the fifth night blood samples were collected every hour via an IV during both the reading and sleeping periods. The research team assessed sleep time ...

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The Year in Energy and Environment: It Wasn’t All Apocalyptic
By David Biello | December 22, 2014 | Comments9

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‘Tis the season for year end lists. The problem is: news keeps happening. One of the members of this list only happened just last week.

Two of these you’ve no doubt already seen on Scientific American’s annual Top 10 list:

Scientific American‘s Top 10 Science Stories of 2014

I’ll add them here, because they are important, but with a few new thoughts:

(1) Global Warming

Could be the top energy and environment story of every year since the Industrial Revolution, but 2014 was the best of times for climate change: ...

Read more on http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2014/12/22/the-year-in-energy-and-environment-it-wasnt-all-apocalyptic/


How Lithium Ion Batteries Grounded the Dreamliner
Official report on Boeing 787 fires tells a cautionary tale about advanced batteries
December 18, 2014 |By Umair Irfan and ClimateWire

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In its assessment, the NTSB report criticized the battery manufacturer for faults in production.
Credit: National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB)/Wikimedia Commons

At 10:21 a.m. on Jan. 7, 2013, about a minute after all 183 passengers and 11 crew members from Japan Airlines Flight 008 disembarked at Boston's Logan International Airport, a member of the cleaning crew spotted smoke in the aft cabin of the Boeing 787-8.

A mechanic then opened the aft electronic equipment bay of the plane, parked at the airport gate, and saw billowing smoke and flames coming from the batteries for the 787's auxiliary power unit (APU). He tried to use a fire extinguisher, but the blaze didn't go out.

Firefighters arrived at the scene at 10:37 a.m., and using a thermal imaging camera, they looked through the smoke in the equipment bay and saw a ...

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Pacemaker Powered by Heartbeats Has Watch Parts
An automatic wristwatch mechanism harnesses heartbeats
Dec 16, 2014 |By Prachi Patel

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Brown Bird Design

Electronic pacemakers time the heartbeats of more than three million people in the U.S. For these patients, surgery is a regular occurrence. A pacemaker's batteries must be swapped out every five to eight years, and the electric leads that connect the device to the heart can wear out, too.

In an effort to eliminate the batteries and leads altogether, biomedical engineers at the University of Bern in Switzerland have built a heartbeat-powered pacemaker, assembled from self-winding clockwork technology that is more than two centuries old.

Automatic wristwatches, invented in 1777, contain a weighted rotor that ...

Read more on http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/pacemaker-powered-by-heartbeats-has-watch-parts/?WT.mc_id=SA_HLTH_20141230

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Strategies for Sticking to Your Goals

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Setbacks are inevitable but there are ways to cope with them and meet your goals

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Beautiful Minds
The Messy Minds of Creative People
By Scott Barry Kaufman | December 24, 2014 | Comments11

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Creativity is very messy.

According to one prominent theory, the creative process involves four stages: preparation, incubation, illumination, and verification. This is all well and good in theory. In reality, the creative process often feels like this:

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Epidemic of Violence against Health Care Workers Plagues Hospitals
Hospital administrations and the judicial system do little to prevent assaults against nurses and other caregivers by patients
December 31, 2014 |By Roni Jacobson

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Emergency room and psychiatric nurses and workers involved in elder and in-home care are at an especially high risk.
Credit: COD Newsroom via flickr

In a harrowing video that surfaced last month, a 68-year-old hospital patient attacks a group of nurses with a pipe pulled from his bed. They flee through a nearby door in a streak of rainbow scrubs, but the patient pursues and lands several more blows on one fallen nurse in the hallway.

This assault is far from an isolated incident. Health-care workers are hit, kicked, scratched, bitten, spat on, threatened and harassed by patients with surprising regularity. In a 2014 survey, almost 80 percent of nurses reported being attacked on the job within the past year. Health-care workers experience the most nonfatal workplace violence compared to ...

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Banking Culture Encourages Dishonesty
What is it about the financial sector that encourages bad behavior?
December 30, 2014 |By Francesca Gino

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Opportunity beckons
Credit: Jacob Wackerhausen/Thinkstock

Across the globe, many people and institutions suffered large costs from the 2008 financial meltdown. Among the victims is the financial sector itself—whose reputation has been questioned after scandals involving the manipulation of interest rates and fraudulent deals. In trying to make sense of the crisis, some have pointed the fingers to individual bankers and banks, others to institutional pressures. But new research suggests that one important cause may reside elsewhere: in the banking culture itself. A paper recently published in Nature magazine found that the financial sector’s culture encourages dishonesty.

This is an important finding, as it suggests that good conduct starts with ...

Read more on http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/banking-culture-encourages-dishonesty/?WT.mc_id=SA_SP_20150105

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Virtual Reality Comes to the Web—Maybe for Real This Time
Backed by Google and Mozilla, VR-enabled browsers and gear could soon immerse Web users in 3-D worlds
December 29, 2014 |By Susan Kuchinskas

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WEB VR FOR REAL: Gadgets that can take advantage of Web VR include the still-in-beta Oculus Rift (via Facebook) and Samsung Gear VR (pictured here).
Courtesy of Samsung Electronics Co.

Get ready to take the stage with Paul McCartney. If that’s not your thing, you can test-drive the latest SUV before it's available in showrooms or experience a movie as though you're in the scene. That's been the promise of virtual reality (VR) for years, although stepping into an immersive three-dimensional virtual world has always required expensive stereoscopic head-mounted displays and other specialized equipment.

A new, more accessible form of virtual reality delivered via the Web promises to let people experience digital worlds in 3-D using head-mounted displays connected to a variety of browser-enabled devices. Web VR is expected to offer ...

Read more on http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/virtual-reality-comes-to-the-web-maybe-for-real-this-time/?WT.mc_id=SA_TECH_20150106


What Black Box Data Will Tell Us about the AirAsia Crash
One of the "black boxes," the flight data recorder, keeps track of hundreds of measurements, including engine temperature and vertical and horizontal speed
December 31, 2014 |By Kelly Dickerson and LiveScience

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Flight 8501 crashed on its way from Surabaya, Indonesia, to Singapore on December 28.
Credit: Google Maps

Pieces of an AirAsia jet and the bodies of some of its 162 passengers were recovered today (Dec. 30) off the coast of Borneo, snuffing out hopes that the missing plane had somehow made a miracle landing and that survivors might be found.

Life vests, aircraft debris and a small blue suitcase were among the items that the search and rescue team found floating in the Java Sea. But Indonesian authorities are still working to recover a key piece of the plane that should reveal what caused the mysterious crash: the black box.

"Recovering victims is [the] highest priority, but they'll have enough search and rescue team members to simultaneously search for ...

Read more on http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-black-box-data-will-tell-us-about-the-airasia-crash/?WT.mc_id=SA_TECH_20150106

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Get the New Skinny on Dietary Fat
What is the new consensus on whether fat is good or bad for you?
January 7, 2015 |By EarthTalk

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Avocado is one of the superfoods which contain good fat that is crucial for brain health.
Credit: Cyclonebill, Flickr CC

Dear EarthTalk: What's the skinny on fat these days? I saw a major magazine cover image recently that was suggesting fat wasn't so bad for us after all? -- Marcy Bellwether, Taos, NM

Going “fat-free” might seem like an effective, safe way to lose weight when considering that fat contains nine calories per gram, compared to four calories per gram in carbohydrates and proteins. But if you take into account the fact that approximately 60 percent of human brain matter consists of fats, eating reduced fat or fat-free foods high in sugar and refined carbohydrates no longer seems as appealing for our health.

“The brain thrives on a fat-rich, low carbohydrate diet, which unfortunately is relatively uncommon in human populations today,” reports ...

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The Secret to Raising Smart Kids
HINT: Don't tell your kids that they are. More than three decades of research shows that a focus on “process”—not on intelligence or ability—is key to success in school and in life
Jan 1, 2015 |By Carol S. Dweck

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JIM CUMMINS Getty Images

A brilliant student, Jonathan sailed through grade school. He completed his assignments easily and routinely earned As. Jonathan puzzled over why some of his classmates struggled, and his parents told him he had a special gift. In the seventh grade, however, Jonathan suddenly lost interest in school, refusing to do homework or study for tests. As a consequence, his grades plummeted. His parents tried to boost their son's confidence by assuring him that he was very smart. But their attempts failed to motivate Jonathan (who is a composite drawn from several children). Schoolwork, their son maintained, was boring and pointless.

Our society worships talent, and many people assume that possessing superior intelligence or ability—along with confidence in that ability—is a recipe for success. In fact ...

Read more on http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-secret-to-raising-smart-kids1/

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Newfound Exoplanets Are Most Earth-Like Yet
NASA's planet-hunting Kepler spacecraft finds two worlds that have sizes and orbits similar to ours
January 6, 2015 |By Lee Billings

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This artist's conception depicts an Earth-like planet orbiting an evolved star that has formed a stunning "planetary nebula." Earlier in its life, this planet may have been like one of the eight newly discovered worlds orbiting in the habitable zones of their stars.
Credit: David A. Aguilar (CfA)

After five years of searching, researchers using data from NASA's exoplanet-hunting Kepler spacecraft have discovered what look to be two of the most Earth-like worlds yet. Dubbed Kepler 438 b and Kepler 442 b, both planets appear to be rocky and orbit in the not-too-hot, not-too-cold habitable zones of their stars where liquid water can exist in abundance. Astronomers announced the planets along with six other newfound small, temperate worlds today at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle. Their findings will be published in The Astrophysical Journal. The discoveries double the number of known potentially habitable exoplanets. They also push Kepler's tally of vetted, confirmed worlds to just over 1,000, marking a milestone in the mission's epochal search for alien Earths.

Both planets are many hundreds of light-years away and orbit stars smaller and dimmer than our sun. Like most of Kepler's finds, they were discovered via transits—the shadows they cast toward our solar system as they cross the blazing faces of their stars. Transits allow astronomers to measure a planet's size, orbit and exposure to starlight. Kepler 438 b is only about ...

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Tau Ceti’s Dust Belt is Huge
New image shows the star’s system shares features with our own
Dec 16, 2014 |By Ken Croswell

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COURTESY OF GRANT KENNEDY University of Cambridge AND SAMANTHA LAWLER University of Victoria

Shining just 12 light-years from Earth, the star Tau Ceti so resembles the sun that it has appeared in numerous science-fiction stories and was the first star astronomers ever searched for signs of intelligent life, half a century ago. In 2012 Tau Ceti grew still more intriguing when astronomers reported five possible planets somewhat larger than Earth circling closer to the star than Mars orbits the sun—one of which is in the star's habitable zone. Newly released far-infrared images taken by the Herschel Space Observatory yield even more insight about Tau Ceti's solar system: greater detail about its dust belt.

Dust arises when asteroids and comets collide, so its location reveals ...

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[Duke of Buckingham]

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Game Theorists Crack Poker
An "essentially unbeatable" algorithm for Texas hold 'em points to strategies for solving real-life problems without having complete information
January 8, 2015 |By Philip Ball and Nature magazine

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As part of its developing strategy, the computer learned to inject a certain dose of bluffing into its plays. Although bluffing seems like a very human, psychological element of the game, it is in fact part of game theory — and, typically, of computer poker.
Credit: Thinkstock

A new computer algorithm can play one of the most popular variants of poker essentially perfectly. Its creators say that it is virtually “incapable of losing against any opponent in a fair game”.

This is a step beyond a computer program that can beat top human players, as IBM's chess-playing computer Deep Blue famously did in 1997 against Garry Kasparov, at the time the game's world champion. The poker program devised by computer scientist Michael Bowling and his colleagues at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, along with Finnish software developer Oskari Tammelin, plays perfectly, to all intents and purposes.

That means that this particular variant of poker ...

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Where in the World Are the Fossil Fuels That Cannot Be Burned to Restrain Global Warming?
A new analysis reveals the nations—U.S. included—that must sacrifice exploiting much of their carbon-based energy resources if they are serious about combating climate change
January 7, 2015 |By David Biello

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(DO NOT) BURN NOTICE: A new analysis notes that fossil fuel reserves like Canada's oil sands cannot be used if the world is serious about restraining global warming to 2 degrees Celsius or less.
© David Biello

Canada, Russia, Saudi Arabia and the U.S. cannot burn much of the coal, oil and gas located within their national territories if the world wants to restrain global warming. That’s the conclusion of a new analysis aimed at determining what it will take to keep average global temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius this century—a goal adopted during ongoing negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

"If we want to reach the two degree limit in the most cost-effective manner, over 80 percent of current coal, half of gas and one third of oil need to be classified as unburnable," said Christophe McGlade, a research associate at University College London's Institute for Sustainable Resources (ISR) and lead author of the report published in Nature on January 8, during a press conference. (Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.) Those global restrictions apply even if technologies ...

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[zombie67]

"combating climate change"? Climate is constantly changing, and always has. The Thames used to freeze over, and parties were held on the ice, for example. Most of us have see the painting of GW crossing the Delaware river with ice chunks. Google "The Little Ice Age" and "Medieval Warm Period". All that radical climate change happened long before the industrial age. The primary influences on climate are the giant fireball in the sky (and its belches) and volcanic activity (and its belches). Trying to stop the changing climate is hubris and futile in the long run. Reduce pollution where it's convenient and not an economic disaster, and get on with your lives.