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Inequality, 'Silver Spoon' Effect Found In Ancient SocietiesThe so-called "silver spoon" effect -- in which wealth is passed down from one generation to another -- is well established in some of the world's most ancient economies, according to anthropologists.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 30 Oct 2009 | 12:00 pm New Technology May Cool The LaptopDoes your laptop sometimes get so hot that it can almost be used to fry eggs? New technology may help cool it and give information technology a unique twist.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 30 Oct 2009 | 12:00 pm Exploring The Final Frontier: Disease Proposed As Major Barrier To Mars And BeyondScientists argue that human missions to Mars, as well as all other long-term space flights might be compromised by microbial hitchhikers, such as bacteria. That's because long-term space travel packs a one-two punch to astronauts: first it appears to weaken their immune systems; and second, it increases the virulence and growth of microbes.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 30 Oct 2009 | 12:00 pm Nanoparticle Coating Prevents Freezing Rain BuildupPreventing the havoc wrought when freezing rain collects on roads, power lines, and aircrafts could be only a few nanometers away. A research team has now demonstrated a nanoparticle-based coating that thwarts the buildup of ice on solid surfaces and can be easily applied.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 30 Oct 2009 | 12:00 pm For Big Athletes, Possible Future Risk: Heightened Cardiometabolic Risk Factors Among Professional Football LinemenNew research comparing the signs of metabolic syndrome in professional baseball and football players reveals that the larger professional athletes -- football linemen in particular -- may encounter future health problems despite their rigorous exercise routines.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 30 Oct 2009 | 12:00 pm Bodybuilding With Steroids Damages KidneysAthletes who use anabolic steroids may gain muscle mass and strength, but they can also destroy their kidney function, according to a new article. The findings indicate that the habitual use of steroids has serious harmful effects on the kidneys that were not previously recognized.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 30 Oct 2009 | 12:00 pm New Studies Explore Connection Between High Stress Jobs And GI DisordersIn a six year study of World Trade Center workers, researchers probed the connection between the high frequencies of GERD and mental health disorders reported among exposed workers during the post 9/11 cleanup. And researchers from the United States Navy examining functional gastrointestinal disorders within the active military population and their connection to of infectious gastroenteritis found not only a significant association between IGE and FGD, but also that almost 30 percent of those effected received care for two years after their initial diagnosis.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 30 Oct 2009 | 9:00 am New Celestial Map Gives Directions For GPSMany of us have been rescued from unfamiliar territory by directions from a Global Positioning System navigator. GPS satellites send signals to a receiver in your GPS navigator, which calculates your position based on the location of the satellites and your distance from them. The distance is determined by how long it took the signals from various satellites to reach your receiver.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 30 Oct 2009 | 9:00 am Scientists Propose New Explanation For Flu Virus Antigenic DriftInfluenza viruses evade infection-fighting antibodies by constantly changing the shape of their major surface protein. Now, researchers have proposed a new explanation for the evolutionary forces that drive antigenic drift.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 30 Oct 2009 | 9:00 am No Pain, No Gain: Mastering A Skill Makes Us Stressed In The Moment, Happy Long TermNo pain, no gain applies to happiness, too, according to new research. People who work hard at improving a skill or ability, such as mastering a math problem or learning to drive, may experience stress in the moment, but experience greater happiness on a daily basis and longer term, the study suggests.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 30 Oct 2009 | 9:00 am US rubber company disputes Liberia pollution study (AP)AP - An American-owned rubber company is disputing claims by the Liberian government that the company's waste products are polluting creeks.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 30 Oct 2009 | 4:31 am EU push for climate funding unityEU leaders will try to break an impasse over funds to help poor countries fight global warming, on the last day of their summit.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 30 Oct 2009 | 4:14 am Polar bear plus grizzly equals?A new study reveals what happens when a polar bear is crossed with a grizzly.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 30 Oct 2009 | 3:56 am EU leaders seek to break deadlock on climate aid (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 30 Oct 2009 | 3:24 am Frog embryos 'smell' predatorsFrogs learn the smell of their future predators while they are still embryos, according to researchers.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 30 Oct 2009 | 3:16 am The nation's weather (AP)AP - Rain and flooding were forecast to continue over the Mississippi River on Friday as a strong front lingered over the region.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 30 Oct 2009 | 2:57 am EU sets 100 bln euro climate summit goal for poor states (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 30 Oct 2009 | 2:49 am Philippines braces for new storm, grounds ferries (Reuters)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 29 Oct 2009 | 11:27 pm New Moon Rocket Damaged in Test Flight, NASA Says (SPACE.com)SPACE.com - NASA has discovered a large dent on its brand-new moon rocket after the booster splashed into the Atlantic Ocean at the end of a test flight this week.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 29 Oct 2009 | 7:05 pm Chevron tried to taint Ecuador toxic waste trial: lawyer (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 29 Oct 2009 | 6:35 pm Ariane puts satellites in orbitEurope's Ariane 5 rocket launches another two telecommunications satellites into orbit.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 29 Oct 2009 | 6:27 pm NASA: Booster rocket damaged in test flight (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 29 Oct 2009 | 5:30 pm Don’t Tell Geico: You May Be a Natural Born Bad Driver
Next time you get cut off by a another driver, consider giving the offender a break: One-third of Americans might be genetically predisposed to crappy driving. No, really, it’s not just your imagination. In a new study of college undergraduates, those with a common genetic variation scored 20 percent worse in a driving simulator than their counterparts. “The people who had this genetic variation performed more poorly from the get-go and learned more slowly as they went along,” said Steven Cramer, a University of California, Irvine neurologist, who works on helping stroke victims recover. “Then, when we brought them back four days later, they had more forgetting.” The single nucleotide polymorphism, or SNP, is just one of millions of single-letter variations between humans’ genetic codes. This one occurs in a gene that produces a protein called brain-derived neurotrophic factor, which helps regulate the formation of new synapses, and the maintenance of old ones. BDNF plays a very important role in what’s called neuroplasticity, or the brain’s ability to rewire itself on the fly. As described in a paper published in the journal Cerebral Cortex, study participants were asked to drive 16 laps in a driving simulator that was essentially a screen with a steering wheel. As they drove around the course, they attempted to keep their cars on a black strip in the center of the road. The software grades their ability to complete that task quantitatively. And, of a small sample of 29 students, people with that single genetic difference, called Val66Met, performed more poorly than their demographically similar counterparts.
Cramer considers the simulation a good proxy not just for driving, but for other complex motor skills tasks. Because it’s not controlling a motor vehicle, per se, that he’s interested in, but how the brain learns, or relearns complex tasks. When people have a stroke, and a portion of their brain dies, they have to relearn tasks using different parts of their brains. Individual genes are only part of the symphony of influences that determine individual behavior, but the Val66Met variation appears to have an unusually strong influence on the brain’s activity. “There is mounting evidence that the one in three people who have this variation have less plasticity than the two thirds of people who lack that genetic variation,” Cramer said. Results from a separate study reported earlier this year in Scientific American also found that genetic variation in BDNF helped determined people’s skill at a simple computer game. The effect is so pronounced, in fact, that Cramer said he could imagine future stroke patient routing within hospitals based on the SNP. “I wonder if there aren’t going to be treatments, when they have traumatic brain injury and you’re in the rehab ward, where they test the gene and say, ‘Send them to the BDNF ward,’” he said. So, if the presence of the gene makes you a worse driver, a slower stroke-victim recoverer, and possibly has other negative effects, why is the variant still present? “Variations can stick around just for the fact that they are not that bad for you,” said Bruce Teter, a geneticist who studies the brain at UCLA. “They don’t kill you before you reproduce, in which case, there is no selective advantage or disadvantage.” But it also turns out that people with the Val66Met variant could be less susceptible to degenerative neurological disorders like Parkinson’s and Huntington’s. “Originally people thought plasticity had to be good, as it’s related to the ability of the brain to adapt and learn and things like that,” Teter said. “But neuroplasticity can also be bad for you in situations where the kinds of changes that are seen are deleterious.” But if you want to stay out of car accidents, it’s better to have the dominant BDNF variant, Cramer’s study suggests. And if further work continues to support that idea, the question is, can or should we do anything with that information? “Let’s pretend that the one in three people are more prone to car accidents,” Cramer said. “It’s up to society to say, how do we deal with that fact?” Image: Justin Fantl. See Also:
WiSci 2.0: Alexis Madrigal’s Twitter, Google Reader feed, and green tech history research site; Wired Science on Twitter and Facebook.
Source: Wired: Wired Science | 29 Oct 2009 | 5:18 pm Space Junk Threat Delays Japanese Spaceship's Station Departure (SPACE.com)SPACE.com - A piece of space junk orbiting Earth has forced NASA to tweak upcoming plans for the Friday departure of Japan's first cargo ship to the International Space Station.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 29 Oct 2009 | 4:46 pm Ariane rocket launches two television satellitesKOUROU, French Guiana (Reuters) - An Ariane-5 rocket placed two television satellites in orbit after blasting off from French Guiana on Thursday, space officials said.Source: Reuters: Science News | 29 Oct 2009 | 4:28 pm Stem Cells Turned into Precursors of Sperm and EggsThe breakthrough could ultimately lead to research that would help infertile couples.Source: Livescience.com | 29 Oct 2009 | 3:50 pm Vaccines Could Slow Flu's EvolutionVaccinating more children could inhibit the mutation of the constantly changing flu virus.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 29 Oct 2009 | 3:00 pm Share Your Stars: New Wired Science DIY Astronomy Flickr Group
We have been amazed by the astrophotos our readers and followers have been sharing with us. So to facilitate our ongoing amazement, and in keeping with our belief that there can never be too many space photos, we have created a new Flickr group for you to upload your favorite shots. We’ll run the best of the bunch on Wired Science periodically so that your work can be properly gawked at by your fellow Wired.com readers. So join our DIY Astronomy Flickr group, and start wowing us with your nebulas, clusters and galaxies! Our first submission, the Orion Nebula by Elias Jordan, is pictured above. We’ll also be tweeting @wiredscience about your astrophotography, so follow us there. Image: The Orion Nebula. / Elias Jordan See Also:
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Source: Wired: Wired Science | 29 Oct 2009 | 2:45 pm BLOG: Five Scary (But True) Space StoriesThere's nothing like a good horror story, especially when it's set in space.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 29 Oct 2009 | 1:20 pm NASA to Start Irradiating MonkeysSpider monkeys will be exposed to radiation as NASA investigates the effects of space travel.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 29 Oct 2009 | 1:00 pm Recipe for Mass Extinction: Add Algae and Stir ControversyA new hypothesis claims toxins from algae played a major role in all five mass extinctions.Source: Livescience.com | 29 Oct 2009 | 12:50 pm The Future of Video Game Input: Muscle Sensors (LiveScience.com)LiveScience.com - Motion control and multi-touch have become common in devices ranging from Nintendo's Wii to Apple's iPhone. But a muscle-sensing system could someday allow gamers to play air "Guitar Hero" without a controller, or help harried parents with full hands open car doors.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 29 Oct 2009 | 12:29 pm NASA's Ares Flies; Commercial Falcon FollowsNASA is looking to the private sector to develop vehicles to launch astronauts into orbit.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 29 Oct 2009 | 11:15 am Hubble Captures Sparkling ‘Jewel Box’ Star Cluster
This stunning image of the Kappis Crucis Cluster, nicknamed the “Jewel Box,” was one of the last gifts from a retiring camera on the Hubble Space Telescope. Just before NASA brought the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 back to Earth in mid-2009, it snapped this photo of the core of the NGC 4755 star cluster, the first comprehensive image of an open galactic cluster taken in multiple wavelengths. Using seven different filters, Hubble captured the Jewel Box cluster in far ultraviolet to near-infrared light. The different colors of the stars — from pale blue to bright ruby red — result from their differing intensities at various ultraviolet wavelengths. Just bright enough to be seen from Earth with the naked eye, the Jewel Box was given its name by English astronomer John Herschel in the 1830’s, who thought the sparkling blue and red stars resembled expensive jewelry. Like most open star clusters, the Jewel Box is made up of an array of sister stars, all formed from the same cloud of gas and dust with similar ages and chemical make-up. Located about 6,400 light-years away, near the Southern Cross in the constellation of Crux, the Jewel Box contains roughly 100 stars.
Besides Hubble, two other telescopes have also recently captured new images of the Jewel Box. A wide-field photo taken by the 2.2-meter telescope at the European Southern Observatory’s La Silla observatory in Chile shows the multi-colored cluster surrounded by thousands of neighboring stars. A close-up from ESO’s Very Large Telescope captures the stars in detail and ranks as one of the best images of the Jewel Box ever taken from the ground. Both images can be seen in the composite photo below.
Image 1: NASA/ESA and Jesús Maíz Apellániz/Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía, Spain. Image 2: ESO, NASA/ESA, Digitized Sky Survey 2 and Jesús Maíz Apellániz/Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía, Spain. See Also:
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Source: Wired: Wired Science | 29 Oct 2009 | 11:11 am Humans, Shmumans: What Mars Needs Is an Armada of Robots and Blimps
Airships may be the key component in a new robotic system for exploring the celestial bodies most likely to harbor life like Mars and Jupiter’s moon, Titan.
The dirigibles would provide regional observations and autonomous command for ground-based vehicles, while maintaining contact with orbiters. It’d be a new role for airships, which were the wonder of the aerial world in the days before airplanes (and rockets and space shuttles). “The balloon or airship has a lot of advantages: It’s buoyant, so it keeps its altitude and you do not need to invest energy to keep it afloat,” said Wolfgang Fink, who led the work at Cal Tech’s Visual and Autonomous Exploration Systems Research Laboratory, before accepting an appointment at the University of Arizona. “It has a lot of advantages, especially in places like Titan, which has a dense atmosphere that’s perfect for an airship.” Current robotic exploration missions are limited. Orbiting telescopes like the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter provide low-resolution views of vast swaths of a celestial body while rovers and landers provide detailed observations of a tiny region. Fink argues that we’ll need teams of robots to do any serious exploration looking for interesting features that might tip us off to the presence of life or geological activity. And on planets with atmospheres, airships are the ideal middle layer for “tier-scalable reconnaissance,” a vision Fink has spelled out in a series of papers over the past several years.
To test how teams of autonomous robots working together could explore an area, Fink’s team built a miniature lab version of the system, as seen in the image above. At just 4 feet by 5 feet, it’s not exactly the surface of Mars, but it allowed the team to test a piece of software that picks out anomalous objects in a landscape, the Automatic Global Feature Analyzer. The software doesn’t try to place what it reads in images into known categories. Surveying a scene, it doesn’t try to identify certain kind of rocks or geological features. Instead, it just looks for the odd stuff out — the Waldo — in the scene. For a place like Mars, where we know a lot of the territory is similar and seemingly lifeless, the weird stuff is probably the good stuff. “If you do not know what you will encounter, you have to embrace the unknown,” Fink said. With the miniature lab tests complete, Fink plans to take his show on the road, probably to the Arizona desert. Over a large geographic region, they’ll float an airship with on-board camera and release rovers controlled by the feature analyzer software. “For initial test purposes, we could put a Coke can and see if the science algorithms will flag these anomalies,” Fink said, “And then, once they are flagged, generate the navigation commands that are issued from the airships to the ground.” They plan to try the Coke can test in the next year. As time goes on, they will try more difficult terrains out because ultimately, it’s the extreme areas of other planets that could prove the most interesting. By keeping the ground units cheap, they can also have more of them, allowing the missions to take greater risks. “Mountain ranges, canyons, cliffs — those are the locations where interesting stuff might happen,” Fink said. “You need to be able to get into those high-risk areas to get a nice and interesting science return. You might lose some of these agents you deploy, but because they are simplified, you can deploy more of them and still afford to lose some of them.” The entire system — satellite, airships and ground rovers — could be ready to go in the next decade, which would be long before NASA could actually use it.
Image: 1. NASA/JPL. 2. Wolfgang Fink. 3. The invasion of Normandy, U.S. Coast Guard Collection. See Also:
WiSci 2.0: Alexis Madrigal’s Twitter, Google Reader feed, and green tech history research site; Wired Science on Twitter and Facebook.
Source: Wired: Wired Science | 29 Oct 2009 | 10:50 am Multiyear Arctic ice is effectively gone: expertOTTAWA (Reuters) - The multiyear ice covering the Arctic Ocean has effectively vanished, a startling development that will make it easier to open up polar shipping routes, an Arctic expert said on Thursday.Source: Reuters: Science News | 29 Oct 2009 | 10:01 am Hungry Bats Prompt Firefly FlashesFireflies may flash their bio-luminescent lights at night to warn off hungry bats.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 29 Oct 2009 | 9:40 am 2012 Cataclysm: Ancient Astronomy to Modern Myth?Our skeptic, Ben Radford, takes on three authors to calibrate the claims of planetary disaster in 2012.Source: Livescience.com | 29 Oct 2009 | 9:28 am Exploding Star Sets Distance RecordA dying mega-star 13 billion light-years away is the most distant object ever found.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 29 Oct 2009 | 8:45 am Cosmic Jewel Box Photographed in DetailTrio of images showcase stars of the Jewel Box cluster.Source: Livescience.com | 29 Oct 2009 | 7:52 am Dripless teapots: here's my handle, here's my superhydrophobic spoutWhy do teapots dribble? French scientists say it's all about the simple subject of surface wettability For those who hate tea stains on their pristine linen tablecloth, succour is at hand: scientists in France have solved the perennial puzzle of the dribbling teapot. Fluids experts at the University of Lyon have produced a four-page report [pdf] that claims to offer a solution, and as often can be the case with long-unresolved problems, it is a simple one. "Surface wettability is an unexpected key factor in controlling flow separation and dripping, the latter being completely suppressed in the limit of superhydrophobic substrates," the report explains. "This unforeseen coupling is rationalised in terms of a novel hydro-capillary adhesion framework, which couples inertial flows to surface wettability effects. This description of flow separation successfully captures the observed dependence on the various experimental parameters – wettability, flow velocity, solid surface edge curvature. As a further illustration of this coupling, a real-time control of dripping is demonstrated using electro-wetting for contact angle actuation." This scientific jargon boils down to the fact that tea tends to stick to the inside of the spout as it is poured. The flow of tea then begins to stop-start, causing a dribble effect. The team, led by Cyril Duez, say the use of "superhydrophobic surfaces" – essentially water-repelling linings – on the inside of the spout can avoid dripping and "thus beat the 'teapot effect'". The scientists are not the first to bend their minds towards the problem. This year the retailer Debenhams claimed to have designed a dribble-free teapot with a "multi-faceted solution" that involved a larger spout, "tea bag baffle" and redesigned lid. As far back as 1998 the British inventor Damini Kumar was hawking her solution – the D-pot – around the BBC and other media groups. Her solution was a groove under the spout. The latest intensive research appears to be the first to tackle the dribbling problem from an explicitly scientific perspective. The Lyon team's verdict: marry a superhydrophobic surface with the more traditional method of using a sharp edge at the end of the spout, creating a drip- and hassle-free pot. What about other brew-time dilemmas? In 2003 the Royal Society of Chemistry released guidance on how to make the perfect cup of tea [pdf], and in 1998 researchers from the University of Bristol published a scientific formula for dunking a biscuit. Long may science's dalliance with snack-based problems continue. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 29 Oct 2009 | 7:41 am Why We Carve Pumpkins, Not TurnipsThere are actual historical reasons that we carve pumpkins every Oct. 31.Source: Livescience.com | 29 Oct 2009 | 7:40 am Economic Crisis Could Spread Invasive SpeciesA depressed shipping economy is helping invasive species spread around the world.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 29 Oct 2009 | 7:40 am 'Tis the Season ... for Cheap HDTVsA leaked Sears ad shows a wide variety of LCD TVs at some pretty attractive prices.Source: Livescience.com | 29 Oct 2009 | 6:17 am BIG PIC: Strange Cloud in Ares LaunchSeconds into the Ares launch, an odd cloud formed around the upper stage. What was it?Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 29 Oct 2009 | 6:00 am The 'ghostly dance' of the weedy sea dragon filmedThe dance of the weedy sea dragon, one of the most elegant courtship rituals in the animal kingdom, is filmed by a BBC crew.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 29 Oct 2009 | 3:48 am Wiring the worldMarking 40 years since the web's first data volleySource: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 29 Oct 2009 | 3:25 am
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