Animal tests raise chemical concern

"The BBC's Costing The Earth programme investigates the safety of chemicals in the environment and how they could be altering the behaviour of wild animals." "If tiny amounts of these chemicals, applied to animals while in the womb, can alter their brains, what about humans?"

A Future for Fusion?

In a surprising feat of miniaturization, scientists are reporting today that they have produced nuclear fusion - the same process that powers the sun - in a footlong cylinder just five inches in diameter. And they say they will soon be able to make the device even smaller. While the device is probably too inefficient to produce electricity or other forms of energy, the scientists say, egg-size fusion generators could someday find uses in spacecraft thrusters, medical treatments and scanners that search for bombs. Advertisement The findings, by a team at the University of California, Los Angeles, led by Dr. Seth J. Putterman, are being reported in the journal Nature.

Tiny, Plentiful and Really Hard to Catch

The New York Times > Science > Tiny, Plentiful and Really Hard to Catch: "An hour north of Duluth, Minn., and a half-mile down, the dim tunnels of the Soudan mine open up to a bright, comfortably warm cavern roughly the size of a gymnasium, 45 feet high, 50 feet wide, 270 feet long. Well hidden from the lakes, pine forests and small towns of northern Minnesota, the mine churned out almost pure iron ore until it closed in 1962. Today, it is a state park, and it houses a $55 million particle physics experiment that is part of a worldwide effort to unravel the secrets of the neutrino, one of the least known and most common elementary particles. Because of discoveries over the past decade, the ubiquitous neutrino, once a curiosity in a corner of particle physics, now has the potential to disrupt much of what physicists think they know about the subatomic world. It may hold a key to understanding the creation of hydrogen, helium and other light elements minutes after the Big Bang and to how dying stars explode."

Mysterious Viruses as Bad as They Get

NY Times: "UÍGE, Angola, April 19 - Traditional healers here say their grandmothers knew of a bleeding disease similar to the current epidemic of hemorrhagic fever that has killed 244 of the 266 people who have contracted it. The grandmothers even had a treatment for the sickness, the healers told Dr. Boris I. Pavlin of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But the remedy has been lost. The old disease was called kifumbe, the word in the Kikongo language for murder. But kifumbe did not seem to be contagious. And so, Dr. Pavlin said, though he did not doubt it was real, it was probably not the same as the disease in Uíge today. The current disease, caused by the Marburg virus, is contagious. Like the Ebola virus, to which it is closely related, it is spread by bodily fluids like blood, vomit and saliva. No one can say for sure what kifumbe (pronounced key-FOOM-bay) was, and in some ways the Marburg virus is almost as mysterious. More than a month has passed since it was identified as the cause of the deadly outbreak here - the largest Marburg epidemic on record - but some of the most basic questions about the epidemic have yet to be answered. How and when did this rare virus get here? Why have so many victims been children? And how could so many have become infected before the disease was recognized?"

Mystery of German exploding toads

BBC NEWS: "Toads in an area of northern Germany are being killed off by a mysterious disease - they are exploding. Thousands of the amphibians have died in recent days in a pond in Hamburg's Altona district, with their bodies swelling to bursting point. The toads' entrails are propelled for up to a metre (3.2ft), in scenes that have been likened to science fiction. Scientists are baffled. Possible explanations include a unknown virus or a fungus in the pond."

Titan Shoreline

Titan Shoreline Originally uploaded by ReidAnderes. Organic Materials Spotted High Above Titan's Surface April 25, 2005 During its closest flyby of Saturn's moon Titan on April 16, the Cassini spacecraft came within 1,027 kilometers (638 miles) of the moon's surface and found that the outer layer of the thick, hazy atmosphere is brimming with complex hydrocarbons

This is Amazing!!!! Must Read!! MAKE SURE TO WATCH THE VIDEO!

Human Cells Filmed in Action!!!!: "San Diego, CA, April 20, 2005 --Researchers at UCSD and UC Irvine have captured on video for the first time chemical signals that traverse human cells in response to tiny mechanical jabs, like waves spreading from pebbles tossed into a pond. The scientists released the videos and technical details that explain how the visualization effect was created as part of a paper published in the April 21 issue of Nature. The researchers working at the UCSD Jacobs School of Engineering’s Department of Bioengineering developed a novel molecular “reporter” system, which allowed the dynamic visualization of the activation of an important protein called Src. Peter Yingxiao Wang, lead author of the paper and a post-doctoral researcher in UCSD’s Jacobs School of Engineering spent two years designing the reporter molecules to light up selectively only when Src was activated, and not other proteins."

Faster Handoff Between Wi-Fi Networks Promises Near-seamless 802.11 Roaming

Faster Handoff Between Wi-Fi Networks Promises Near-seamless 802.11 Roaming San Diego, CA (April 13, 2004) -- Road warriors may no longer have to stay put in an airport lounge or Starbucks to access the high-speed Internet via an 802.11 Wi-Fi network. Thanks to software developed by two computer scientists at the University of California, San Diego, the time it takes to hand off from one Wi-Fi wireless network to the next can be dramatically shortened -- overcoming a major obstacle in Wi-Fi roaming.

Prank fools US science conference

"A collection of computer-generated gibberish in the form of an academic paper has been accepted at a scientific conference, to the delight of hoaxers. Three US boffins built a programme designed to create research papers with random text, charts and diagrams. Two bogus papers were submitted to a computing conference in Florida, and one of them was accepted. One of the hoaxers said the fake paper was designed to expose the lack of standards at academic gatherings. The paper has the nonsense headline "Rooter: A Methodology for the Typical Unification of Access Points and Redundancy". It was accepted for the World Multiconference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics (WMSCI), due to be held in the city of Orlando in July."

Beetle boost for Bush and friends

BBC NEWS: "Two US scientists have paid tribute to their favourite politicians by naming three species of beetle after them. President George Bush, Vice-President Dick Cheney and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld were all honoured. One of the entomologists said he admired all three men for 'having the courage of their convictions' and standing up for freedom and democracy. The three beetles who now bear their names are among 65 newly discovered species which feed on mould."

Using Advanced Physics to Find Concealed Weapons

NY Times:"Three companies are racing to market a new form of technology for detecting concealed weapons, using physics borrowed from radio astronomy and manufacturing techniques from cellular phone makers. The technology, called millimeter wave, is a new category of sensing so unobtrusive that it seems like something out of 'Star Trek.' Unlike conventional systems such as metal detectors, which sense magnetic fields created by certain materials or objects, or X-ray machines, which pass rays through objects, millimeter wave sensors are passive and rely on detecting energy emitted by objects."

Ray burst is extinction suspect

BBC NEWS: "A huge cosmic explosion could have caused a mass extinction on Earth 450 million years ago, according to an analysis by scientists in the US. A gamma ray burst could have caused the Ordovician extinction, killing 60% of marine invertebrates at a time when life was largely confined to the sea. These cosmic blasts are the most powerful explosions in the Universe. The scientists think a 10-second burst near Earth could deplete up to half of the planet's ozone layer."

The Top 10 Intelligent Designs (or Creation Myths)

religion Originally uploaded by ReidAnderes. The Top 10 Intelligent Designs (or Creation Myths) Just in time for the holidays, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) recently filed a lawsuit against a Pennsylvania school district that added the controversial theory of "intelligent design" to its curricullum. Unlike the theory of evolution which is taught at most schools as a fact-based science, "intelligent design" -- as argued by the ACLU -- is nothing more than a philosophy predicated on the Judeo-Christian belief that the logical sequences found in nature are not random happenings or surprising mutations, but deftly managed events created by a greater omniscient and omnipresent intelligence with a specific plan. In short, the work of God.

Brain Imaging Suggests How Higher Education Helps To Buffer Older Adults From Cognitive Decline

WASHINGTON -- College seems to pay off well into retirement. A new study from the University of Toronto sheds light on why higher education seems to buffer people from cognitive declines as they age. Brain imaging showed that in older adults taking memory tests, more years of education were associated with more active frontal lobes – the opposite of what happened in young adults. It appears possible that education strengthens the ability to "call in the reserves" of mental prowess found in that part of the brain.

MSNBC - The mysteries of time and sleep

MSNBC - The mysteries of time and sleep : "The mysteries of time and sleep Lose an hour, gain insights with daylight-saving switch By David Ropeik MSNBC contributor Updated: 2:10 p.m. ET April 1, 2005 It’s that time of year again, when crocuses bloom, the lawn starts to need mowing, and most Americans lose an hour’s sleep setting their clocks ahead. (Remember? Spring forward, fall back.) So here are answers to your questions about the time switch — and about sleep."

Dark Days for Dark Energy?

Sky and Telescope: "Most astrophysics papers sink into the ponds of academia and hardly make a ripple. Others spawn tidal waves. The latest cosmological tsunami was triggered on March 14th, when Edward ('Rocky') Kolb (Fermilab), Sabino Matarrese (University of Padova, Italy), Alessio Notari (McGill University, Canada), and Antonio Riotto (National Institute of Nuclear Physics, Italy) posted a terse, four-page paper on arxiv.org, an online bulletin board that's rapidly taking the place of established journals. The paper invokes the 25-year-old inflation theory to explain away dark energy — a mysterious force that astronomers have recently embraced to explain why the universe's expansion is accelerating. Dark energy has become widely accepted as the main ingredient in today's cosmic soup. Arguing that 'there is no dark energy,' as Kolb says, is as heretical today as was advocating for its existence (in the form of Albert Einstein's cosmological constant) a decade ago. Thus it's no surprise that weblogs and university hallways are buzzing with the news of dark energy's possible demise."