Science News

"Tremors are increasing near a "locked" stretch of the San Andreas fault in Central California near Parkfield. In a study released today, seismologists say this could mean the shaky state is on the verge of an enormous quake. UC Berkeley seismologists Robert M. Nadeau and Aurélie Guilhem examined data gleaned from instruments buried deep in the earth around the Parkfield stretch of the San Andreas fault. What they discovered was that the area was constantly being rocked by small tremors from far underground, and that the number of these tremors had escalated greatly in the wake of two recent earthquakes." - RAPatton from Bookmarklet

"Those tremors could be an advanced warning system, after more research reveals what causes them and what their exact relationship is to quakes. The new research Nadeau has done, he says, strengthens the connection between elevated levels of tremors and earthquakes. That means the San Andreas might be ready to snap. Or it could just mean that we have a lot more to learn about tremors." - RAPatton

"HIGH-ENERGY laser weapons have been hailed as the future of anti-missile defence, but they may be further from being battle-ready than military chiefs hoped. In recent tests, several prototypes have suffered serious damage to their optics at intensities well below the expected levels of tolerance. "Optical damage has been quietly alarming upper management in most major programmes," Sean Ross of the US Air Force Research Laboratory in New Mexico told a meeting of the Directed Energy Professional Society in Newton, Massachusetts, last week. There are also big problems managing the waste heat generated by high-intensity beams. Laser weapons require mirrors and lenses to focus powerful beams onto distant moving targets, and to compensate for atmospheric perturbations that can reduce the power they deliver. The higher the intensity of the beam, the more likely it is to damage the surface of its optical components. Optical surfaces are designed to withstand powers up to a specific damage... more... - RAPatton from Bookmarklet

"Finding a way of preventing laser weapons from frying themselves is proving just as troublesome. Depending on the type of laser, generating 1 watt of laser beam produces about 4 watts of waste heat that must be dissipated. The challenge is to develop a cooling system that is both small and extremely robust." - RAPatton

Oops! - Scorpio

"Scientists are attempting to discover exactly what makes cheetahs the fastest running animals on the planet. A Royal Veterinary College (RVC) team is using high-speed cameras and a sensitive track to monitor the big cats as they sprint. Cheetahs can reach speeds of at least 104km/h (64mph) and they can achieve their top speed in just a few paces. The study is being carried out with North African cheetahs from ZSL Whipsnade Zoo. Professor Alan Wilson, head of the structure and motion laboratory at RVC, said: "The cheetah is fascinating because it can run 50% faster than any of the other animals we are familiar with, so in terms of understanding what limits how fast you can run, the cheetah is a wonderful animal to study."" - Kol Tregaskes from Bookmarklet

http://en.netlog.com/Koktebel - Birnstingl

"Early next year, the Southern California town of Carlsbad will break ground on a plant that each day will turn 50 million gallons of seawater into fresh drinking water. The $320 million project, which would be the largest desalination plant in the Western Hemisphere, was held up in the planning stages for years. But a protracted drought helped propel the project to its approval in May -- a sign of how worried local authorities are about water supplies. "Water is going to be very short until you have a new source," said Carlsbad Mayor Claude Lewis. "And the only new source is desalination, I don't care what anybody says." The desalination plant would use water that flows by gravity from the ocean across a manmade lagoon and into the facility through 10 large pumps. The plant would then blast it through a filter, extracting fresh water and leaving behind highly pressurized salty water. The process would provide enough water for 300,000 people each day." - RAPatton from Bookmarklet

"Half of the water in Southern California is imported from two sources: the State Water Project, which draws from the Sacramento River Delta in Northern California, and the Colorado River, which runs along the state's southeast border. Local authorities need to cobble together the rest from groundwater, recycled or surface water, and imports from elsewhere in the state. But exports from... more... - RAPatton

Quote: "I was asked to provide some ideas on the implications of cloud computing for business as well as its future operating environment. To allow my colleagues and the O'Reilly community to help define the issues and provide references, I've put up a discussion forum as a wiki. Anyone with relevant and valid ideas can suggest points." You have until 16 July, according to the post. - Maxine from Bookmarklet

http://en.netlog.com/Koktebel - Birnstingl

"A ONE-OFF treatment for diabetes is a step closer thanks to a better understanding of how human liver cells can be transformed into something like the beta cells that produce insulin in a healthy pancreas. The new insights have allowed Sarah Ferber of the Sheba Medical Center in Tel Hashomer, Israel, and colleagues to implant these cells into diabetic monkeys. The ultimate plan is to take liver cells from people with diabetes, reprogram the cells and reinject them. Because they are the patient's own, the cells should escape rejection by the immune system, sparing the individual a lifetime of daily insulin injections. "Potentially, patients can be donors of their own therapeutic tissue," says Ferber." - RAPatton

"The American public likes science, but thinks that its achievements are less important than they were a decade ago. That's according to telephone surveys conducted by the Pew Research Center and the American Association for the Advancement of Science." - Tanath from Bookmarklet

Yea, I guess the lack of imminent effects of most scientific disoveries makes the whole thing seem a bit too abstract to care at times (I must admit, I'm totally ignorant of anything outside the life sciences myself). personally. I like thinking about the possibilities though, or just get off on the coolness factor despite a lack of personal benefits. Regarding the original theme of the... more... - laura

Wow! - Kol Tregaskes

Because you know you want the poster: http://www.amazon.com/Univers... - Curtis Jackson

"A long-awaited study of aging in rhesus monkeys suggests, with some reservations, that people could in principle fend off the usual diseases of old age and considerably extend their life span by following a special diet. Known as caloric restriction, the diet has all the normal healthy ingredients but contains 30 percent fewer calories than usual. Mice kept on such a diet from birth have long been known to live up to 40 percent longer than comparison mice fed normally. Would the same be true in people? More than 20 years ago, two studies of rhesus monkeys were started to see if primates respond to caloric restriction the same way that rodents do. Since rhesus monkeys live an average of 27 years and a maximum of 40, these are experiments that require patience." - RAPatton

"Scientists have identified Reston ebolavirus—a member of the deadly Ebola group of hemorrhagic viruses—in domestic swine from the Philippines. The virus, which looks like a piece of yarn with a slight bend, is the only Ebola pathogen not known to cause disease in humans. Even so, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta considers it a biosafety level 4 pathogen, reserved for the most dangerous and exotic diseases." - Arnaldo M Pereira from Bookmarklet

"A panel of medical experts has just released its assessment of the technologies and therapies that could be rolled out if a home-made nuclear bomb was ever detonated in the heart of an American city. A device of this kind - now judged by Obama to pose "the most immediate and extreme threat to global security" - would kill hundreds of thousands of people. But as catastrophic as such an attack would be, it would not level an entire city, and a timely response could save many lives. Recent advances in techniques for mapping the path of radioactive fallout after an attack, combined with novel therapies for treating radiation victims, will improve survival chances, the report says. "Clearly there would be loss of life, but it's not hopeless," says Georges Benjamin, head of the panel of doctors and public health officials that was convened by the National Academy of Sciences to assess the nation's level of preparedness for such an attack. "We feel that there are things that one can do to... more... - RAPatton

"The blast wave would destroy buildings and kill almost everyone within 1 kilometre (see map), so the panel focused its attention on people outside this zone, for whom the main danger would come from radioactive fallout. "That's a place where you could get big gains if you plan right," says panel member Fred Mettler of the New Mexico Veterans Administration Health Center in Albuquerque.... more... - RAPatton

"A SUBTLE anomaly in the orbit of the planets in our solar system could prove a controversial idea that goes beyond Einstein. The orbit of the innermost planet, Mercury, departs from what it should be under Newton's laws. A century ago, when Einstein explained this anomaly, it confirmed his theory of gravity - the general theory of relativity. Now an Israeli physicist predicts that a similar but far more subtle anomaly in the orbits of the planets, if detected, might prove his own theory, known as modified Newtonian dynamics, or MOND. This provides an alternative theory to dark matter to explain why stars orbiting at the edge of spiral galaxies are not flung out into space. These stars are travelling at speeds too fast for conventional gravity from the mass at the heart of a spiral galaxy to hold them in their orbits, so something else must be keeping them on track. One theory is that invisible dark matter provides that extra pull. But an alternative is MOND, devised in the early... more... - RAPatton from Bookmarklet

"However, we are not in a position to test this as we have not observed enough full orbits of some of the outer planets, like Neptune. A question that immediately arises is could this new force be responsible for the Pioneer anomaly? NASA's two Pioneer space probes, launched in the early 1970s, are leaving the solar system slower than they should be. Milgrom says MOND would not be to... more... - RAPatton

"People with superior language skills early in life may be less likely to develop Alzheimer's disease decades later, research suggests. A team from Johns Hopkins University studied the brains of 38 Catholic nuns after death. They found those with good language skills early in life were less likely to have memory problems - even if their brains showed signs of dementia damage. The study appears online in the journal Neurology." - RAPatton from Bookmarklet

"The study also found that brain cells were largest in women who retained a normal memory despite showing signs of disease in their brains. The researchers said this suggested that a growth in brain cells might be part of the body's early response to the onset of dementia, and this might help to prevent memory impairment. Dr Troncoso said: "Perhaps mental abilities at age 20 are... more... - RAPatton

"The end result is a high resolution 87.4 megapixel image of the Moon, larger even then previous images taken by some of the world's largest observatories, allowing features as small as 1km to be clearly seen." - Tanath from Bookmarklet

"July 8, 2009—The newly named patch-nosed salamander—the second smallest salamander in the United States—had been living right under our noses. Scientists found the 2-inch-long (5.1-centimeter-long) amphibian (pictured above) in 2007, in a creek near a well-traveled road in northern Georgia. (See a regional map.) The new species, named for its lighter hued snout, is so different from other salamanders in the amphibian-rich region that it was placed in a new genus. (Read more on the NatGeo News Watch blog.)" - Arnaldo M Pereira from Bookmarklet

"Companies such as IGF Oncology are trying a new "Trojan horse" strategy: attaching a chemotherapy drug to an IGF molecule. Because cancer cells covet IGF, the therapy can better target sick cells." - Tanath from Bookmarklet

"July 8, 2009--Deep shadows fill the pockmarked terrain of the lunar highlands south of Mare Nubium, or Sea of Clouds, in the first images of the moon returned from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which were released on July 2." - Arnaldo M Pereira from Bookmarklet

"My computer has over 5,000 songs on it -- 16.2 days' worth, according to my music-playing software. So how do I pick what song to listen to? More often than not, I just shuffle the whole list and play whatever album shows up on top. But if I'm in the car listening to the radio, I switch between the 10 or so local stations I've programmed in until I hear a song I like. I seem to be more likely to rely on my own judgment when I have fewer choices. Some researchers have found similar effects with buying decisions: shoppers with just a few flavors of jam to choose from are more likely to buy than those given dozens of options (including the original choices). It's as if we're paralyzed when we have a large number of options to choose from, and so we end up getting nothing. But is less always more? Most of the studies on number of choices have either given participants a very small or a very large number of options. Does this mean just one choice is the best? Or is there some larger number of choices that is optimal?" - Arnaldo M Pereira from Bookmarklet

"July 7, 2009--The vast stellar nursery known as the Omega nebula seems to paint watercolor streaks across the cosmos in a newly released image from the European Southern Observatory's New Technology Telescope in Chile." - Arnaldo M Pereira from Bookmarklet

"Wealthier mothers tend to have more sons while hard-up women produce more daughters, a study claims. Scientists have unearthed a fascinating link between the financial status of a woman and the proportion of boys and girls she can expect to have. The discovery adds to the increasing evidence that the sex of a baby isn't just a matter of chance but is influenced by lifestyle and environment. According to evolutionary theory, when conditions are good, and babies are likely to be healthy, a mother's best chance of passing on her genes to another generation is to have boys." - RAPatton from Bookmarklet

o_0 - Barry Wynn

"Many studies have shown the possible health benefits of eating soy, so most people consider it a "health food." After all, it's high in protein and has zero cholesterol—what could be wrong with that? Plenty, some say. Recent research has shown that soy may contain dangerous levels of isoflavones, natural chemicals that are similar to human estrogen. Isoflavones can affect fertility in men and may increase the incidence of breast cancer in at-risk women. Because of these concerns, the Israeli Ministry of Health has had a warning in effect since 2005. According to reports, the ministry suggests that adults moderate their soy consumption, that infants be given soy formula only when breast milk or cow's milk is not an option, and that parents limit the amount of soy their children eat. Health officials in France and Great Britain are concerned, too. French food manufacturers have been asked to reduce the isoflavones in soy formula, and are required to put warning labels on soy foods. The British Dietetic Association has warned parents against using soy formula during the first six months of a baby's life." - RAPatton from Bookmarklet

"So what's the bottom line? If you're a woman who has been diagnosed with or has a family history of breast cancer, it's probably safest to avoid soy. Men hoping to father children should probably limit the amount of soy they eat, and parents would be advised to follow the Israeli guidelines in serving soy foods to their kids, especially infants and toddlers." - RAPatton

"While Dean Kamen spends his time creating bionic replacement arms, a team of Swedish scientists have begun developing a robotic prosthesis for a far more complex organ: the brain. Writing in this week's Nature Materials, the team announced that they had created the first device that communicates with nerves in their own language of neurotransmitter chemicals, rather than electrical impulses. Previous neuroprothesis worked through electric signals that triggered already existing nerves to release neurotransmitters like dopamine. However, the electric signals didn't discriminate between different types of nerve cells, which greatly reduced the fidelity and usefulness of the devices. This new device utilizes the same neurotransmitters that natural nerves use. That allows the robotic nerve to target specific neural pathways, without the random side effects of electronic neural stimulation. The technology is still in its infancy, but contains the potential for a radical shift in brain/electronics interfaces." - RAPatton from Bookmarklet

"Scientists have created human sperm in the laboratory for the first time. The extraordinary development, which until a few years ago belonged in the realms of science fiction, raises hopes that infertile men may one day be able to father their own biological children. The sperm were created in a test tube, from stem cells derived from a five-day-old male embryo. The advance raises ethical questions over the safety of the procedure and the threat it poses to the future role of men. It was also challenged by experts who claimed the sperm-like cells produced in the experiment were not genuine sperm. If the finding is confirmed, a single male embryo could, in theory, yield a stem-cell line which when stored could provide an unlimited supply of sperm. Once the stem-cell line was established, there would be no further reproductive need for men. In a briefing on the research, the scientists at Newcastle University and the NorthEast England Stem Cell Institute, led by Professor Karim Nayernia, raise the question of whether their discovery means "the end of men"." - RAPatton

Perhaps not, because once this is perfected and women don't need men, the next step will be to conceive children outside the womb, which means that women won't need women. Then the cockroach overlords can take over and breed slaves at will. - John E. Bredehoft

"Some athletes are turning to a lip-puckering remedy for post-workout pain and weakness: tart cherry juice. The juice can be hard to swallow, but the claim is that it diminishes muscle pain and soreness as well as, or better than, many over-the-counter medications. So far, those claims are mostly anecdotal. The Web is peppered with testimonials of the juice's analgesic powers and rumors of entire football teams guzzling the stuff. The claims are supported by some research, but it's highly preliminary. Tart cherries are rich in anthocyanins, antioxidant compounds that are also found (in lower levels) in arguably more popular fruits and berries. Lab tests carried out in the early 2000s showed that the antioxidant capacity of tart cherry juice exceeded that of pomegranate, açaí and cranberry juices, among others. Subsequent lab tests suggested that the anthocyanins in tart cherries could reduce inflammation in rats and mice and slow the growth of tumors in the animals too." - RAPatton from Bookmarklet

And suddenly I'm reminded of all the times I picked cherries from the cherry tree in our front yard when I was a kid. - Katy S

In the case of the biological sciences, it's not necessarily good news if it isn't accompanied with an increase in the number of available faculty positions (or attractive alternative positions). It just means more postdocs doing 6+ year stints fighting tooth-and-nail for a few positions. - Carl Fulp

"On Mars, snow falls in the early morning from wispy, feathery clouds that many Earthlings would recognize as cirrus clouds, a Canadian-led research team has reported." - Tanath from Bookmarklet

"Bananas to banish veruccas, ginger to ease muscle pain and tea for mouth ulcers – before you visit the chemist, check out the many proven remedies in your own larder. Garlic Colds, cuts, thrush .... Bananas Veruccas, hangovers .... Honey Infections ... Tea Hay fever, mouth ulcers .... Olive oil Earwax ..... Cranberries Cystitis .... Ginger Nausea, inflammation, muscle pain .... Bicarbonate of Soda Indigestion, bloating, cystitis .... Vinegar Warts, jellyfish stings ..... Natural yoghurt Thrush" - RAPatton from Bookmarklet

"Like any big cultural event, the Apollo missions sent ripples across society that left their mark in the form of rock and pop songs: some good, some (really) bad. To celebrate the Apollo mission's 40th anniversary, New Scientist has compiled a top 10 of these creations - all inspired specifically by Apollo and the moon landings. We tried to avoid general references to the moon or spacemen, so the likes of Sinatra, Elton and Bowie didn't make the cut. But let us know in the comments below if you'd argue for any other favourites for entry onto the lunar play list. So, in no particular order..." - RAPatton from Bookmarklet

"So, in no particular order... 1. Conspiracy theories abound in REM's Man on the Moon 2. The Farfisa-twiddling Inspiral Carpets with Saturn V 3. Before saving the rainforest, Sting had lunar aspirations: The Police - Walking on the Moon We also dug up a cover version from America's Got Talent. Better than Sting? You decide. 4. This even includes a countdown: The Byrds - Armstrong,... more... - RAPatton

"“That single thought is enough,” wrote Edgar Allan Poe in “The Imp of the Perverse,” an essay on unwanted impulses. “The impulse increases to a wish, the wish to a desire, the desire to an uncontrollable longing.” He added, “There is no passion in nature so demoniacally impatient, as that of him who, shuddering upon the edge of a precipice, thus meditates a plunge.” Or meditates on the question: Am I sick? In a few cases, the answer may be yes. But a vast majority of people rarely, if ever, act on such urges, and their susceptibility to rude fantasies in fact reflects the workings of a normally sensitive, social brain, argues a paper published last week in the journal Science." - RAPatton from Bookmarklet

"“We know that what’s accessible in our minds can exert an influence on judgment and behavior simply because it’s there, it’s floating on the surface of consciousness,” said Jamie Arndt, a psychologist at the University of Missouri. The empirical evidence of this influence has been piling up in recent years, as Dr. Wegner documents in the new paper. In the lab, psychologists have people... more... - RAPatton

"In short, the attempt to banish biased thoughts worked, to some extent. But the study also provided “a strong demonstration that stereotype suppression leads stereotypes to become hyperaccessible,” the authors concluded. Smokers, heavy drinkers and other habitual substance users know this confusion too well: the effort to squelch a longing for a smoke or a drink can bring to mind all... more... - RAPatton

"Julia Strecher was 9 years old when she had her second heart transplant. Her body had rejected the first heart she received with particular vehemence: She went into cardiac arrest six times in two hours. As doctors struggled to revive her, she recalls, she could hear them debating whether to give up. “I was trapped in my body,” says Ms. Strecher, now 18. “I was trying to tell people I was alive and not to pull the plug.” A few months after she went home with her second new heart, she began having nightmares in which she watched herself suffering cardiac arrest. But then, she began writing down her thoughts about being helpless. Eventually she turned the details into poems and stories. “It was extremely emotionally healing and freeing,” she said. “It helped me relieve a lot of stress and provided a distraction from pain and depression.” The nightmares went away. Ms. Strecher’s case seems a striking illustration of the healing potential of creative expression. But is it science? Can the power of the arts to soothe, transform and inspire be enlisted to treat—and perhaps even prevent—heart disease?" - RAPatton from Bookmarklet

No problem, nimabeckie - RAPatton from iPhone