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One of the fun things about covering so many different areas of science is that you often come across things you had no idea existed. This week's discovery goes by the name of "diffuse interstellar bands," a phenomenon first discovered back in the 1920s. Since then, dozens of these DIBs, which represent areas of the spectrum that are absorbed by the interstellar medium, have been discovered. Despite these discoveries - and this week's Nature describes a few more of the bands - we really don't know what's causing them.
Most stars emit radiation over a very broad spectrum, from the ultraviolet well down past the infrared. However, if there's some material between us and the star - say, for example, a cloud of hydrogen - then it can absorb some of that radiation. But it won't absorb it evenly. Instead, each element or compound absorbs a specific set of wavelengths that correspond to the energy gaps between its ground state electrons and their excited states. So a cloud of hydrogen that sits between us and a star will cause some very narrow gaps in the spectrum of the star when we observe it.
Internet security expert Eugene Kaspersky has told Sky a catastrophic cyber terrorist attack is likely
Eugene Kaspersky is not given to easy hyperbole. But the Russian maths genius who founded an internet security empire with a global reach, clutched at his thick mop of hair with both hands.
"I don't want to speak about it. I don't even want to think about it," he said.
"But we are close, very close, to cyber terrorism. Perhaps already the criminals have sold their skills to the terrorists - and then...oh, God."
Speaking privately at the London Cyber Conference, Kaspersky told Sky that he believed that cyber terrorism was the biggest immediate threat to have emerged to confront nations as diverse as China and the US.
"There is already cyber espionage, cyber crime, hacktivisim (when activists attack networks for political ends) soon we will be facing cyber terrorism," he said.
Investigation claims dozens of social-psychology papers contain faked data.
When colleagues called the work of Dutch psychologist Diederik Stapel too good to be true, they meant it as a compliment. But a preliminary investigative report released on 31 October gives literal meaning to the phrase, detailing years of data manipulation and blatant fabrication by the prominent Tilburg University researcher.
"We have some 30 papers in peer-reviewed journals where we are actually sure that they are fake, and there are more to come," says Pim Levelt, chair of the committee that investigated Stapel's work at the university.
Stapel's eye-catching studies on aspects of social behaviour such as power and stereotyping garnered wide press coverage. For example, in a recent Science paper (which the investigation has not identified as fraudulent), Stapel reported that untidy environments encouraged discrimination (Science 332, 251 - 253; 2011).
When colleagues called the work of Dutch psychologist Diederik Stapel too good to be true, they meant it as a compliment. But a preliminary investigative report released on 31 October gives literal meaning to the phrase, detailing years of data manipulation and blatant fabrication by the prominent Tilburg University researcher.
"We have some 30 papers in peer-reviewed journals where we are actually sure that they are fake, and there are more to come," says Pim Levelt, chair of the committee that investigated Stapel's work at the university.
Stapel's eye-catching studies on aspects of social behaviour such as power and stereotyping garnered wide press coverage. For example, in a recent Science paper (which the investigation has not identified as fraudulent), Stapel reported that untidy environments encouraged discrimination (Science 332, 251 - 253; 2011).
© Live Science
Today might not seem any more special than yesterday or the day before, but it is a once-in-10,000-years event. Nov. 2, 2011, written out numerically, is 11/02/2011, which on its own makes it a very rare eight-digit palindrome date, meaning that it can be read the same way frontward and backward.
But, as one scientist has found, there's much more to this date that makes it truly one of a kind.
This century features a relative wealth of eight-digit palindrome dates; today is the third date so far, and there will be nine more. In fact, we live in a relative golden age of palindrome dates: Before 10/02/2001, the last eight-digit palindrome date was Aug. 31, 1380 (08/31/1380).
"Eight-digit palindrome dates are very rare, and are clustered in the first three or so centuries at the beginning of a millennial, and then don't show up for 600 to 700 years, until they appear as a cluster in the next millennium," said Aziz Inan, a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Portland who crunches palindrome dates in his spare time.
© Van den Heuvel, et al. The Journal of Neuroscience 2011This image shows the group connectome, with the nodes and connections colored according to their rich-club participation. Green represents few connections. Red represents the most.
Just as the Occupy Wall Street movement has brought more attention to financial disparities between the haves and have-nots in American society, researchers from Indiana University and the University Medical Center Utrecht in The Netherlands are highlighting the disproportionate influence of so called "Rich Clubs" within the human brain.
Not all regions of the brain, they say, are created equal.
"We've known for a while that the brain has some regions that are 'rich' in the sense of being highly connected to many other parts of the brain," said Olaf Sporns, professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences in IU's College of Arts and Sciences. "It now turns out that these regions are not only individually rich, they are forming a 'rich club.' They are strongly linked to each other, exchanging information and collaborating."
The study, "Rich-Club Organization of the Human Connectome," is published in the Nov. 2 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience. The research is part of an ongoing intensive effort to map the intricate networks of the human brain, casting the brain as an integrated dynamic system rather than a set of individual regions.
Using diffusion imaging, which is a form of MRI, Martijn van den Heuvel, a professor at the Rudolf Magnus Institute of Neuroscience at University Medical Center Utrecht, and Sporns examined the brains of 21 healthy men and women and mapped their large-scale network connectivity. They found a group of 12 strongly interconnected bihemispheric hub regions, comprising the precuneus, superior frontal and superior parietal cortex, as well as the subcortical hippocampus, putamen and thalamus. Together, these regions form the brain's "rich club".
© unknown
It's reported that officials from 60 countries will join Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Tudou.com (Chinese video sharing site), as well as cyber crime agencies, and computer security firms at the London Conference on Cyberspace.
The London summit is hosted by Foreign Secretary, William Hague, who said the purpose is to "discuss ideas and expected behaviour in cyberspace".
To which he claims the goal is bring together major players to determine how "collectively, we should respond to the challenges and opportunities which the development of cyberspace presents."
A few days before the conference, Council on Foreign Relations members Adam Segal and Matthew Waxman wrote that the conference presents those calling for a global Internet treaty with "a step in that direction."
© NASA
The energy was output in the form of heat, measured by the quantity of water boiled off. The results are reported in NyTeknik and Pure Energy Systems News, who both had reporters present for the test. Associated Press also sent a correspondent who should be filing a story in the next few days (one suspects his editors might have some questions).
But this does not mean we can crack open the champagne and celebrate the end of fossil fuels quite yet. Skeptics have plenty of grounds to doubt whether the new test really takes us any further forwards.
© Scott Olson/Getty ImagesA sign at a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) checkpoint instructs passengers about the use of the full-body scanner at O'Hare International Airport.
One after another, the experts convened by the Food and Drug Administration raised questions about the machine because it violated a longstanding principle in radiation safety - that humans shouldn't be X-rayed unless there is a medical benefit.
"I think this is really a slippery slope," said Jill Lipoti, who was the director of New Jersey's radiation protection program. The device was already deployed in prisons; what was next, she and others asked - courthouses, schools, airports? "I am concerned ... with expanding this type of product for the traveling public," said another panelist, Stanley Savic, the vice president for safety at a large electronics company. "I think that would take this thing to an entirely different level of public health risk."
© Flickr user nolifebeforecoffee
The system was developed by the British firm Datong plc, according to The Guardian, which noted that the U.S. Secret Service and a number of Middle Eastern regimes also patronize the company.
The signal this device projects covers an area for 10 miles around, and the variety of data it can produce is specific enough to track the exact location of any mobile device on the network. It can even be used to shut off all mobile devices in its range.
The full range of its capabilities are classified, The Guardian added, and Datong plc did not comment on the initial report. The Metropolitan Police refused to say when or where the device has been used, if at all.
© YouTube | puckeredpetebreweryTank the dog caught red-handed after digging through the trash.
In a famous YouTube video, Tank the dog sure does look guilty when his owner comes home to find trash scattered everywhere, and the trash can lid incriminatingly stuck on Tank's head. But does the dog really know he misbehaved, or is he just trying to look submissive because his owner is yelling at him?
In another new video from the BBC Frozen Planet series, Adelie penguins are seen gathering stones to build their nests. One penguin stealthily steals a stone from his neighbor's nest every time the neighbor goes a-gathering. Does the penguin thief know its covert actions are wrong?
These are some of the scenarios that interest ethologists, or scientists who study animal behavior. For years, these scientists categorically ruled out the possibility that animals might have a sense of morality - that they know right from wrong. Lately, though, the tide is turning.
"People used to like to make that stark division between human and nonhuman animals," said ethologist Marc Bekoff. "But there's just no doubt that the scientific evidence for animal morality is accumulating as more and more animals are studied."
