Science & TechnologyS


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Savanna, not forest, was human ancestors' proving ground

Savanna
© Thure Cerling, University of UtahAn East African savanna landscape of tree-dotted grassland is shown in this image from Samburu National Reserve in Kenya. The more heavily vegetated area in the middle distance is the corridor of the Ewaso Ngiro River. A new University of Utah study concludes that savanna was the predominant ecosystem during the evolution of human ancestors and their chimp and gorilla relatives in East Africa.
The savannas of Africa may have become the cradle of human evolution millions of years earlier than thought, researchers suggest. These rolling grasslands would have nurtured our ancestors through pivotal moments in their evolution.

These findings provide new ammunition in debates over the forces that helped distinguish humans from other animals.

The human lineage originated about 2.5 million years ago, coinciding with the expansion of savannas - grasslands mixed with trees - across East Africa. As such, researchers have long speculated that savannas were key to our evolution. For instance, the replacement of woodlands with savannas may have prompted the ancestors of humans to stray from trees and begin walking upright across the grass, which in turn would have freed up their hands for tool use.

Recently, however, the importance of savannas in human evolution came under question. For instance, what may be the earliest human ancestor discovered yet, Ardipithecus ramidus, was thought to have lived 4.4 million years ago in woodlands.

Beaker

Swede cuffed for cooking nuclear reactor on kitchen stovetop

Add radioactive smoke detector innards. Stir

A Swedish man was arrested and briefly detained for attempting to build a nuclear reactor in his kitchen.

"I've always been interested in nuclear physics and particle physics," the unnamed 31-year-old told the Helsingborgs Dagblad (Google Translate). "I have read many books about it and wanted to see if it worked. I just thought of it as an experiment."

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Do Bees Have Feelings?

Honey Bee
© AntagainMight this bee be blue?

If you've never watched bees carefully, you're missing out. Looking up close as they gently curl and uncoil their tapered mouths toward food, you sense that they're not just eating, but enjoying. Watch a bit more, and the hesitant flicks and sags of their antennae seem to convey some kind of emotion. Maybe annoyance? Or something like agitation?

Whether bees really experience any of these things is an open scientific question. It's also an important one with implications for how we should treat not just bees, but the great majority of animals. Recently, studies by Geraldine Wright and her colleagues at Newcastle University in the UK have rekindled debate over these issues by showing that honeybees may experience something akin to moods.

Using simple behavioral tests, Wright's research team showed that like other lab-tested brooders -- which so far include us, monkeys, dogs, and starlings -- stressed bees tend to see the glass as half empty. While this doesn't (and can't) prove that bees experience human-like emotions, it does give pause. We should take seriously the possibility that it feels like something to be an insect.

As invertebrates -- animals without backbones -- bees are representatives of a diverse group accounting for over 95 percent of animal species. But despite their prevalence, not to mention their varied and often nuanced behaviors, invertebrates are sometimes regarded as life's second string, as a mindless and unfeeling band of alien critters. If that seems a bit melodramatic, just consider our willingness to boil some of them alive.

Meteor

NASA Dawn Spacecraft Reveals New Insights into Mysterious Vesta Asteroid 184 Million Km Away From Earth

Vesta Asteroid
© NASANASA's Dawn spacecraft is beginning the first of it four intensive research orbits, with its initial run around the Vesta asteroid scheduled to begin on 11 August.
NASA's Dawn spacecraft is beginning the first of it four intensive research orbits, with its initial run around the Vesta asteroid scheduled to begin on 11 August.

The spacecraft will soon begin circling the giant asteroid at an altitude of roughly 1,700 miles, providing key data and in-depth analysis of the Vesta giant.

Vesta is the brightest object viewable from Earth in the asteroid cluster surrounding Earth, Mars, Venus and Mercury. Previously, little was known about the giant though it is believed to be roughly 530 kilometres large in diameter. The Dawn has already taken an image of Vesta showing its its rocky outer surface for the first time in human history.

The images have all been taken while the Dawn is still roughly 5,200 km from the asteroid. NASA has since confirmed that the current images are primarily for navigation rather than overtly scientific purposes.

Bulb

Unexpected Clue to Thermopower Efficiency: Uneven Temperature Can Lead to Electronic Whirlpools and Sideways Magnetic Fields

Image
© Jinqiao Wu, Lawrence Berkeley National LaboratoryAn n-type semiconductor on top of a p-type semiconductor creates a vertical electric field (E, green arrow), while diffusion creates a depletion layer near the junction (orange), where the electric field is strongest. Heating one end of the device creates a heat gradient at right angles to the electric field (del T, red arrow). Electrons and holes moving in these fields are forced into loops of current, and a magnetic field is generated “sideways” (B, blue arrow), at right angles to both electric and thermal fields.
Berkeley Lab scientists and their colleagues have discovered a new relation among electric and magnetic fields and differences in temperature, which may lead to more efficient thermoelectric devices that convert heat into electricity or electricity into heat.
"In the search for new sources of energy, thermopower -- the ability to convert temperature differences directly into electricity without wasteful intervening steps -- is tremendously promising," says Junqiao Wu of Berkeley Lab's Materials Sciences Division (MSD), who led the research team. Wu is also a professor of materials science and engineering at the University of California at Berkeley. "But the new effect we've discovered has been overlooked by the thermopower community, and can greatly affect the efficiency of thermopower and other devices."

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Oxygen Molecules Discovered in Deep Space for First Time

Oxygen Molecule
© ESA/NASA/JPL-CaltechThe Herschel space telescope found the molecules in a dense patch of gas and dust adjacent to star-forming regions in the Orion nebula.
Astronomers can finally breathe a sigh of relief: A team of scientists has discovered the first oxygen molecules in deep space, capping a nearly 230-year search for the elusive cosmic molecule.

The oxygen molecules were detected in a star-forming region of the Orion nebula, roughly 1,500 light-years from Earth, by the European Space Agency's Herschel Space Observatory. The observatory used its large telescope and infrared detectors to hone in on the species, which is thought to be common in the cosmos, but has so far been hard to find.

Individual atoms of oxygen (called atomic oxygen) are common in space, particularly around massive stars. But molecular oxygen, which is formed of two bonded oxygen atoms and makes up about 20 percent of the air we breathe on Earth, has eluded astronomers until now.

"Oxygen gas was discovered in the 1770s, but it's taken us more than 230 years to finally say with certainty that this very simple molecule exists in space," Paul Goldsmith, NASA's Herschel project scientist at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said in a statement. Goldsmith is lead author of a recent paper describing the findings in the Astrophysical Journal.

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Does the Impact Rate For Asteroids Vary Periodically with Time?

Impact Events
© Space Ref

Synopsis: Is the Earth more likely or less likely to be hit by an asteroid or comet now as compared to, say, 20 million years ago? Several studies have claimed to have found periodic variations, with the probability of giant impacts increasing and decreasing in a regular pattern. Now a new analysis by Coryn Bailer-Jones from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA), set to be published in the Monthly Notes of the Royal Astronomical Society, shows those simple periodic patterns to be statistical artifacts. His results indicate either that the Earth is as likely to suffer a major impact now as it was in the past, or that there has been a slight increase in impact rate events over the past 250 million years. **

Giant impacts by comets or asteroids have been linked to several mass extinction events on Earth, most famously to the demise of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Nearly 200 identifiable craters on the Earth's surface, some of them hundreds of kilometers in diameter, bear witness to these catastrophic collisions.

Understanding the way impact rates might have varied over time is not just an academic question. It is an important ingredient when scientists estimate the risk Earth currently faces from catastrophic cosmic impacts.

Sun

Russian solar probe to predict Earthly cataclysms

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© www.nasa.gov
Some scientists believe bursts of solar activity cause natural disasters on our planet, but until now the star has been too difficult to reach or explore in any detail. Some Russian researchers think they have the solution.

­Volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, tsunamis - apocalyptic pictures are becoming an ordinary part of news bulletins across the globe. And scientists are not giving out reassuring forecasts.

"Unfortunately, we're expecting more severe cataclysms which may lead to large-scale human losses and destruction," says Baku-based Professor Elchin Kakhalilov of the Global Network for the Forecasting of Earthquakes. "I'm talking about even a possible shift of the centers of our entire civilization."

The change in the Earth's seismic activity coincides with the rise of activity on the sun. Scientists have been witnessing gigantic bursts of plasma on its surface and say they are affecting our planet, even though it is over 90 million miles away.

Each burst sends billions of particles into space which impacts the Earth's magnetic field. This may trigger some of the processes going on deep bellow its surface, leading to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.

Book

Internet Archive founder turns to new information storage device - the book

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© Associated Press/Jeff ChiuKeeping his word ... Brewster Kahle shows off the converted shipping containers used to store books in a warehouse in Richmond, California.
Brewster Kahle, the man behind a project to file every webpage, now wants to gather one copy of every published book

Tucked away in a small warehouse on a dead-end street, an internet pioneer is building a bunker to protect an endangered species: the printed word.

Brewster Kahle, 50, founded the non-profit Internet Archive in 1996 to save a copy of every webpage ever posted. Now the MIT-trained computer scientist and entrepreneur is expanding his effort to safeguard and share knowledge by trying to preserve a physical copy of every book ever published.

R2-D2

Foxconn to Replace Workers with 1 Million Robots in 3 Years

lego robots
© n/a
Taiwanese technology giant Foxconn will replace some of its workers with 1 million robots in three years to cut rising labor expenses and improve efficiency, said Terry Gou, founder and chairman of the company, late Friday.

The robots will be used to do simple and routine work such as spraying, welding and assembling which are now mainly conducted by workers, said Gou at a workers' dance party Friday night.

The company currently has 10,000 robots and the number will be increased to 300,000 next year and 1 million in three years, according to Gou.

Foxconn, the world's largest maker of computer components which assembles products for Apple, Sony and Nokia, is in the spotlight after a string of suicides of workers at its massive Chinese plants, which some blamed on tough working conditions.

The company currently employs 1.2 million people, with about 1 million of them based on the Chinese mainland.