Science & TechnologyS


Cloud Lightning

Satellites provide up-to-date information on snow cover

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© ESA GlobSnow.Snow Water Equivalent map for Northern Hemisphere, 4 November 2010.
ESA GlobSnow project led by the Finnish Meteorological Institute uses satellites to produce up-to-date information on global snow cover. The new database gives fresh information on the snow situation right after a snowfall. Gathering this information was not possible before when only land-based observations were available.

Telescope

New analysis explains formation of bulge on far side of moon

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© Unknown
A bulge of elevated topography on the farside of the moon--known as the lunar farside highlands--has defied explanation for decades. But a new study led by researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, shows that the highlands may be the result of tidal forces acting early in the moon's history when its solid outer crust floated on an ocean of liquid rock.

Rocket

Comet bomber flyby pics show spaceball belching ancient dry ice

Professor Sunshine bitchslaps wet squirty tail theory

Excellent snaps sent back by a NASA probe craft during a rendezvous with the comet Hartley 2 have revealed that the spectacular "jets" of glowing gas which make it so spectacular result from dry ice subliming in its interior.

HartleyFlybyPhoto
© The RegisterA little bit of dry ice fabulousness

Control Panel

Hacker makes Minority Report manipulation a reality with Kinect hack

kinecthack
© DVICE
After eight years of geeking over Minority Report's gesture-based manipulation interface, we're really pumped that it isn't all just movie magic anymore. It was only a matter of time before this would happen. Hackers are a crafty bunch after all.

Grey Alien

SETI Astronomers Launch New Campaign to Eavesdrop on E.T.

Andromeda galaxy
© Chaco Culture NHP ObservatoryAndromeda galaxy.

In a vast cosmic experiment equivalent to hitting "redial," astronomers in a dozen countries are aiming telescopes to listen in once again on some of the stars that were part of the world's first search for alien life 50 years ago.

The coordinated signal-searching campaign began this month to mark the 50th anniversary of Project Ozma, a 1960 experiment that was christened the world's first real attempt in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence - or SETI.

Like Project Ozma, which got its name from a character in L. Frank Baum's series of books about the Land of Oz, the new search is called Project Dorothy.

Project Ozma was conducted by astronomer Frank Drake of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif. Drake is also famous for devising the Drake equation, which predicts the number of alien civilizations with whom we might be able to communicate. The formula is based on factors including the rate of star formation in the galaxy and the percentage of stars thought to have planets. Making educated guesses for some of the equation's terms, scientists have used it to predict we could find evidence of ET intelligence within the next 25 years.

Magnify

New Pathway Discovered for Repairing Damaged DNA

UC Davis researchers have found a new pathway for repairing DNA damaged by oxygen radicals. The results are published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"This new inducible pathway gives cells greater capacity to repair oxidative damage," said Peter Beal, professor of chemistry at UC Davis and senior author of the paper.

As part of its inflammatory response, the body's immune system produces oxygen radicals, or reactive oxygen species, to kill bacteria, parasites or tumors. But chronic inflammation, for example in the gut, has been linked to cancer, said co-author Professor Sheila David, also of the Department of Chemistry.

Oxygen radicals are strongly linked to cancer and aging and are also formed during metabolism and upon exposure to environmental toxins and radiation. Understanding more about how this damage can be repaired could lead to a better understanding of the causes of some cancers.

Oxygen radicals can react with the four bases that make up the "letters" of DNA -- A, C, G and T -- so that the "spelling" of genes gets changed. The accumulation of spelling errors (called mutations) can lead to cancer.

Sherlock

UK: Found After 300 Years, The Scourge of the British Navy

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© National Maritime MuseumA painting of the French frigate from around 1780
Wreck found off Plymouth is identified as feared French corsair

With 25 guns and a plunder-thirsty crew, La Marquise de Tourny was the scourge of the British merchant fleet some 260 years ago. For up to a decade, the French frigate terrorized English ships by seizing their cargoes and crew under a form of state-sanctioned piracy designed to cripple British trade.

Then, in the mid-18th century, the 460-ton vessel from Bordeaux, which seized three valuable cargo ships in a single year and distinguished itself by apparently never being captured by the English, disappeared without a trace. Nearly 300 years later, the fate of La Marquise and its crew can finally be revealed.

Wreckage from the frigate, including the remarkably well-preserved ship's bell carrying its name and launch date of 1744, has been found in the English Channel some 100 miles south of Plymouth by an American exploration company, suggesting that the feared privateer or "corsair" sank with the loss of all hands in a storm in notoriously treacherous waters off the Channel Islands.

The vessel is the first of its type to be found off British waters and one of only three known around the world, offering a unique insight into a frenetic phase of Anglo-French warfare when both countries set about beefing up their meagre navies in the mid-1700s by providing the captains of armed merchant vessels with "Letters of Marque" to take to the seas and capture enemy ships in revenge for attacks on other cargo convoys.

Sherlock

Pharaonic Inscription Found in Saudi Arabia

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© Arab NewsThe rock with a hieroglyphic inscription dating back to at least 1160 B.C.
The Saudi Commission for Tourism and Antiquities (SCTA) announced Sunday that Saudi archaeologists have discovered an ancient hieroglyphic inscription mentioning an Egyptian pharaoh on a rock near the ancient oasis of Tayma, Tabuk province. The discovery, about 400 km north of Madinah and northeast of the ancient Nabatean site Madain Saleh, marks the first confirmed hieroglyphic inscription discovered in the Kingdom.

"The rock was bearing an inscription of King Ramses III, one of the kings who ruled ancient Egypt from 1192 B.C.to 1160 B.C.," said SCTA Vice President for Antiquities and Museums Ali Ibrahim Al-Ghabban at a news conference on Sunday at the Commission on National Museum.

Al-Ghabban said the discovery was made in July. Since then researchers have posited that Tayma was on an important land route between the western coast of Arabia and the Nile Valley. Recent discoveries at the site prove Tayma was inhabited as far back as the Bronze Age (2,000 B.C.). The trade route has been used by caravans for centuries to carry goods such as incense, copper, gold and silver.

"The route connected the Nile Valley, Port Qulzum, the city of Suez, and then went by sea to Srabit near the port of Abu Zenima on the Gulf of Suez, where the archaeologists found a temple dedicated to King Ramses III, then across the Sinai Peninsula, where they also found several inscriptions similar to that found in Tayma," said Al-Ghabban.

Sherlock

Mummified Dogs Discovered in Peru

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© Agence France-PresseArchaeologists from the Pucllana museum work at Huaca Pucllana ancient pre Inca site, in Miraflores district, Lima.
Peruvian archaeologists have discovered six mummified dogs, all dating from the 15th century and apparently presented as religious offerings at a major pre-Columbian site just south of Lima.

The dogs "have hair and complete teeth", said Jesus Holguin, an archaeologist at the museum in Pachacamac, located some 25km south of Lima.

Holguin told AFP on Wednesday that experts were still trying to determine their breed.

The mummified remains of four children were also found at the site, archaeologists said. The mummified dogs were found two weeks ago wrapped in cloth and buried in one of Pachacamac's adobe brick pyramids.

Archaeologists believe the animals were offerings related to a funeral, "although we do not know if this was related to an important personality of the Inca period," said archaeologist Isabel Cornejo.

Telescope

Milky Way Giant "Bubbles" Baffle Astronomers

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© NASA
Two huge bubbles that emit gamma rays have been found billowing from the center of the Milky Way galaxy, astronomers have announced.

The previously unseen structures, detected by NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, extend 25,000 light-years north and south from the galactic core.

"We think we know a lot about our own galaxy," Princeton University astrophysicist David Spergel, who was not involved in the discovery, said during a press briefing Tuesday. But "what we see here are these enormous structures ... [that] suggest the presence of an enormous energetic event in the center of our galaxy."

For now the source of all that energy is unclear, said study co-author Doug Finkbeiner, an associate professor of astronomy at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Gamma rays are the most energetic forms of light, and in space they tend to come from violent events such as supernovae or from extreme objects such as black holes and neutron stars.

The newfound bubbles, meanwhile, are made of hot, charged gas that's releasing the same amount of energy as a hundred thousand exploding stars.

"So you have to ask, where could energy like that come from" in the Milky Way? Finkbeiner said.