Science & TechnologyS


Evil Rays

Tsunami sensor detects mysterious background signal in Panama


Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute
Fri, 03 Jun 2011 12:42 UTC
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© J. McMillanEquipment designed to detect tsunamis and earthquakes also detects background sounds including cars and the hum of the earth
An unusual signal detected by the seismic monitoring station at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute's research facility on Barro Colorado Island results from waves in Lake Gatun, the reservoir that forms the Panama Canal channel, scientists report. Understanding seismic background signals leads to improved earthquake and tsunami detection in the Caribbean region where 100 tsunamis have been reported in the past 500 years.

As part of a $37.5 million U.S. presidential initiative to improve earthquake monitoring following the devastating tsunami in the Indian Ocean in 2004, a seismic sensor was installed on Barro Colorado Island in 2006. The sensor is one of more than 150 sensors that comprise the U.S. Geological Survey's Global Seismographic Network.

Barro Colorado Island is a hilltop that was isolated by the waters of the reservoir created when the Chagres River was dammed to form Lake Gatun, a critical part of the Panama Canal. The Barro Colorado seismic monitoring station is a collaboration between the U.S. Geological Survey, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the University of Panama and STRI.
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Laptop

Targeted Cyber Attacks an 'Epidemic'

Maggie Shiels
BBC News
Thu, 02 Jun 2011 15:20 UTC
Image
The RSA attack involved two e-mails sent to a small group of high-value individuals.
The targeted attack used by hackers to compromise e-mail accounts of top US officials is reaching 'epidemic' proportions, say security experts.

The scam, known as spear phishing, was used in a bid to get passwords of Gmail accounts so they could be monitored.

Via a small number of customised messages it tries to trick people into visiting a web page that looks genuine so users type in login names.

Such attacks are often aimed at top officials or chief executives.

Such attacks are not new, say security professionals, but they are becoming more commonplace.

"What is happening more and more is the targeting of a couple of high value individuals with the one goal of acquiring valuable information and valuable data," said Dan Kaminsky, chief scientist at security firm DKH.

"The most interesting information is concentrated in the accounts of a few people," he said. "Attackers using information to impersonate the users is at epidemic proportions and why computer security is in the state it is in."

Total access

In March, security firm RSA was hit by a sophisticated spear-phishing attack that succeeded despite only two attacking e-mails being sent. The phishing e-mail had the subject line "2011 Recruitment Plan" and contained a booby-trapped spreadsheet.
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Beaker

Flashback US Dept of Energy Reengineers E.coli to Produce Renewable Diesel from Biomass

Jim Lane
Biofuels Digest
Thu, 28 Jan 2010 00:00 UTC
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© Université de Lausanne
In California, a research team including members of the Keasling lab at the DOE's Joint BioEnergy Institute and LS9 announced a major breakthrough in their ability to make renewable diesel and other advanced biofuels directly from cellulosic biomass in a one-step process.

Consolidated bio-processing - converting pretreated biomass in one step to a renewable fuel, eliminating the two-step procedure of using acids or enzymes to extract sugars, and then fermenting sugars into fuel - is considered a critical path element in driving down the costs of cellulosic biofuel towards cost parity with gasoline, and has been widely described as "the holy grail of biofuels".

The particular breakthrough here is that - to this point, the small number of companies that have developed an organism capable of CBP - most notably, Mascoma and Qteros - have been working with ethanol as a target fuel.

In the announcement, the research team has been able to achieve a one-step process to create a renewable drop-in fuel - at this point, renewable diesel - that would require no change in distribution or vehicle infrastructure to be deployed in the transportation fleet.
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Question

"The Human Species Will One Day Migrate to a Parallel Universe" -- Michio Kaku


The Daily Galaxy
Wed, 01 Jun 2011 21:51 UTC
Parallel Universe
© The Daily Galaxy

Like many physicists, Michio Kaku thinks our universe will end in a "big freeze." However, unlike many physicists, he thinks we might be able to avoid this fate by slipping into a parallel universe.

One of the most fascinating discoveries of our new century may be imminent if the Large Hadron Collider outside Geneva produces nano-blackholes when it goes live again. According to the best current physics, such nano blackholes could not be produced with the energy levels the LHC can generate, but could only come into being if a parallel universe were providing extra gravitational input. Versions of multiverse theory suggest that there is at least one other universe very close to our own, perhaps only a millimeter away. This makes it possible that some of the effects, especially gravity, "leak through," which could be responsible for the production of dark energy and dark matter that make up 96% of the universe.

"The multiverse is no longer a model, it is a consequence of our models," says Aurelien Barrau, particle physicist at CERN

While it hasn't been proven yet, many highly respected and credible scientists are now saying there's reason to believe that parallel dimensions could very well be more than figments of our imaginations.

"The idea of multiple universes is more than a fantastic invention - it appears naturally within several scientific theories, and deserves to be taken seriously," stated Aurelien Barrau, a French particle physicist at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN).
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Info

Human Ancestor Guys Stayed Home While Gals Cruised

Charles Q. Choi
LiveScience
Wed, 01 Jun 2011 13:01 UTC
Australopithecus africanus
© Darryl de Ruiter"Mrs. Ples" is the most famous example of Australopithecus africanus from Sterkfontein cave, South Africa.

Our distant female relatives may have cruised around for mates while the guys may have been more stay-at-home types, scientists find.

Until now, much of what was known about our human ancestors' biology and lifestyle was deduced with little hard evidence.

In the new study, scientists analyzed fossils of extinct apelike hominids from the Sterkfontein and Swartkrans caves in South Africa. These 1.8 million to 2.2 million-year-old specimens included eight members of Australopithecus africanus, which may have been a direct ancestor of humans, as well as 11 members of Paranthropus robustus, which dead-ended on a side branch of the hominid family tree for reasons still unknown. These landscapes were much the same back then as they are now - hilly grasslands with rivers - although they had a bit more water and vegetation.

The investigators concentrated on traces of naturally occurring strontium isotopes in the enamel of 19 molar and canine teeth. Isotopes of an element all have the same number of protons in their atoms, but they differ from each other in how many neutrons they have; for instance, strontium-86 has 48, while strontium-87 has 49.
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Magic Wand

What doesn't kill the brain makes it stronger


Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions
Mon, 23 May 2011 11:30 UTC
brain
© Unknown
Johns Hopkins team discovers brain defense in mice and a possible new strategy for treating neurologic disorders.

Johns Hopkins scientists say that a newly discovered "survival protein" protects the brain against the effects of stroke in rodent brain tissue by interfering with a particular kind of cell death that's also implicated in complications from diabetes and heart attack.

Reporting in the May 22 advance online edition of Nature Medicine, the Johns Hopkins team says it exploited the fact that when brain tissue is subjected to a stressful but not lethal insult a defense response occurs that protects cells from subsequent insult. The scientists dissected this preconditioning pathway to identify the most critical molecular players, of which a newly identified protein protector - called Iduna -- is one.

Named for a mythological Norwegian goddess who guards a tree full of golden apples used to restore health to sick and injured gods, the Iduna protein increased three- to four-fold in preconditioned mouse brain tissue, according to the scientists.

"Apparently, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger," says Valina Dawson, Ph.D., professor of neurology and neuroscience in the Johns Hopkins Institute of Cell Engineering. "This protective response was broad in its defense of neurons and glia and blood vessels - the entire brain. It's not just a delay of death, but real protection that lasts for about 72 hours."
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Satellite

Mysterious Anomaly Leaves Japanese Satellite Dead in Orbit


SPACE.com
Thu, 12 May 2011 01:48 UTC
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© JAXAArtist's concept of Japan's Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS), also known as Daichi
Japan's Earth-observing satellite Daichi is dead in orbit, three weeks after a mysterious anomaly crippled the spacecraft, the nation's space agency announced today (May 12).

Daichi, formally known as the Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS), unexpectedly powered down on April 22 for reasons that remain murky. The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) repeatedly tried to re-establish communication with Daichi over several weeks, but finally threw in the towel today.

"We decided to complete its operations by sending a command from the ground to halt its onboard transmitter and batteries at 10:50 a.m. on May 12 (Japan Standard Time), as we found it was impossible to recover communication with the satellite," JAXA officials said in a statement.
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Saturn

SOTT Focus: Planetary Alignments and the Solar Capacitor - Things are heatin' up!

Ryan X
Sott.net
Mon, 30 May 2011 13:01 UTC
Cosmic Patterns Alignments
© American Federation of AstrologersThe Impact of Planetary Alignments on Earth
As I sit here now, I'm looking at this Ephemeris software showing the orbital positions of the planets. This has actually been a daily activity for me over the past several weeks, kind of like checking the weather in the morning. I can see that Jupiter and Saturn have just passed opposition (the actual date was April 28th). Speaking of planetary alignments, there's been a lot of talk of these in the news as of late. SOTT carried an article earlier this month describing an unusual planetary alignment that happened on May 11th. On this day Mercury, Venus, Mars and Jupiter all lined up neatly in the sky. Interestingly, an earthquake was felt in Spain that same day. Just for clarification, this alignment in early May was actually a geocentric alignment, meaning that the Earth was lined up with these planets, or the Earth was the frame of reference as opposed to the Sun, for instance.

Astrologers typically speak of planetary positions from the geocentric perspective too. There may be some significance to these geocentric alignments (as the Spanish earthquake may indicate), but in this article I'm going to focus on heliocentric, or Sun centered, alignments. Now why are any of these planetary alignments important, you ask? Are we going to start giving astrology reports on SOTT? Well, no, but for this article it might seem like it. The thing is, these planetary alignments do cast light upon the changes taking place on the Big Blue Marble. Hopefully this article will elucidate some of how this process works; there's obviously a lot that we still don't understand.
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Evil Rays

Human brain's 'bat sight' found


BBC
Thu, 26 May 2011 01:32 UTC
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© SPLBats use sound to hunt
The part of the brain used by people who can "see like a bat" has been identified by researchers in Canada.

Some blind people have learned to echolocate by making clicking noises and listening to the returning echoes.

A study of two such people, published in PLoS ONE, showed a part of the brain usually associated with sight was activated when listening to echoes.

Action for Blind People said further research could improve the way the technique is taught.

Bats and dolphins bounce sound waves off their surroundings and by listening to the echoes can "see" the world around them.
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Better Earth

Rare all-white kiwi hatched in New Zealand sanctuary

Mark Brown
Wired.co.uk
Sun, 29 May 2011 02:59 UTC

A rare and impossibly cute all-white chick has hatched at New Zealand's Pukaha Mount Bruce National Wildlife Centre. "This is a first for us," said Bruce's chairman, Bob Francis, "and as far as we know, the first hatched in captivity."

He's not an albino, he's just the rare offspring of North Island brown kiwis who were brought over from Little Barrier Island in May 2010. The centre has seen the most successful kiwi breeding season in Pukaha's history, with 14 hatched chicks, and staff were delighted to see it punctuated by this surprise hatching.

To mark the occasion, the chick has been named Manukura, which means "of chiefly status" in the New Zealand Maori language.
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