http://www.sott.net Signs of the Times, featuring news and commentary on world events. Never wavering in our unending search for the light of truth in a pathocracy driven world! en-us Original content Copyright 2010 by Signs of the Times. For other content, see our Fair Use Policy at www.sott.net Tue, 09 Feb 2010 13:12:06 -0500 http://www.sott.net/images/sottlogo_rss.jpg SOTT.net http://www.sott.net http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202723-Italy-Asian-Skeleton-Found-in-Ruins-Suggests-Roman-Empire-Larger-than-Thought Archeologists have discovered the 2,000-year-old skeleton of an Asian man in an ancient cemetery in Italy, suggesting that the Roman Empire's reach was far more extensive than previously thought. Although the Romans are known to have traded for silk and exotic spices with China, it was thought that most of the commerce was conducted through intermediaries along the Silk Route and that no Chinese or other Asians entered the empire itself. But that orthodoxy will now have to be re-examined after a team of Canadian archaeologists conducted DNA analysis on the man's bones and found that he came from East Asia. The skeleton was excavated from a cemetery which formed part of an imperial Roman estate at Vagnari, in the province Puglia, which forms the heel of the Italian boot. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202723-Italy-Asian-Skeleton-Found-in-Ruins-Suggests-Roman-Empire-Larger-than-Thought Tue, 09 Feb 2010 13:11:42 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202691-Time-to-Upgrade-to-A-Solid-State-Hard-Drive- SSDs try to give users the best of everything: the access speed of a hard drive (some run 50 percent faster than normal hard drives), without the hard drive's noise, power consumption, tendency to succumb when dropped or vibrated, and the eventual certainty of a mechanical failure. The trade-off, of course, is cost. Byte for byte, a SSD is about five times more expensive than a normal hard drive. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202691-Time-to-Upgrade-to-A-Solid-State-Hard-Drive- Mon, 08 Feb 2010 21:06:46 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202690-Enceladus-Nasa-discovers-new-evidence-that-Saturn-moon-may-contain-life- New evidence that liquid water lies beneath the surface on the Saturn moon of Enceladus has been discovered by Nasa scientists, suggesting that life may exist. Nasa's Cassini spacecraft flew through icy plumes created by ice volcanoes on and detected negatively charged water molecules, in a clear sign an underground sea exists. On Earth this short-lived type of ion is produced where water is moving, such as in waterfalls or crashing ocean waves. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202690-Enceladus-Nasa-discovers-new-evidence-that-Saturn-moon-may-contain-life- Mon, 08 Feb 2010 20:56:03 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202681-Obama-vs-Einstein A renowned physicist demolishes a paper by Laurence Tribe, that President Obama played some roll in crafting, on the "revolutionary" aspects and legal implications of 20th century physics. According to the Washington Post, David Axelrod, Barack Obama's senior advisor, said that the president worked with "[Harvard professor] Laurence Tribe on a paper on the legal implications of Einstein's theory of relativity." I've read that paper, "The Curvature of Constitutional Space." It's complete nonsense. It shows no understanding of Einstein's theory of relativity, or of the relationship between relativity theory and Newton's theory. I - to use Obama's favorite word - do understand relativity theory. I was trained in relativity theory by the best. I was the post-doc of the late Princeton professor John A. Wheeler, who was himself the post-doc of Nobel Prize winner Niels Bohr. Wheeler's most famous student was Nobel Prize Winner Richard Feynman. I was also the post-doc of the late Oxford professor Dennis Sciama, who was a student of Nobel Prize winner Paul Dirac. Sciama's most famous student was Stephen Hawking. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202681-Obama-vs-Einstein Mon, 08 Feb 2010 18:04:33 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202663-Bangladesh-1-500-Year-Old-City-Gate-Discovered Archaeologists in Mahasthangarh archaeological site have recently discovered an ancient city gate, used as the city's entrance at least 1,500 years ago. A joint archaeological excavation team of France and Bangladesh found the ancient city gate on February 1 on the south-western side of the site. After the discovery, the team claimed that the age of the gate considering the earth and area is at least 1,500 years as they made a similar archaeological discovery at the location last year. French archaeologist Ernelle Berliet said that several types of stone including sandstones were used along with brick to construct the floor of the gate. The width of the gate was at least 2.95 metres, according to archaeologists. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202663-Bangladesh-1-500-Year-Old-City-Gate-Discovered Mon, 08 Feb 2010 09:57:33 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202655-Iran-producing-attack-drones-general Unmanned aircraft said to have long range Iran has launched two production lines to build unmanned aircraft with surveillance and attack capabilities, the country's defence minister announced Monday. Iran also announced it will soon deploy a missile air defence system more powerful than the advanced Russian S-300 system Tehran ordered from Moscow in 2007 but has yet to receive. State television quoted Defence Minister Gen. Ahmad Vahidi as saying the unmanned aircraft would be able to carry out surveillance and offensive tasks with high precision and a long range. The two types of drones are named Ra'd (Thunder) and Nazir (Herald), with the former possessing attack capabilities. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202655-Iran-producing-attack-drones-general Mon, 08 Feb 2010 09:26:17 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202651-Radio-Active-Sunspot Behemoth sunspot 1045 is crackling with M-class solar flares--and that's not all. "There have been many loud shortwave radio bursts over the past two days," reports amateur radio astronomer Thomas Ashcraft of New Mexico. "Some of the bursts have completely saturated my receivers." Just listen to the sounds coming from the loudspeakers in his observatory. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202651-Radio-Active-Sunspot Mon, 08 Feb 2010 09:07:12 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202647-Intelligent-oil-droplet-navigates-chemical-maze There's some humbling news from the chemical world for anyone who has ever found themselves lost in a garden maze. A simple droplet of organic solvent can find its way through a complicated labyrinth with nothing more to go on than a slight pH difference. Bartosz Grzybowski's team at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, used a common polymer to fashion a two-dimensional labyrinth some 2 centimetres on each side. They then flooded the maze with strongly alkaline potassium hydroxide solution, before placing a hydrochloric acid-soaked chunk of gel at the maze exit. After about 40 seconds they placed a droplet of mineral oil containing hexyldecanoic acid at the maze entrance. The oil, which cannot mix with the potassium hydroxide solution, sits on the surface. But it remains still only for a matter of seconds - it soon begins tearing around the maze at speeds of up to 10 millimetres per second, sniffing out the shortest path to the acid-soaked gel, and solving the maze in the process. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202647-Intelligent-oil-droplet-navigates-chemical-maze Mon, 08 Feb 2010 00:44:36 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202645-Quasar-Pair-Captured-In-Galaxy-Collision This composite image shows the effects of two galaxies caught in the act of merging. A Chandra X-ray Observatory image shows a pair of quasars in blue, located about 4.6 billion light years away, but separated on the sky by only about 70 thousand light years. These bright sources, collectively called SDSS J1254+0846, are powered by material falling onto supermassive black holes. An optical image from the Baade-Magellan telescope in Chile, in yellow, shows tidal tails - gravitational-stripped streamers of stars and gas - fanning out from the two colliding galaxies. This represents the first time a luminous pair of quasars has been clearly seen in an ongoing galaxy merger. "Quasars are the most luminous compact objects in the Universe, and though about a million of them are now known, it's incredibly hard work to find two quasars side by side," said Paul Green, from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, MA, who led the study. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202645-Quasar-Pair-Captured-In-Galaxy-Collision Sun, 07 Feb 2010 22:48:44 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202610-Pentagon-to-make-immortal-organisms- The Pentagon's advanced research division has allocated $6 million to create immortal synthetic organisms, which can die on command and keep a genetic record of what they have been doing, a report says. Based on the 2011 budget of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the project, known as 'BioDesign,' aims to create artificial life, presumably with military purposes, Wired News reported. The DNA of these genetically engineered organisms is altered to "produce the intended biological effect." These changes will ideally prevent cell death but induce the 'self-destruct option' in case of malfunction or falling into the wrong hands. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202610-Pentagon-to-make-immortal-organisms- Sun, 07 Feb 2010 15:03:03 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202605-Smart-dust-could-give-early-warning-of-space-storms A swarm of "smart dust" spacecraft, positioned at a sweet spot between the Earth and the sun, could alert us to the approach of dangerous space storms well before a conventional craft can. The first prototypes are due for launch into low-Earth orbit this year, perhaps as early as May. Mason Peck, a mechanical engineer at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and his colleague Justin Atchison have designed a 1-centimetre-square spacecraft that is 25 micrometres thick and weighs under 7.5 milligrams. The craft is modelled on the dust particles that orbit the sun and are propelled by the photons streaming out from the sun. This solar radiation pressure would have a negligible effect on normal-sized spacecraft but is significant at the millimetre scale. The grooved edges of the "spacecraft-on-a chip" deflect incoming photons in such a way as to ensure it always faces the sun. The craft's miniature size would let it hitch a ride into space on the back of another satellite mission headed for the Lagrange point between the Earth and the sun. A Lagrange point is a kind of gravitational sweet spot, where a small object can be stationary relative to two larger objects. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202605-Smart-dust-could-give-early-warning-of-space-storms Sun, 07 Feb 2010 14:37:29 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202525-Astronomers-Spot-Aftermath-of-Asteroid-Collision An object imaged last week by the Hubble Space Telescope looks at first glance to be a comet, but a closer examination indicates it is something researchers have never seen before - the immediate aftermath of two asteroids colliding. The scattered debris that looks like a comet's tail is actually the result of two asteroids colliding nearly head-on at more than 11,000 miles per hour, scattering pieces in all directions, NASA announced earlier this week. The asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, where the collision occurred, contains the remains of many such events from the distant past, but this is first time that researchers have observed such debris so soon after a collision. The object, called P/2010 A2, was first observed Jan. 6 by the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research program, and astronomers thought it was a comet. But images taken by Hubble on Jan. 25 and 29 show something far different. Comets are icy bodies that fall into the inner solar system from distant reservoirs in the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud. As they warm up, they shed particles and water vapor that are pushed away from the comet in a smooth tail by solar pressure. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202525-Astronomers-Spot-Aftermath-of-Asteroid-Collision Sun, 07 Feb 2010 13:08:30 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202592-Electric-Planes-Could-Transform-How-We-Fly As the promise of electric cars grows, so too does the potential of electric planes. These aircraft, whose motors are far more efficient, reliable and quiet than internal combustion engines, could help transform how we fly - if a few problems could be solved. Electric motors are three to four times better than internal combustion engines at driving an airplane propeller. And the reliability of electric motors is "perhaps 10 times or even 20 times that of a piston engine," said Brien Seeley, president of the Comparative Aircraft Flight Efficiency (CAFE) Foundation, an independent flight test agency which hosts NASA's Centennial Challenges for Aeronautics. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202592-Electric-Planes-Could-Transform-How-We-Fly Sun, 07 Feb 2010 09:54:55 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202591-High-Tech-Glitter-to-Create-Flexible-Solar-Panels Researchers have unveiled super-small solar cells no bigger than the pieces of glitter on your holiday ornaments and cards. These highly efficient photovoltaics could be game-changers in the burgeoning field of solar power, allowing arrays of microcells to be placed on bendable or curved surfaces and even woven into clothing. Unlike the conventional, rigid solar cells deployed as flat panels on rooftops, for instance, the new miniscule cells could be encapsulated in flexible plastic and made to fit virtually any object. "With this technology, one can envision ubiquitous [solar-powered] devices," said Greg Nielson, lead investigator at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202591-High-Tech-Glitter-to-Create-Flexible-Solar-Panels Sun, 07 Feb 2010 09:48:03 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202590-Archaeologists-stumble-on-8-000-year-old-skeleton-in-Kenyir-Lake Hulu Terengganu - Archaeologists have stumbled upon human skeletal remains believed to be from the Mesolithic Age in the Bewah Cave in the Kenyir Lake area, according to a university professor. The remains, believed to be those of a youth, are estimated to be between 8,000 and 11,000 years old, said Prof Datuk Dr Nik Hasan Shuhaimi Nik Abdul Rahman, deputy director of the Institute of the Malay World and Civilisation (ATMA) of Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM). The remains were uncovered by archaeologists from UKM, the Museums Department and the Terengganu Museum Board at a depth of 65 to 70 centimetres, he told reporters after a visit by Terengganu Menteri Besar Datuk Ahmad Said and reporters to the cave on Saturday. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202590-Archaeologists-stumble-on-8-000-year-old-skeleton-in-Kenyir-Lake Sun, 07 Feb 2010 09:42:14 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202589-Cuneiform-tablets-Seals-and-Tombs-Unearthed-in-Syria According to Syrian media, archaeological expeditions working at North-eastern Syria (Hasaka Province) have discovered several collective tombs and parts of seals with different shapes in addition to 27 cuneiform tablets dating back to 2500 BC. Director of Hasska Antiquities Department Abdul-Masih Baghdo said that the British expedition working at the site of Tal Barak had studied many clay jars discovered at the site. He added that the expedition also studied several archaeological findings to find out the location of the buildings dating back to the Babylonian and Mitanni periods. Three collective tombs were also unearthed at the site of Tal Majnuna, dating back to the period between 3600 to 3800 BC. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202589-Cuneiform-tablets-Seals-and-Tombs-Unearthed-in-Syria Sun, 07 Feb 2010 09:38:19 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202588-Wall-with-Maya-Seignior-Glyphs-Discovered-at-Archaeological-Zone Chiapas, Mexico.- A wall with a rich glyphic text that includes the complete name of the ruler that founded one of the most important Maya military seigniories was discovered in Tonina Archaeological Zone, in Chiapas. Epigraphists point out that the finding will bring in new information regarding Maya grammar, since it shows linguistic features yet to be deciphered. The discovery adds up to the sarcophagus recently uncovered by specialists of the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH). The wall dated in 708 AD was detected at El Palacio; a stucco portrait of K'inich B'aaknal Chaahk, the most powerful seignior of the ancient Maya city, was found as well. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202588-Wall-with-Maya-Seignior-Glyphs-Discovered-at-Archaeological-Zone Sun, 07 Feb 2010 09:33:00 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202567-Explorer-s-Whiskey-Found-Buried-Near-South-Pole It's probably the most sought-after scotch in history - crates of whiskey buried in Antarctica by the famed explorer Ernest Shackleton a century ago. He abandoned them on a failed attempt to reach the South Pole in 1909, and they've been on ice - literally - ever since. Researchers from New Zealand found the crates while restoring a hut Shackleton built and used during the expedition. He and his team were forced to cut short the trip and abandon supplies, including their booze, to sail away before winter ice trapped them there. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202567-Explorer-s-Whiskey-Found-Buried-Near-South-Pole Sat, 06 Feb 2010 16:32:06 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202565-Stonehenge-s-secret-archaeologist-uncovers-evidence-of-encircling-hedges Survey of landscape suggests prehistoric monument was surrounded by two circular hedges. The Monty Python knights who craved a shrubbery were not so far off the historical mark: archaeologists have uncovered startling evidence of The Great Stonehenge Hedge. Inevitably dubbed Stonehedge, the evidence from a new survey of the Stonehenge landscape suggests that 4,000 years ago the world's most famous prehistoric monument was surrounded by two circular hedges, planted on low concentric banks. The best guess of the archaeologists from English Heritage, who carried out the first detailed survey of the landscape of the monument since the Ordnance Survey maps of 1919, is that the hedges could have served as screens keeping even more secret from the crowd the ceremonies carried out by the elite allowed inside the stone circle. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202565-Stonehenge-s-secret-archaeologist-uncovers-evidence-of-encircling-hedges Sat, 06 Feb 2010 16:14:14 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202540-Dark-Ages-Did-a-comet-impact-cause-global-catastrophe-around-500-A-D- Double impact may have caused tsunami, global cooling Pieces of a giant asteroid or comet that broke apart over Earth may have crashed off Australia about 1,500 years ago, says a scientist who has found evidence of the possible impact craters. Satellite measurements of the Gulf of Carpentaria (see map) revealed tiny changes in sea level that are signs of impact craters on the seabed below, according to new research by marine geophysicist Dallas Abbott. Based on the satellite data, one crater should be about 11 miles (18 kilometers) wide, while the other should be 7.4 miles (12 kilometers) wide. For years Abbott, of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, has argued that V-shaped sand dunes along the gulf coast are evidence of a tsunami triggered by an impact. "These dunes are like arrows that point toward their source," Abbott said. In this case, the dunes converge on a single point in the gulf - the same spot where Abbott found the two sea-surface depressions. The new work is the latest among several clues linking a major impact event to an episode of global cooling that affected crop harvests from A.D. 536 to 545, Abbott contends. According to the theory, material thrown high into the atmosphere by the Carpentaria strike probably triggered the cooling, which has been pinpointed in tree-ring data from Asia and Europe. What's more, around the same time the Roman Empire was falling apart in Europe, Aborigines in Australia may have witnessed and recorded the double impact, she said. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202540-Dark-Ages-Did-a-comet-impact-cause-global-catastrophe-around-500-A-D- Sat, 06 Feb 2010 11:12:03 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202534-7-Gadgets-That-Changed-the-World Companies like to call their new gadgets revolutionary. Amazon did it when it introduced its Kindle e-book reader in 2007, and Apple CEO Steve Jobs used the word often last week while unveiling his company's new iPad - a tablet computer that also doubles as an e-reader. Jobs even threw in a "magical" here and there when describing the device. Corporations aren't the only ones predicting that the digitization of books will bring great change. Take author and journalist Steven Johnson, who's Kindle moved him to envision a paperless future: http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202534-7-Gadgets-That-Changed-the-World Sat, 06 Feb 2010 09:39:08 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202512-Scientists-ID-a-Protein-That-Splices-and-Dices-Genes A novel finding offers a clue as to how genes can have what you might call multiple personalities. The research was recently described online in the journal Science by teams from the National Cancer Institute, The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio and the University of Toronto. Genes are long strings of DNA letters, but they can be cut and spliced to make different proteins, something like the word "Saskatchewan" can have its middle cut out to leave the word "Swan," its front, middle and end deleted to leave the word "skate," or its front and back chopped off to make the word "chew." http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202512-Scientists-ID-a-Protein-That-Splices-and-Dices-Genes Fri, 05 Feb 2010 18:04:02 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202510-First-Measurement-of-Energy-Released-from-a-Virus-During-Infection Within a virus's tiny exterior is a store of energy waiting to be unleashed. When the virus encounters a host cell, this pent-up energy is released, propelling the viral DNA into the cell and turning it into a virus factory. For the first time, Carnegie Mellon University physicist Alex Evilevitch has directly measured the energy associated with the expulsion of viral DNA, a pivotal discovery toward fully understanding the physical mechanisms that control viral infection and designing drugs to interfere with the process. "We are studying the physics of viruses, not the biology of viruses," said Evilevitch, associate professor of physics in the Mellon College of Science at Carnegie Mellon. "By treating viruses as physical objects, we can identify physical properties and mechanisms of infection that are common to a variety of viruses, regardless of their biological makeup, which could lead to the development of broad spectrum antiviral drugs." Current antiviral medications are highly specialized. They target molecules essential to the replication cycle of specific viruses, such as HIV or influenza, limiting the drugs' use to specific diseases. Additionally, viruses mutate over time and may become less susceptible to the medication. Evilevitch's work in the burgeoning field of physical virology stands to provide tools for the rational design of less-specialized antiviral drugs that will have the ability to treat a broad range of viruses by interrupting the release of viral genomes into cells. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202510-First-Measurement-of-Energy-Released-from-a-Virus-During-Infection Fri, 05 Feb 2010 17:51:21 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202504-How-the-face-of-Pluto-changed-in-just-two-years-do-you-think-they-can-blame-it-on-global-warming- Nasa scientists have been left stunned after detailed images of the surface of Pluto reveal it has dramatically changed colour over just a two-year period. The Hubble Telescope captured the images, which are the most detailed and dramatic ever taken of the distant dwarf planet. They revealed that the cosmic body, demoted from full planet status in 2006, is significantly redder than it has been for the past several decades. The photos show a mottled world with a yellow-orange hut, but astronomers say it is 20 per cent more red than it used to be. At the same time its illuminated northern hemisphere is getting brighter, while the southern hemisphere has darkened. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202504-How-the-face-of-Pluto-changed-in-just-two-years-do-you-think-they-can-blame-it-on-global-warming- Fri, 05 Feb 2010 16:09:41 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202498-Did-an-Asteroid-Strike-in-Australia-Plunge-Anglo-Saxon-England-into-a-Mini-Ice-Age- In the mid-sixth century, Europe and Asia experienced the most severe and protracted episode of cooling of the last 2,000 years. Sources from the time refer to widespread crop failures and famines as the unseasonal weather took hold. The Gaelic Irish Annals recorded 'a failure of bread' from 536 to 539AD. Tree ring analysis by Mike Baillie from Queen's University in Belfast also suggested a cool period. He found the Irish oak showed abnormally little growth in 536 and 542. This phenomenon was noted in trees in Sweden and Finland as well. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202498-Did-an-Asteroid-Strike-in-Australia-Plunge-Anglo-Saxon-England-into-a-Mini-Ice-Age- Fri, 05 Feb 2010 14:02:40 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202496-Youth-who-self-identify-as-gay-lesbian-or-bisexual-at-higher-suicide-risk Mental health professionals have long-known that gay, lesbian and bisexual (GLB) teens face significantly elevated risks of mental health problems, including suicidal thoughts and suicidal attempts. However, a group of McGill University researchers in Montreal has now come to the conclusion that self-identity is the crucial risk-factor, rather than actual sexual behaviours. Their results were published in February in the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry. The researchers administered a detailed, anonymous questionnaire to nearly 1,900 students in 14 Montreal-area high schools, and found that those teens who self-identified as gay, lesbian or bisexual, or who were unsure of their sexual identity, were indeed at higher risk for suicidal ideation and attempts. However, teens who had same-sex attractions or sexual experiences - but thought of themselves as heterosexual - were at no greater risk than the population at large. Perhaps surprisingly, but consistent with previous studies, the majority of teens with same-sex sexual attraction or experience considered themselves to be heterosexual. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202496-Youth-who-self-identify-as-gay-lesbian-or-bisexual-at-higher-suicide-risk Fri, 05 Feb 2010 13:34:54 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202492-Imagining-The-Fate-Of-Data-After-The-Apocalypse If modern civilization collapsed, could the survivors hope to rebuild using our massive stores of data? Unless we can come up with something way more permanent to put them on in the near future, we probably shouldn't bank on it. A recent article by Tom Simonite and Michael Le Page in New Scientist tackles this question by positing a minor cataclysm: something bad enough to tear apart civilization as we know it, but not quite enough to kill off humans entirely. Candidates include a pandemic, a financial collapse that would make 2008's pale in comparison, a severe natural disaster, or just the slow accumulation of decay in society's foundations. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202492-Imagining-The-Fate-Of-Data-After-The-Apocalypse Fri, 05 Feb 2010 12:12:50 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202473-First-Germanium-Laser New results from MIT's Electronic Materials Research Group bring us closer to computers that use light instead of electricity to move data. MIT researchers have demonstrated the first laser built from germanium that can produce wavelengths of light useful for optical communication. It's also the first germanium laser to operate at room temperature. Unlike the materials typically used in lasers, germanium is easy to incorporate into existing processes for manufacturing silicon chips. So the result could prove an important step toward computers that move data - and maybe even perform calculations - using light instead of electricity. But more fundamentally, the researchers have shown that, contrary to prior belief, a class of materials called indirect-band-gap semiconductors can yield practical lasers. As chips' computational capacity increases, they need higher-bandwidth connections to send data to memory. But conventional electrical connections will soon become impractical, because they'll require too much power to transport data at ever higher rates. Transmitting data with lasers - devices that concentrate light into a narrow, powerful beam - could be much more power-efficient, but it requires a cheap way to integrate optical and electronic components on silicon chips. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202473-First-Germanium-Laser Thu, 04 Feb 2010 22:51:52 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202457-NIST-s-Second-Quantum-Logic-Clock-Based-on-Aluminum-Ion-is-Now-World-s-Most-Precise-Clock Clock keeps time to 1 second in 3.7 billion years Boulder - Physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have built an enhanced version of an experimental atomic clock based on a single aluminum atom that is now the world's most precise clock, more than twice as precise as the previous pacesetter based on a mercury atom. The new aluminum clock would neither gain nor lose one second in about 3.7 billion years, according to measurements to be reported in Physical Review Letters. The new clock is the second version of NIST's "quantum logic clock," so called because it borrows the logical processing used for atoms storing data in experimental quantum computing, another major focus of the same NIST research group. (The logic process is described here.) The second version of the logic clock offers more than twice the precision of the original. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202457-NIST-s-Second-Quantum-Logic-Clock-Based-on-Aluminum-Ion-is-Now-World-s-Most-Precise-Clock Thu, 04 Feb 2010 19:28:16 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202455-U-S-teens-lose-interest-in-blogging-in-favor-of-social-networking-sites Blogging by teenagers and young adults has dropped by half over the past three years as they turn instead to texting and social networking sites such as Facebook, a new study shows. The study released this week by the Pew Internet and American Life project also found that fewer than one in 10 teens were using Twitter, a surprising finding given overall popularity of the micro-blogging site. According to the report, only 14 percent of teenagers who use the Internet say they kept an online journal or blog, compared with a peak of 28 percent in 2006 -- and only 8 percent were using Twitter. "It was a little bit surprising, although there are definitely explanations given the state of the technological landscape," Pew researcher Aaron Smith told Reuters. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202455-U-S-teens-lose-interest-in-blogging-in-favor-of-social-networking-sites Thu, 04 Feb 2010 19:19:30 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202453-What-the-World-Knows-About-Your-Computer Do you believe that you are anonymous when you surf the web? Your computer may reveal more information than you thought - possibly enough to identify your computer uniquely. Computer experts refer to the idea of a "device fingerprint," which is a summary of the hardware and software settings that can be collected from your computer by web sites that you visit. Thanks to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), you can now see what web sites can see when they look at your computer. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202453-What-the-World-Knows-About-Your-Computer Thu, 04 Feb 2010 19:08:08 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202447-Hubble-Catches-Pluto-Changing-With-The-Years NASA today released the most detailed set of images ever taken of the distant dwarf planet Pluto. The images taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope show an icy and dark molasses-colored, mottled world that is undergoing seasonal changes in its surface color and brightness. Pluto has become significantly redder, while its illuminated northern hemisphere is getting brighter. These changes are most likely consequences of surface ices sublimating on the sunlit pole and then refreezing on the other pole as the dwarf planet heads into the next phase of its 248-year-long seasonal cycle. The dramatic change in color apparently took place in a two-year period, from 2000 to 2002. The Hubble images will remain our sharpest view of Pluto until NASA's New Horizons probe is within six months of its Pluto flyby. The Hubble pictures are proving invaluable for picking out the planet's most interesting-looking hemisphere for the New Horizons spacecraft to swoop over when it flies by Pluto in 2015. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202447-Hubble-Catches-Pluto-Changing-With-The-Years Thu, 04 Feb 2010 17:24:21 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202409-10-Profound-Innovations-Ahead Today's world looks increasingly like the future. Robots work factory assembly lines and fight alongside human warriors on the battlefield, while tiny computers assist in everything from driving cars to flying airplanes. Surgeons use the latest technological tools to accomplish incredible feats, and researchers push the frontiers of medicine with bioengineering. Science fiction stories about cloning and resurrecting extinct animals look increasingly like relevant cautionary tales. But even the best of science and technology has yet to solve climate change and famine, or conquer disease. More and more people live on a planet with shrinking resources, which leads to political strife and conflict. Here, we examine some of the hottest areas where researchers hope to forge a better tomorrow. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202409-10-Profound-Innovations-Ahead Wed, 03 Feb 2010 21:09:11 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202407-The-Stars-behind-the-Curtain NGC 3603 is a starburst region: a cosmic factory where stars form frantically from the nebula's extended clouds of gas and dust. Located 22 000 light-years away from the Sun, it is the closest region of this kind known in our galaxy, providing astronomers with a local test bed for studying intense star formation processes, very common in other galaxies, but hard to observe in detail because of their great distance from us. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202407-The-Stars-behind-the-Curtain Wed, 03 Feb 2010 20:52:19 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202394-The-Behavior-of-Silver-Nanotextiles-During-Washing Silver nanoparticles used as antimicrobials in fabric can leach out of clothes as they are being washed. One brand lost over half of its silver content from the fabric with just two washings. The discovery raises questions about potential affects of human and environmental exposures. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202394-The-Behavior-of-Silver-Nanotextiles-During-Washing Wed, 03 Feb 2010 18:02:00 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202385-New-Neutron-Studies-Support-Magnetism-s-Role-in-Superconductors Neutron scattering experiments performed at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory give strong evidence that, if superconductivity is related to a material's magnetic properties, the same mechanisms are behind both copper-based high-temperature superconductors and the newly discovered iron-based superconductors. The work, published in a recent Nature Physics, was performed at ORNL's Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) and High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR) along with the ISIS Facility at the United Kingdom's Rutherford Appleton Laboratory. High-temperature superconducting materials, in which a material conducts electricity without resistance at a relatively high temperature, have potential for application to energy efficient technologies where little electricity is lost in transmission. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202385-New-Neutron-Studies-Support-Magnetism-s-Role-in-Superconductors Wed, 03 Feb 2010 15:55:36 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202381-Ex-finance-minister-says-Russia-is-40-years-behind-developed-nations-in-high-tech-sector The architect of Russia's 1990s privatizations have given a sobering assessment of the country's present and future in the high-tech world, warning that Russia faces an "innovate-or-degrade" choice. Anatoly Chubais, a former finance minister who now runs the state-owned corporation for the development of the nascent high-tech sector, said "We have to admit: We have fallen very far behind." http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202381-Ex-finance-minister-says-Russia-is-40-years-behind-developed-nations-in-high-tech-sector Wed, 03 Feb 2010 14:47:23 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202379-Iran-fires-satellite-carrier-into-space Iran on Tuesday test-fired the Kavoshgar 3 satellite carrier, sending its third explorer - with living organisms onboard - into space. The Kavoshgar 3 (Explorer) rocket, carrying an experimental capsule, transfers telemetric data, live pictures and flight and environmental analysis data. The Iranian Aerospace Organization (IAO) says live video transmission and the mini-environmental lab will enable further studies on the biological capsule - carrying a rat, two turtles and worms - as it leaves earth's atmosphere and enters space. In February 2008, Iran became the 11th country to have acquired space-related technology by blasting Kavoshgar 1 into space. The second Kavoshgar, which carried a space-lab and a restoration system, was launched in November 2008. The Kavoshgar 3 rocket is an updated version of the previous models. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202379-Iran-fires-satellite-carrier-into-space Wed, 03 Feb 2010 14:43:10 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202359-Computers-that-understand-how-you-feel Robots can now pick up the mood of their users, and can even tell if they're drunk. Many people have commented on the contrast between Tony Blair's urbane comments to last week's Chilcott Enquiry and his physical unease in its first minutes as manifest in blinks, foot-tapping, crossed legs, and soon. Body language - non-verbal communication - is a valuable clue to innerfeelings (a truth, or half-truth, that men's magazines often use when advising their readers how to tell whether a young lady might be interested in body language of another kind). Their claims are dubious, but now science is getting in on the act. It began with Darwin, whose 1872 book The Expression of the Emotions in Man and other Animals showed how blushes, smiles, raised eyebrows and the like add spice to the banal messages of the spoken word. Now, computers can sense the mood of their users. Already they are able to identify smiles and frowns and even blushes (a subject of much interest to Darwin, who devotes many pages to it). Their programs generate well over a million combinations of facial expressions and head position and, on a good day (or with an expressive face) can. nine times out of ten, correctly identify looks of fear, sadness, happiness, anger disgust and surprise. They even do better than humans in differentiating the expression of a puzzled person from that of a drunk. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202359-Computers-that-understand-how-you-feel Wed, 03 Feb 2010 09:38:43 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202349-Long-lost-theory-on-Silbury-Hill-is-uncovered Letters that lay undiscovered in national archives for more than 230 years suggest that Silbury Hill, the enigmatic man-made mound that stands between Marlborough and Beckhampton, may have originally be constructed around some sort of totem pole. Historians have uncovered in the British Library in London letters written in 1776 that describe a 40ft-high pole which once stood at the centre of Silbury Hill. Europe's largest man-made mound. The letters detail an 18th century excavation into the centre of the man-made mound, where archaeologists discovered a long, thin cavity six inches wide and about 40ft deep. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202349-Long-lost-theory-on-Silbury-Hill-is-uncovered Tue, 02 Feb 2010 21:28:36 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202348-How-HTML5-Will-Revolutionize-the-Web There's a lot going on behind all the images, video and information on the Internet. All the things we see when browsing the Web are powered by a special coding language called HTML. This language has been the foundation of the Internet for decades, but it isn't static. The Internet is about to experience another evolution in HTML that will have benefits for everyone who uses it. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202348-How-HTML5-Will-Revolutionize-the-Web Tue, 02 Feb 2010 21:20:09 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202347-New-Underwater-Plane-To-Explore-Ocean-Depths A new "underwater plane" will plunge wealthy riders down into the ocean depths for a hefty fee. U.K. company Virgin Limited Edition recently announced the Necker Nymph, a three-person "aero-submarine" that can dive to depths of 36,000 feet - which is deeper than Mount Everest is tall. The Necker Nymph vehicle is designed and built by San Francisco-based Hawkes Ocean Technologies and is based on the company's DeepFlight series of submersibles http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202347-New-Underwater-Plane-To-Explore-Ocean-Depths Tue, 02 Feb 2010 21:14:51 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202328-Suspected-Asteroid-Collision-Leaves-Trailing-Debris NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has observed a mysterious X-shaped debris pattern and trailing streamers of dust that suggest a head-on collision between two asteroids. Astronomers have long thought the asteroid belt is being ground down through collisions, but such a smashup has never been seen before. Asteroid collisions are energetic, with an average impact speed of more than 11,000 miles per hour, or five times faster than a rifle bullet. The comet-like object imaged by Hubble, called P/2010 A2, was first discovered by the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research, or LINEAR, program sky survey on Jan. 6. New Hubble images taken on Jan. 25 and 29 show a complex X-pattern of filamentary structures near the nucleus. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202328-Suspected-Asteroid-Collision-Leaves-Trailing-Debris Tue, 02 Feb 2010 14:45:31 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202325-Drug-could-turn-soldiers-into-super-survivors A lucky few seem to be able to laugh in the face of death, surviving massive blood loss and injuries that would kill others. Now a drug has been found that might turn virtually any injured person into a "super-survivor", by preventing certain biological mechanisms from shutting down. The drug has so far only been tested in animals. If it has a similar effect in humans, it could vastly improve survival from horrific injuries, particularly in soldiers, by allowing them to live long enough to make it to a hospital. Loss of blood is the main problem with many battlefield injuries, and a blood transfusion the best treatment, although replacing lost fluid with saline can help. But both are difficult to transport in sufficient quantities. "You can't carry a blood bank into the battlefield," says Hasan Alam of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. "What we're looking for is a pill or a shot that would keep a person alive for long enough to get to them to a hospital." http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202325-Drug-could-turn-soldiers-into-super-survivors Tue, 02 Feb 2010 13:20:20 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202308-US-plans-crewless-automated-ghost-frigates Mary Celeste class robot X-ships to prowl seas Those splendid brainboxes at DARPA - the Pentagon's in-house bazaar of the bizarre - have outdone themselves this time. They now plan an entirely uncrewed, automated ghost frigate able to cruise the oceans of the world for months or years on end without human input. The new project is called Anti-submarine warfare Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessel (ACTUV), and is intended to produce "an X-ship founded on the assumption that no person steps aboard at any point in its operating cycle". The uncrewed frigate would have enough range and endurance for "global, months long deployments with no underway human maintenance", being able to cross oceans largely without any human input - communications back to base would be "intermittent", according to DARPA. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202308-US-plans-crewless-automated-ghost-frigates Tue, 02 Feb 2010 11:54:12 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202297-Super-Hard-Diamonds-Found-in-Meteorite The ultra hard rocks may not end up on your finger, but they could help scientists learn how to create harder diamonds in the lab. Researchers using a diamond paste to polish a slice of meteorite stumbled onto something remarkable: crystals in the rock that are harder than diamonds. A closer look with an array of instruments revealed two totally new kinds of naturally occurring carbon, which are harder than the diamonds formed inside the Earth. "The discovery was accidental but we were sure that looking in these meteorites would lead to new findings on the carbon system," said Tristan Ferroir of the Universite de Lyon in France. Ferroir is the lead author of a report in the new diamond in the Feb. 15 issue of the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters. The researchers were polishing a slice of the carbon-rich Havero meteorite that fell to Earth in Finland in 1971. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202297-Super-Hard-Diamonds-Found-in-Meteorite Tue, 02 Feb 2010 10:02:15 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202292-Cell-Growth-Regulates-Genetic-Circuits Max Planck researchers discover an explanation for different growth rates of genetically identically cells Genetic circuits control the activity of genes and thereby the function of cells and organisms. Scientists from the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces in Potsdam and the University of California at San Diego have shown how various genetic circuits in bacterial cells are influenced by growth conditions. According to their findings, even genes that are not regulated can display different activities - depending on whether they are translated into proteins in slow or fast growing cells. The results provide researchers with new insights into gene regulation and will help them in the design of synthetic genetic circuits in the future (Cell 139, 1366-1375, 2009) Control circuits do not only exist in CD players, coffee makers, or cars, but also in living cells in this case as "genetic circuits". They consist of a network of different genes which can mutually stimulate or inhibit each other. With the help of these circuits, a cell can switch genes on or off and thus control what proteins it produces. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202292-Cell-Growth-Regulates-Genetic-Circuits Tue, 02 Feb 2010 09:24:50 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202291-Hunger-for-Stimulation-Driven-by-Dopamine-in-the-Brain-According-to-New-Brain-Research Our need for stimulation and dopamine's action upon the brain are connected, which explains why people who constantly crave stimulation are in danger of addictive behaviour such as drug abuse and gambling. The urge to actively seek out new experiences is a personality trait that psychologists have known about for years, but up until now scientists have been unable to prove how this urge relates to hormonal activities in the brain. Now, an international research team made up of scientists from the University of Copenhagen, University of Aarhus and University of Tokyo have been able to prove for the first time that this hunger for stimulation is greater on average among people who possess more of the gratification hormone - dopamine in the brain. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202291-Hunger-for-Stimulation-Driven-by-Dopamine-in-the-Brain-According-to-New-Brain-Research Tue, 02 Feb 2010 09:24:47 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202289-Skin-Cells-Transformed-Directly-into-Neurons Researchers sidestep conversion to an embryonic state One small step for skin cells could mean one big leap for regenerative medicine. For the first time, scientists have converted adult cells directly into neurons. If the technique, performed on mouse cells, works for human cells, the achievement may bypass the need to revert a patient's cells to an embryonic state before producing the type of cell needed to repair damage due to disease or injury. Researchers at Stanford University transformed skin fibroblast cells from mice into working neurons by inserting genes that encode transcription factors. Transcription factors are proteins that help regulate gene activity, usually by turning genes on. To convert skin cells into neurons, only three genes for regulatory proteins needed to be added, the team reported online January 27 in Nature. The three transcription factors, called Ascl1, Brn2 and Myt1l, normally appear while new neurons are being born. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202289-Skin-Cells-Transformed-Directly-into-Neurons Tue, 02 Feb 2010 09:05:16 -0500 http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202282-Stratospheric-Water-Vapor-Is-a-Global-Warming-Wild-Card A 10 percent drop in water vapor ten miles above Earth's surface has had a big impact on global warming, say researchers in a study published online January 28 in the journal Science. The findings might help explain why global surface temperatures have not risen as fast in the last ten years as they did in the 1980s and 1990s. Observations from satellites and balloons show that stratospheric water vapor has had its ups and downs lately, increasing in the 1980s and 1990s, and then dropping after 2000. The authors show that these changes occurred precisely in a narrow altitude region of the stratosphere where they would have the biggest effects on climate. Water vapor is a highly variable gas and has long been recognized as an important player in the cocktail of greenhouse gases -- carbon dioxide, methane, halocarbons, nitrous oxide, and others -- that affect climate. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202282-Stratospheric-Water-Vapor-Is-a-Global-Warming-Wild-Card Mon, 01 Feb 2010 22:26:15 -0500