Science & TechnologyS


Network

Neutering the 'Net

Holman W. Jenkins
Wall Street Journal
Wed, 30 Sep 2009 14:49 UTC
Net Neutrality
© Getty
The real agenda of Google, Amazon, Microsoft and other status-quo web powers behind the Obama administration's Net Neutrality campaign

Like Chekhov's gun, "net neutrality" gets dragged down from the mantel for every act of the broadband rollout. It's getting dragged down now for the rollout of wireless broadband.

Yet everything you need to know was contained in the first act, when AOL began bleating about "open access" when broadband first threatened its dial-up empire. AOL's business model depended on free riding on the infrastructure paid for by phone users. AOL users were dialing up and keeping a line open for days or even weeks at a time - yet faced no cost for the disproportionate capacity they used up.

This is the basic pricing model the biggest Web companies (especially Google) seek to preserve on the Internet. Their business models are built on a Web that makes their services appear "free" to users.
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Telescope

Flashback Generations Of Stars Pose For Stunning Family Portrait In Constellation Cassiopeia


Science Daily
Mon, 25 Aug 2008 02:39 UTC
A new image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope tells a tale of life and death amidst a rich family history. The striking infrared picture shows a colorful cosmic cloud, called W5, studded with multiple generations of blazing stars.

Image
©NASA/JPL-Caltech/Harvard-Smithsonian CfA
Generations of stars can be seen in this new infrared portrait from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.

It also provides dramatic new evidence that massive stars -- through their brute winds and radiation -- can trigger the birth of stellar newborns.

"Triggered star formation continues to be very hard to prove," said Xavier Koenig of the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass. "But our preliminary analysis shows that the phenomenon can explain the multiple generations of stars seen in the W5 region." Koenig is lead author of a paper about the findings in the December 1, 2008, issue of the Astrophysical Journal.
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Info

Space radiation hits record high

David Shiga
New Scientist
Wed, 30 Sep 2009 13:02 UTC
Image
© Richard Mewaldt/CaltechThe solar system is protected from galactic cosmic rays by the heliosphere, a giant magnetic bubble around the sun
Like a wounded Starship Enterprise, our solar system's natural shields are faltering, letting in a flood of cosmic rays. The sun's recent listlessness is resulting in record-high radiation levels that pose a hazard to both human and robotic space missions.

Galactic cosmic rays are speeding charged particles that include protons and heavier atomic nuclei. They come from outside the solar system, though their exact sources are still being debated.

Earth dwellers are protected from cosmic rays by the planet's magnetic field and atmosphere. But outside Earth's protective influence, cosmic rays can play havoc with spacecraft electronics - they may be responsible for some recent computer glitches on NASA's Kepler spacecraft, which temporarily halted its planet-hunting observations. They can also damage astronaut DNA, which can lead to cancer.

Now, the influx of galactic cosmic rays into our solar system has reached a record high. Measurements by NASA's Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) spacecraft indicate that cosmic rays are 19 per cent more abundant than any previous level seen since space flight began a half century ago.
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Magnify

Can Evolution Run in Reverse? A Study Says It's a One-Way Street

Carl Zimmer
New York Times
Wed, 30 Sep 2009 10:54 UTC
Evolutionary biologists have long wondered if history can run backward. Is it possible for the proteins in our bodies to return to the old shapes and jobs they had millions of years ago?

Examining the evolution of one protein, a team of scientists declares the answer is no, saying new mutations make it practically impossible for evolution to reverse direction. "They burn the bridge that evolution just crossed," said Joseph W. Thornton, a biology professor at the University of Oregon and co-author of a paper on the team's findings in the current issue of Nature.

The Belgian biologist Louis Dollo was the first scientist to ponder reverse evolution. "An organism never returns to its former state," he declared in 1905, a statement later dubbed Dollo's law.
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Info

Roman Statues Found in Blue Grotto Cave

Rossella Lorenzi
Discovery News
Tue, 29 Sep 2009 20:57 UTC
Image
© Vasco Fronzoni Magical Blue Waters
The turquoise waters of the Blue Grotto on the island of Capri in southern Italy is celebrated for the almost phosphorescent blue tones of the water and the mysterious silvery light flowing through fissures in the rocks
A number of ancient Roman statues might lie beneath the turquoise waters of the Blue Grotto on the island of Capri in southern Italy, according to an underwater survey of the sea cave.

Dating to the 1st century A.D., the cave was used as a swimming pool by the Emperor Tiberius (42 B.C. - 37 A.D.), and the statues are probably depictions of sea gods.

"A preliminary underwater investigation has revealed several statue bases which might possibly hint to sculptures lying nearby," Rosalba Giugni, president of the environmentalist association, Marevivo, told Discovery News.
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Telescope

World's Most Sensitive Astronomical Camera Developed at the Universite de Montreal

Olivier Hernandez
University of Montreal
Tue, 29 Sep 2009 10:00 UTC
Montreal - A team of Université de Montréal researchers, led by physics PhD student Olivier Daigle, has developed the world's most sensitive astronomical camera. Marketed by Photon etc., a young Quebec firm, the camera will be used by the Mont-Mégantic Observatory and NASA, which purchased the first unit.

The camera is made up of a CCD controller for counting photons; a digital imagery device that amplifies photons observed by astronomical cameras or by other instruments used in situations of very low luminosity. The controller produces 25 gigabytes of data per second.
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Sherlock

New clue into human evolution found


Xinhua
Tue, 29 Sep 2009 08:19 UTC
Skull
© english.cctv.comSkull found at Dmanisi archaeological site in Georgia, United Stades. Fossils at Dmanisi date back nearly two million years and represent the first prehistoric human fossils ever found outside of Africa.
An archaeological site located in southern Georgia has provided a key element in solving the mystery of human evolution. Let's dig into one of the oldest questions in history.

This archaeological site could hold the secret to human evolution.

Fossils at Dmanisi date back nearly two million years and represent the first prehistoric human fossils ever found outside of Africa.

David Lortkipanidze, director of Georgia's National Museum, said, "We could say for sure that Dmanisi is the earliest site in the whole of Eurasia."
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Info

How a tiny bug slew T. rex

Andy Coghlan
New Scientist
Tue, 29 Sep 2009 12:56 UTC
Image
© The Field Museum GEO86284cThe pits in Sue's jawbone probably hurt like hell.
A trip to the dentist could perhaps have saved many a mighty Tyrannosaurus rex.

Holes found in the jawbones of 10 T. Rex - including "Sue" at the Field Museum in Chicago - may not be battle scars from fighting with rivals as previously thought. The holes are more consistent with parasitic infections that gouged holes up to 5 centimetres wide in the bone, says Ewan Wolff at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

His team examined 61 T. Rex jawbones and observed the holes in 1 in 6 of them. They say the lesions do not resemble bites, but instead are akin to the lesions that protozoan parasite Trichomonas gallinae causes in birds - especially birds of prey such as hawks and ospreys.

"I think it would have been very painful," says Wolff. "Probably, most of the pain would come from feeding and the back of the throat, so it would have been very difficult to swallow and likely difficult to breathe." He concludes that the infected animals probably starved to death as a result.
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Info

Concepts are born in the hippocampus

Nic Fleming
New Scientist
Tue, 29 Sep 2009 10:41 UTC
Image
© Bjorn Mansson/IBL/RexFile under "dog"
A diminutive chihuahua and a lumbering Irish wolfhound look completely different, yet most us know they both belong to the concept called "dog". Now the brain regions responsible for our ability to organise the world into separate concepts have been pinpointed.

Forming a concept involves selecting the important characteristics of our experiences and categorising them. The degree to which we are able to do this effectively is a defining characteristic of human intelligence. Yet little is known about how conceptual knowledge is created and used in the brain.

Fractal patterns

In an attempt to identify the brain regions responsible, Dharshan Kumaran and colleagues at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, University College London, showed 25 volunteers pairs of fractal patterns that represented the night sky and asked them to forecast the weather - either rain or sun - based on the patterns.

Conceptual rules based on the positions and combinations of the patterns governed whether the resulting outcome would be rain or sun, but the volunteers were not told this. Instead correct predictions were rewarded with cash prizes, encouraging the volunteers to deduce these conceptual rules.
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Info

5,000-year-old Venus figure found in Çanakkale


Today's Zaman
Mon, 28 Sep 2009 18:59 UTC
Image
© UnknownA 5,000-year-old Venus figure and a seal have been found in an excavation.
A 5,000-year-old Venus figure has been found as part of an excavation being carried out in Çanakkale's Ezine district.

The excavation began in the field three weeks ago in cooperation with Germany's University of Tübingen. Assistant Professor Rüstem Aslan, who is vice head of the excavation, told the Anatolia news agency that the aim of the dig is to find settlements outside Troy from the Bronze Age.
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