Science & TechnologyS


Robot

Help: My Teacher Is a Robot. Really

Zach Miners
U.S. News and World Report
Tue, 21 Apr 2009 06:03 UTC
Smiling. Scolding. Calling roll. If these are the primary job responsibilities for teaching a class of Japanese preteen students, then Hiroshi Kobayashi, Tokyo University of Science professor and creator of the robot named Saya, might really be on to something.

Saya, a female-looking robot complete with shoulder-length black hair, large eyes, thin eyelashes, and a youthful face, was originally designed to be used as a receptionist, as Japanese companies search for a solution to a growing labor shortage as the nation's population ages. But news reports came out last month when Saya was tested in a Tokyo classroom of fifth and sixth graders as a substitute teacher. It (she?) drew laughter from the students with its mechanical mannerisms and declarations of basic pre-programmed phrases such as "Thank you!" It is being called the world's "first robot teacher."
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People

Study finds file-sharers buy ten times more music

Terrence Russell
VentureBeat
Wed, 22 Apr 2009 05:40 UTC
A new report from BI Norwegian School of Management shows illegal file-sharers are more likely to purchase music from legitimate sources than other web users.

I know, I know. The whole thing sounds questionable, but here's how it comes together: Ars Technica reports that researchers monitored the music download habits of 1,900 web users age 15 and above. Over time, the study found that users who downloaded music illegally from P2P file-sharing sites like BitTorrent ultimately made ten times as many legit music purchases than the law abiding users. The study also found that online music stores like iTunes and Amazon MP3 were preferred for the pirates' paid music purchases over traditional brick-and-mortar record stores.
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Telescope

Scientists discover a nearly Earth-sized planet

Jennifer Quinn
Associated Press
Wed, 22 Apr 2009 03:42 UTC
Image
© European Organisation for Astronomical ResearchAn artist's impression of 'Planet e' , forground left, released by the European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere Tuesday April 21, 2009.
Hatfield, England - In the search for Earth-like planets, astronomers zeroed in Tuesday on two places that look awfully familiar to home. One is close to the right size. The other is in the right place. European researchers said they not only found the smallest exoplanet ever, called Gliese 581 e, but realized that a neighboring planet discovered earlier, Gliese 581 d, was in the prime habitable zone for potential life.

"The Holy Grail of current exoplanet research is the detection of a rocky, Earth-like planet in the 'habitable zone,'" said Michel Mayor, an astrophysicist at Geneva University in Switzerland.

An American expert called the discovery of the tiny planet "extraordinary."
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Eye 2

Parasite Breaks Its Own DNA To Avoid Detection


Science Daily
Sun, 19 Apr 2009 00:47 UTC
The parasite Trypanosoma brucei, which causes African sleeping sickness, is like a thief donning a disguise. Every time the host's immune cells get close to destroying the parasite, it escapes detection by rearranging its DNA and changing its appearance. Now two laboratories at Rockefeller University have joined forces to reveal how the parasite initiates its getaway, by cleaving both strands of its DNA.

The parasite's survival strategy hinges upon its ability to change its surface coat. The genes that encode the current coat, which is comprised entirely of molecules called variant surface glycoproteins (VSG), are located in 15 to 20 regions near the ends of chromosomes. When the host's immune system has just about killed all of the parasites, some surviving parasites rearrange their DNA and switch their coat, initiating another wave of infection. During this cat-and-mouse game, the immune system never gains the upper hand and the victim dies.
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Rocket

Moon Dust May Be Worse Than Apollo Missions Found

Leonard David
Space.com
Tue, 21 Apr 2009 23:52 UTC
Image
© SPACE.com
The first astronauts to walk on the moon in the 1960s and 1970s were inundated by sticky lunar dust that clung to their spacesuits whenever they ventured outside. Now, four decades later, a self-funded study by an Australian physicist has found a link between the dust's stickiness and the angle of the sun at the time of each moonwalk.

The new research, which drew on the personal files and paper charts of physicist Brian O'Brien of Perth, suggests that future lunar astronauts may have greater problems with dust adhesion in the middle half of the day than NASA's Apollo missions faced in the early morning.
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Info

Lab finds new method to turn biomass into gasoline

Jasmin Melvin
Reuters
Tue, 21 Apr 2009 23:41 UTC
Washington - U.S. scientists have combined a discovery from a French garbage dump with breakthroughs in synthetic biology to come up with a novel method for turning plant waste into gasoline, without the need of any food sources.

A synthetic biology lab at the University of California San Francisco identified a compound able to use biomass to produce a gas that can be converted into a gasoline chemically indistinguishable from fossil-fuel based petroleum.

Their method allows for a variety of feedstocks to be used that are nonfood sources, such as agricultural waste products like corn stover and sugar cane bagasse.
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Sherlock

Germany to Excavate Yard Said to Hold Remains of 753 Jews Killed by Nazis


Haaretz
Tue, 21 Apr 2009 19:21 UTC
A birch-lined back yard believed to hold the remains of more than 750 former Jewish prisoners slain by the Nazis in the final days of World War II will be excavated by German authorities starting Wednesday.

The work on the site of the former Nazi labor camp Lieberose, a subcamp of the better-known Sachsenhausen concentration camp, follows a lengthy battle with the former landowner.

Joerg Schoenbohm, interior minister of Brandenburg state, said officials hope the efforts will help bring closure to any relatives of victims and send a signal to neo-Nazis and others seeking to deny the Holocaust.

"We want to have clarity," Schoenbohm told reporters Tuesday. "We need to end the uncertainty surrounding the crime so that we will have time for mourning and remembering."
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Sherlock

New Ancient Egypt Temples Discovered in Sinai

Hadeel Al-Shalchi
The Associated Press
Tue, 21 Apr 2009 20:14 UTC
Ramses
© AP Photo/Egypt's Supreme Council of AntiquitiesPharaonic King Ramses II, right and Geb, god of earth, carved on a wall at one of four recently unearthed new temples in Qantara amidst the 3,000-year-old remains of an ancient fortified city that could have been used to impress foreign delegations visiting Egypt.
Archaeologists exploring an old military road in the Sinai have unearthed four new temples amidst the 3,000-year-old remains of an ancient fortified city that could have been used to impress foreign delegations visiting Egypt, antiquities authorities announced Tuesday.

Among the discoveries was the largest mud brick temple found in the Sinai with an area of 70 by 80 meters (77 by 87 yards) and fortified with mud walls 3 meters (10 feet) thick, said Zahi Hawass, chief of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities.

The find was made in Qantara, 2 1/2 miles (4 kilometers) east of the Suez Canal. These temples mark the latest discovery by archaeologists digging up the remains of the city on the military road known as "Way of Horus." Horus is a falcon-headed god, who represented the greatest cosmic powers for ancient Egyptians.
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Brick Wall

Great Wall of China 'Even Longer'


BBC News
Mon, 20 Apr 2009 11:00 UTC
Great Wall
© AFPThe structure is a series of walls first linked up more than 2,000 years ago.
The Great Wall of China is even greater than previously thought, according to the first detailed survey to establish the length of the ancient barricade.

A two-year government mapping study found that the wall spans 8,850km (5,500 miles) - until now, the length was commonly put at about 5,000km.

Previous estimates of its length were mainly based on historical records.

Infra-red and GPS technologies helped locate some areas concealed over time by sandstorms, state media said.
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Blackbox

Why Antarctic ice is growing despite global warming - Damage Control?

Catherine Brahic
New Scientist
Mon, 20 Apr 2009 22:11 UTC
Image
© Modified from Turner/AGUWinds circle clockwise around Antarctica, whip off Victoria Land and create a vortex of cold storms (dark blue) off the Ross Sea, where sea ice is expanding. The vortex also draws in warm (red) air from South America, which warms the Antarctic Peninsula.
It's the southern ozone hole whatdunit. That's why Antarctic sea ice is growing while at the other pole, Arctic ice is shrinking at record rates. It seems CFCs and other ozone-depleting chemicals have given the South Pole respite from global warming.

But only temporarily. According to John Turner of the British Antarctic Survey, the effect will last roughly another decade before Antarctic sea ice starts to decline as well.

Arctic sea ice is decreasing dramatically and reached a record low in 2007. But satellite images studied by Turner and his colleagues show that Antarctic sea ice is increasing in every month of the year expect January. "By the end of the century we expect one third of Antarctic sea ice to disappear," says Turner. "So we're trying to understand why it's increasing now, at a time of global warming."

In a new study, Turner and colleagues show how the ozone hole has changed weather patterns around Antarctica. These changes have drawn in warm air over the Antarctic Peninsula in West Antarctica and cooled the air above East Antarctica.
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