Welcome to Sott.net
Mon, 08 Nov 2021
The World for People who Think

Science & Technology
Map

Satellite

Amateur astronomer photographs top secret spy satellites

Dennis Bodzash
Examiner.com
Wed, 22 Jun 2011 04:12 UTC
Image
© U.S. Air Force
The x37-b space plane is one of Legault's favorite targets
As long as there have been governments, there have been secret projects. With the influx of humans into space, the room for government black projects has grown significantly and, until recently, governments from all over the world have been able to consider space a safe zone from where they were free to hide things from the prying eyes of the populace.

Ever since humans have been flying and/or launching things into space, there have been opportunities to see space vehicles in flight thanks to the sunlight reflected off of their metallic exteriors. From dark skies far away from the city, it is possible to see some satellites as small as a refrigerator should the conditions allow. Needless to say, with space becoming ever more crowded, satellite watching has become a favorite past time for some astronomers such as the observation of natural objects was in decades past.

Come 2011, thanks to advances in technology, secret government satellites are frequently becoming objects of examination, too.
      Read More...
Star

Galaxies Are Either "Awake" or "Asleep," Find Astronomers


TruthDive
Wed, 22 Jun 2011 10:02 UTC
Astronomers have discovered that galaxies in the distant universe behave in one of two ways - they are either awake or asleep, actively forming stars or are not forming any new stars at all.

Scientists have known for several years that galaxies in the nearby universe seem to fall into one of these two states. But a new survey of the distant universe shows that even very young galaxies as far away as 12 billion light-years are either awake or asleep as well, meaning galaxies have behaved this way for more than 85 percent of the history of the universe.

"The fact that we see such young galaxies in the distant universe that have already shut off is remarkable," said Kate Whitaker, a Yaleniversity graduate student and lead author of the paper.

The researchers also found that there are many more active galaxies than passive ones, which agrees with the current thinking that galaxies start out actively forming stars before eventually shutting down.

"We don't see many galaxies in the in-between state," said Pieter van Dokkum, a Yale astronomer and another author of the paper. "This discovery shows how quickly galaxies go from one state to the other, from actively forming stars to shutting off."
      Read More...
Info

Could Brain Scans ID Potential Criminals?

Marianne English
Discovery News
Wed, 22 Jun 2011 11:41 UTC
CT Brain Scan
© iStockPhoto
A close-up of a CT brain scan.
The warning signs may seem subtle at first -- a child unable to empathize with others; another seems to fear nothing, not even the consequences of violence.

With time, researchers say, these descriptions might reflect a growing association between criminality and antisocial behavior.

But most recently, determining who might become a danger to society may be as easy as performing a brain scan, according to neurocriminology, a scientific discipline that uses neuroscience to predict and potentially reduce crime.

Along these lines, is it realistic to use brain scans to pinpoint which individuals are more at risk for criminal behavior before they commit crimes?

For some researchers, the idea is plausible, with the field reviving the nature versus nurture debate, as highlighted by Josh Fischman in a Chronicle of Higher Education article that profiles the work of University of Pennsylvania researcher Adrian Raine.

Raine's work, which draws from neuroscience and the legal system, focuses on differences in the minds of criminals and non-criminals. Over the years, he's established evidence for a link between the brain and criminal behavior.

By working with murderers, rapists and pedophiles, he's helped confirm that two brain structures -- the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex -- are smaller and less active in individuals with antisocial and criminal tendencies. Both areas are thought to give rise to complex behaviors shaped by emotion and fear.
      Read More...
Better Earth

Philippines: 7 New Species of Mice Discovered on Remote Mountain

Remy Melina
Live Science
Tue, 21 Jun 2011 00:00 UTC
Image
© Velizar Simeonovski, The Field Museum
This color drawing shows Apomys brownorum, one of the new species from Mt. Tapulao, Zambales, on the Phillipine island Luzon.
Seven new forest mouse species have come out of hiding on Luzon, the largest island of the Philippines, researchers announced Monday (June 21).

The discovery of the new species, which reside only on a small part of the island, has increased the number of Luzon's native mammal species, excluding bats, to 49.

Observations of each mouse's morphology as well as genetics suggest the seven newbies are part of a new subgenus called Megapomys, which is part of the genus Apomys. These mice are relatively large, weighing less than a half pound (65-110 grams) and sporting tails that are as long as, or slightly shorter, than the length of the animal's body and head.

Two of the newly found species live on Mount Tapulao in the Zambales Mountains, two live on Mount Banahaw, an active volcano in the Philippines, while another two species reside in the Mingan mountains of the Aurora Province and another species in the Sierra Madre mountain range of northeastern Luzon.
      Read More...
Info

Brainy Parrots Can Think Like 4-Year-Olds

Stephanie Pappas
LiveScience
Tue, 21 Jun 2011 18:01 UTC
Parrot
© Sandra Mikolasch
A new study, published June 21 in the journal Royal Society Biological Sciences, finds that parrots can use logical reasoning to find food hidden in one of two cups.
Parrots are capable of logical leaps, according to a new study in which a gray parrot named Awisa used reasoning to figure out where a bit of food was hidden.

The task is one that kids as young as 4 could figure out, but the only other animals that have been shown to use this type of reasoning are great apes. That makes gray parrots the first non-primates to demonstrate such logical smarts, said study researcher Sandra Mikolasch, a doctoral candidate at the University of Vienna.

"We now know that a gray parrot is able to logically exclude a wrong possibility and instead choose the right one in order to get a reward, which is known as 'inference by exclusion,'" Mikolasch wrote in an email to LiveScience.
      Read More...
Info

Humans May Have 'Magnetic' Sixth Sense

Jeanna Bryner
Live Science
Tue, 21 Jun 2011 12:00 UTC
Magneto
© Greg Land / Marvel Comics.
While humans can't create and control magnetism, à la Magneto of X-Men, there's a chance we may have the ability to sense Earth's magnetic field.

Humans may have a sixth sense after all, suggests a new study finding that a protein in the human retina, when placed into fruit flies, has the ability to detect magnetic fields.

The researchers caution that the results suggest this human protein has the capability to work as a magnetosensor; however, whether or not humans use it in that way is not known.

"It poses the question, 'maybe we should rethink about this sixth sense,'" Steven Reppert, of the University of Massachusetts Medical School, told LiveScience. "It is thought to be very important for how animals migrate. Perhaps this protein is also fulfilling an important function for sensing magnetic fields in humans."

Past research has suggested that in addition to helping animals such as sea turtles and migratory birds navigate, the ability to detect magnetic fields could help with visual spatial perception. Reppert said to picture a magnetic-field coordinate system overlaid on objects we view.
      Read More...
Arrow Down

Garbage-Filled Spaceship to Fall to Earth Tuesday

Dave Mosher
National Geographic
Tue, 21 Jun 2011 13:08 UTC
Unmanned craft will become fireball over remote Pacific.

Image
© NASA
The Johannes Kepler ATV approaches the International Space Station in late February.
A spacecraft stuffed with garbage - including astronaut urine - will tumble back to Earth Tuesday, becoming a fireball over a remote section of the Pacific Ocean.

The European Space Agency launched the unmanned craft, called the Johannes Kepler automated transport vehicle (ATV), in February to deliver several tons of cargo to the International Space Station, including food, supplies, fuel, and oxygen.

The glorified space freighter isn't designed to safely return to Earth, so during the past four months space fliers on the ISS have crammed the 450-million-euro (640-million-dollar) canister with 1.3 tons of junk.

"They pretty much filled it to the brim, mostly with packing material from inside modules recently delivered to the space station," said Kelly Humphries, a NASA spokesperson at Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.
      Read More...
Wolf

Canine telepathy? Study explores how dogs think and learn about human behavior


Springer Select
Thu, 09 Jun 2011 09:31 UTC
Image
© Unknown
Can dogs read our minds? How do they learn to beg for food or behave badly primarily when we're not looking? According to Monique Udell and her team, from the University of Florida in the US, the way that dogs come to respond to the level of people's attentiveness tells us something about the ways dogs think and learn about human behavior. Their research, published online in Springer's journal Learning & Behavior, suggests it is down to a combination of specific cues, context and previous experience.

Recent work has identified a remarkable range of human-like social behaviors in the domestic dog, including their ability to respond to human body language, verbal commands, and to attentional states. The question is, how do they do it? Do dogs infer humans' mental states by observing their appearance and behavior under various circumstances and then respond accordingly? Or do they learn from experience by responding to environmental cues, the presence or absence of certain stimuli, or even human behavioral cues? Udell and colleagues' work sheds some light on these questions.
      Read More...
Saturn

Saturn's Ice Queen Captured

Alan Boyle
MSNBC
Mon, 20 Jun 2011 00:00 UTC
NASA's Cassini orbiter has captured another close-up view of the Saturnian moon Helene, clearing the way for a global map of the 20-mile-wide "ice queen."


An animation chronicles the Cassini probe's June 18 flyby of the Saturnian moon Helene.

The spacecraft got its latest look at the icy moon on Saturday from a distance of 4,330 miles (6,968 kilometers), more than a year after its closest-ever Helene flyby in March 2010. This time, the pictures provided sunlit views of the moon's Saturn-facing side, improving on last year's imagery. Taken together, these pictures will enable astronomers to finish a global map that could shed additional light on the grooved, pockmarked moon's impact history, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said in today's image advisory.

Helene sticks out among Saturn's more than 60 moons for a couple of reasons: First of all, it is gravitationally bound in the same orbit as another, much larger icy moon called Dione. This makes it one of four "Trojan moons" in the Saturnian system, along with Polydeuces (which is also bound to Dione) and Telesto and Calypso (both bound to Tethys).

Helene's surface also reveals a network of gully-like features that may have been created by landslides (or, in this case, dustslides or iceslides). Working up a detailed map of the moon should help astronomers get a better grip on the gullies' genesis.

For more about the latest flyby, check out this posting from the Planetary Society's Emily Lakdawalla.
      Read More...
Syringe

Pigs could grow human organs in stem cell breakthrough

Richard Gray
Telegraph.co.uk
Mon, 20 Jun 2011 16:30 UTC
pig
© ALAMY
The researchers have already managed to produce pigs that were able to generate human blood by injecting blood stem cells from humans into pig foetuses

Scientists have found they can create chimeric animals that have organs belonging to another species by injecting stem cells into the embryo of another species.

The researchers injected stem cells from rats into the embryos of mice that had been genetically altered so they could not produce their own organs, creating mice that had rat organs.

The researchers say the technique could allow pigs to grow human organs from patient's stem cells for use as transplants.
      Read More...
Amazon Smile
Revolt! T-shirts