Science & TechnologyS


Better Earth

Deep Impact's amazing shots of Earth

Richard Macey
The Sydney Morning Herald
Fri, 18 Jul 2008 16:47 UTC
It is a view that has never been glimpsed by human eyes.

A second-hand NASA space probe has shot an extraordinary movie showing the moon passing in front of a rotating Earth.

The time-lapse video was recorded in May from 50 million kilometres out in space - about 125 times further away than the moon is from Earth.
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Phoenix

New research reveals why chili peppers are hot


University of Florida
Mon, 11 Aug 2008 16:30 UTC
Despite the popularity of spicy cuisine among Homo sapiens, the hotness in chili peppers has always been something of an evolutionary mystery.

A plant creates fruit in order to entice animals to eat and disperse its seeds, so it doesn't make sense for that fruit to be painfully hot, said University of Florida zoology professor and evolutionary ecologist Douglas Levey.

But according to new research by Levey and six colleagues from other universities, chilies have a very good reason to make themselves hot. It boils down to protection.

Based on research on wild chili plants in rural Bolivia, the scientists found that the leading cause of seed mortality is a fungus called Fusarium. The fungus invades the fruits through wounds made by insects and destroys the seeds before they can be eaten and dispersed.
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Bulb

Cooking and Cognition: How Humans Got So Smart

Robin Nixon
LiveScience
Mon, 11 Aug 2008 16:26 UTC
After two tremendous growth spurts - one in size, followed by an even more important one in cognitive ability - the human brain is now a lot like a teenage boy.

It consumes huge amounts of calories, is rather temperamental and, when harnessed just right, exhibits incredible prowess. The brain's roaring metabolism, possibly stimulated by early man's invention of cooking, may be the main factor behind our most critical cognitive leap, new research suggests.
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Question

Tasmania: Prehistoric giant animals killed by man, not climate


Agence France-Presse
Tue, 12 Aug 2008 14:20 UTC
The chance discovery of the remains of a prehistoric giant kangaroo has cast doubts on the long-held view that climate change drove it and other mega-fauna to extinction, a new study reveals.

The research, published this week in the US-based journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, argues that man likely hunted to death the giant kangaroo and other very large animals on the southern island of Tasmania.
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Display

Yahoo: Not So Private After All

Heather Green and Catherine Holahan
Business Week
Tue, 12 Aug 2008 11:30 UTC
Now you can opt out of its behaviorally targeted ads, but the search giant can still see what you're doing on its site

Yahoo! says it won't target you... to your face. On Aug. 8, the Internet giant announced that it will allow users to opt out of behavioral targeting on its site. But in fact, that change only affects behaviorally targeted ads that users see. The company will still collect information on the Web sites visited by unique computers, it just won't serve ads to individual users based on the info.
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People

Users talk the talk, but don't walk the walk on privacy

Jacqui Cheng
Ars Technica
Mon, 11 Aug 2008 22:31 UTC
Internet users appear to take the concept of privacy online seriously, but their actions don't follow their words very well. AOL surveyed a thousand online consumers in the UK in order to get a feel for their understanding of privacy issues on the Internet and found that while 84 percent said that they would remain tight-lipped about personal details, even more ended up forking them over without any hesitation.

"Our research identified a significant gap between what people say and what they do when it comes to protecting sensitive information online," AOL Chief Privacy Officer Jules Polonetsky said in a statement. That gap was to the tune of 89 percent, which is the fraction of those surveyed who ended up divulging personal income details - "without any pressure or persuasion," says AOL.
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Info

Roman Temple Uncovered In Ancient Jewish Capital Of Galilee


Science Daily
Mon, 11 Aug 2008 16:36 UTC
Ruins of a Roman temple from the second century CE have recently been unearthed in the Zippori National Park. Above the temple are foundations of a church from the Byzantine period.

Image
©Gaby Laron
View of the monumental building on the north side of the decumanus with a pile of collapsed columns in the courtyard -- probably the result of an earthquake.

The excavations, which were undertaken by the Noam Shudofsky Zippori Expedition led by of Prof. Zeev Weiss of the Institute of Archaeology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, shed light on the multi-cultural society of ancient Zippori (also known as Sepphoris).

The discovery indicated that Zippori, the Jewish capital of the Galilee during the Roman period, had a significant pagan population which built a temple in the heart of the city center. The central location of the temple which is positioned within a walled courtyard and its architectural relation to the surrounding buildings enhance our knowledge regarding the planning of Zippori in the Roman era.
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Cow

US: Say What?! GPS headsets make sure the cows come home

Leslie Katz
Crave
Wed, 06 Aug 2008 15:18 UTC


Cows with headsets
©MIT

From the plains of southern New Mexico, we bring you a story of headset-wearing cows. The U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are teaming up to remotely corral cattle using a wireless device that sends sound straight into the bovines' ears. HDTV-watching pigs can't be far behind.

The solar-powered "Ear-A-Round" is a naugahyde "helmet" held in place by the cow's ears. Atop the holster sits an electronics device hooked to sound-transmitting stereo earphones and containing a GPS unit that could let farmers monitor the animals' whereabouts from afar.
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Magic Wand

Invisibility cloak one step closer, scientists say

Maggie Fox
Reuters
Sun, 10 Aug 2008 20:56 UTC
Scientists have created two new types of materials that can bend light the wrong way, creating the first step toward an invisibility cloaking device.

One approach uses a type of fishnet of metal layers to reverse the direction of light, while another uses tiny silver wires, both at the nanoscale level.

Both are so-called metamaterials -- artificially engineered structures that have properties not seen in nature, such as negative refractive index.

The two teams were working separately under the direction of Xiang Zhang of the Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center at the University of California, Berkeley with U.S. government funding. One team reported its findings in the journal Science and the other in the journal Nature.
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Key

MBTA Fare Card Hacked, MIT Students Claim


TheBostonChannel.com
Sun, 10 Aug 2008 10:34 UTC
The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority has obtained a temporary restraining order barring three Massachusetts Institute of Technology students from showing what they claim is a way to get "free subway rides for life."
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