Science & TechnologyS


Bizarro Earth

Update: Rock Snot algae spreading - threatens New England waterways

Lisa Rathke
AP News
Sun, 26 Aug 2007 00:29 UTC
It looks like a clump of soiled sheep's wool, a cottony green or white mass that's turning up on rocks and river bottoms, snarling waterways.

©AP Photo
Mary Russ, executive director of the White River Partnership, holds a rock covered with didymo in the White River in Stockbridge, Vt., Friday, July 27, 2007. The aquatic algae didymo -- Didymosphenia geminata -- has infested rivers in New Zealand with gray floating growth but had never been seen in the Northeast before this summer when fishermen spotted it in the upper Connecticut and White rivers. Northeast states are on alert. They're warning anglers and boaters to scour their boats and clean their gear to prevent the algae's spread.
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Info

Pathocracy of Microworld: Microbial cheats orchestrate their own downfall


University of Chicago Press Journals
Sat, 25 Aug 2007 05:56 UTC
Cooperation is widespread in the natural world but so too are cheats - mutants that do not contribute to the collective good but simply reap the benefits of others' cooperative efforts. In evolutionary terms, cheats should indeed prosper, so how cooperation persists despite the threat of cheat takeover is a fundamental question. Recently, biologists at the Universities of Edinburgh and Oxford have found that in bacteria, cheats actually orchestrate their own downfall.

Comment: Read Political ponerology to understand Hysteroidal cycle and Pathocracy of Human world.

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Telescope

Observations Of Asteroid Itokawa Will Aid In Assessing Risks From Future Asteroids


Science Daily
Thu, 23 Aug 2007 04:26 UTC
The space-borne infrared observatory AKARI, observed asteroid Itokawa last month with its Infrared Camera. The data will be used to refine estimates of sizes of potentially hazardous asteroids in the future.

©JAXA
The asteroid Itokawa was observed by the Infrared Camera (IRC) onboard AKARI at 7 micrometres on 26 July 2007. The above image is a composite of three images from the data showing the motion of Itokawa over 12 minutes. The image covers an area of roughly 7.4 arcminutes x 7.4 arcminutes around the target. The Hayabusa spacecraft itself was too faint to be detected.
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Nuke

China searches for 8 kg of "missing" uranium


Reuters
Fri, 24 Aug 2007 17:08 UTC
Eight kg (17 lb) of radioactive uranium has gone missing in China, delaying the verdict in a trial of four men charged with attempting to sell it on the black market, state media said on Friday.

A court in Guangzhou, capital of China's southern province of Guangdong, heard the four tried to sell the material between 2005 and January 2007, the China Daily said.

The men were arrested in January after a potential buyer in Hong Kong reported them to the authorities, the paper said.

However, despite having the four men in custody, police were unable to locate the uranium.
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Magnify

Fossil find pushes human-ape split back millions of years


AFP
Fri, 24 Aug 2007 14:07 UTC
Ten million-year-old fossils discovered in Ethiopia show that humans and apes probably split six or seven million years earlier than widely thought, according to landmark study released Wednesday.

The handful of teeth from the earliest direct ancestors of modern gorillas ever found -- one canine and eight molars -- also leave virtually no doubt, the study's authors and experts said, that both humans and modern apes did indeed originate from Africa.
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Bulb

Sony develops bio battery with sweet tooth


Reuters
Fri, 24 Aug 2007 10:29 UTC
Sony has developed an environmentally-friendly prototype battery that runs on sugars and that can generate enough electricity to power a music player and a pair of speakers, the Japanese company said.

©Reuters
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Telescope

Astronomers excited about nothing

Seth Borenstein
AP
Fri, 24 Aug 2007 08:44 UTC
Astronomers have stumbled upon a tremendous hole in the universe. That's got them scratching their heads about what's just not there.

The cosmic blank spot has no stray stars, no galaxies, no sucking black holes, not even mysterious dark matter. It is 1 billion light years across of nothing. That's an expanse of nearly 10 billion trillion kilometres of emptiness, a University of Minnesota team announced Thursday.
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Magnify

Martian soil may contain life: study

Ben Hirschler
Reuters
Fri, 24 Aug 2007 02:37 UTC
The soil on Mars may contain microbial life, according to a new interpretation of data first collected more than 30 years ago.

The search for life on Mars appeared to hit a dead end in 1976 when Viking landers touched down on the red planet and failed to detect biological activity.
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Question

Scientists Study Out-Of-Body Experiences

RANDOLPH E. SCHMID
Associated Press
Thu, 23 Aug 2007 23:15 UTC
WASHINGTON - The stories seem strange but riveting. A heart attack victim recalls floating in the air, watching paramedics revive him. A surgical patient remembers hovering, watching the doctors operate. Such widely reported out-of-body experiences have long been the territory of theology, philosophy and scary movies. Now scientists have turned their attention to the topic.

Comment: The experiment seems stranger then an "out-of-body experience".

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Info

Seahenge saga comes full circle in UK


EDP24
Thu, 23 Aug 2007 21:26 UTC
The story of Seahenge has turned full circle, as the ancient timbers are returned to Norfolk. But as experts prepare them to go on display at King's Lynn Museum, CHRIS BISHOP finds an enigma that remains unsolved.

Nearly 10 years after its controversial excavation, the mystery remains. While the upturned oak tree and its ring of timbers have taught us a few things we didn't know about our ancestors, we still don't know why they built it.

©Andy Burnham
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