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First dinosaur tracks found in Arabian Peninsula

Michael Kahn
News Daily
Wed, 21 May 2008 12:03 UTC
LONDON - Scientists have discovered the tracks of a herd of 11 long-necked sauropods walking along a coastal mudflat in what is now the Republic of Yemen, the first discovery of dinosaur footprints on the Arabian peninsula.

Sauropods, the largest land animals in earth's history, walked on four stout legs and ate plants.

dinosaur footprints on the Arabian peninsula
©REUTERS/Nancy Stevens/Handout
Researchers at the site of a newly-discovered sauropod in the Republic of Yemen in an undated photo. Scientists have discovered the tracks of a herd of 11 long-necked sauropods walking along a coastal mudflat in what is now the Republic of Yemen, the first discovery of dinosaur footprints on the Arabian peninsula.

"The nice thing is we finally filled in a bit of a blank spot in the dinosaur map," said Anne Schulp, a palaeontologist at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands, who worked on the study.
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Bulb

Sleep-deprived Brains Alternate Between Normal Activity And 'Power Failure'


Science Daily
Wed, 21 May 2008 11:46 UTC
Neuroscience researchers at the Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School in Singapore have shown for the first time what happens to the visual perceptions of healthy but sleep-deprived volunteers who fight to stay awake, like people who try to drive through the night.

The scientists found that even after sleep deprivation, people had periods of near-normal brain function in which they could finish tasks quickly. However, this normalcy mixed with periods of slow response and severe drops in visual processing and attention, according to their paper, published in the Journal of Neuroscience on May 21.
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Info

New Meaning For The Term 'Computer Bug': Genetically Altered Bacteria For Data Storage


Science Daily
Wed, 21 May 2008 11:31 UTC
US researchers have created 'living computers' by genetically altering bacteria. The findings of the research demonstrate that computing in living cells is feasible, opening the door to a number of applications including data storage and as a tool for manipulating genes for genetic engineering.

Three-dimensional computer-rendered E. coli bacteria
©iStockphoto/Sebastian Kaulitzki
Three-dimensional computer-rendered E. coli bacteria.

A research team from the biology and the mathematics departments of Davidson College, North Carolina and Missouri Western State University, Missouri, USA added genes to Escherichia coli bacteria, creating bacterial computers able to solve a classic mathematical puzzle, known as the burnt pancake problem.
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Bulb

Sunspot cycle more dud than radiation flood

Dan Sorenson
The Arizona Daily Star
Mon, 19 May 2008 10:30 UTC
Many solar scientists expected the new sunspot cycle to be a whopper, a prolonged solar tantrum that could fry satellites and raise hell with earthly communications, the power grid and modern electronics.

But there's scant proof Sunspot Cycle 24 is even here, let alone the debut of big trouble.

Comment: And again we see that last little twist pushing the Anthropogenic Global Warming agenda.

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Better Earth

Ralph Nader: A Trip Inside Google

Ralph Nader
Counterpunch
Wed, 21 May 2008 06:12 UTC
An invitation to visit Google's headquarters and meet some of the people who made this ten year old giant that is giving Microsoft the nervies has to start with wonder.
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Telescope

100 Explosions on the Moon

Dr. Tony Phillips
NASA
Wed, 21 May 2008 05:23 UTC
Not so long ago, anyone claiming to see flashes of light on the Moon would be viewed with deep suspicion by professional astronomers. Such reports were filed under "L" ... for lunatic.

Not anymore. Over the past two and a half years, NASA astronomers have observed the Moon flashing at them not just once but one hundred times.

Comment: Left unsaid here is that the earth, being approximately 3.7 times the diameter of the moon has an equally exposed area of about 14 times that of the moon. Therefore the earth got hit with about 1400 meteors in the same time period. But they're only seeing half the area of the moon. Thus the true number is double that.

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Telescope

Missing matter found in deep space

Maggie Fox
News Daily
Tue, 20 May 2008 16:57 UTC
WASHINGTON - Astronomers have found some matter that had been missing in deep space and say it is strung along web-like filaments that form the backbone of the universe.

The ethereal strands of hydrogen and oxygen atoms could account for up to half the matter that scientists knew must be there but simply could not see, the researchers reported on Tuesday.

missing baryons
©REUTERS/NASA/ESA/A. Feild (STScI)/Handout
This illustration shows how the Hubble Space Telescope searches for missing baryons or normal matter, by looking at the light from quasars several billion light-years away. In an extensive search of the local universe, astronomers say they have definitively found about half of the missing normal matter, called baryons, in the spaces between the galaxies.

Scientists have long known there is far more matter in the universe than can be accounted for by visible galaxies and stars. Not only is there invisible baryonic matter -- the protons and neutrons that make up atoms -- but there also is an even larger amount of invisible "dark" matter.
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Star

Martian north pole consists of layers of dust and ice

John Johnson Jr.
Los Angeles Times
Tue, 20 May 2008 16:41 UTC
Mars' north pole, like a French parfait, comes in layers.

Scientists analyzing radar images from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft have found as many as seven distinct layers of ice and dust beneath the north pole.

Roger J. Phillips, a scientist with the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo., said the layering was probably caused by changes in the planet's orbit over the last 4 million years.

When the planet tilts strongly on its axis, the surface ice erodes and is covered by a layer of dust, Phillips said.

Image
©AP
This image provided by NASA is a small portion of an exposure taken in March 2008 by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Some high-latitude areas on Mars and Earth exhibit similarly patterned ground where shallow fracturing has drawn polygons on the surface. This patterning may result from cycles of freezing and thawing.
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Star

Cosmic dust helps in water formation on interstellar clouds


ANI
Mon, 19 May 2008 16:39 UTC
Scientists have come up with an answer to how water comes about in the interstellar clouds that give birth to stars, planets, and life, by suggesting that tiny grains of cosmic dust in the clouds help in the process.

According to a report in New Scientist, though water forms easily when hydrogen and oxygen exist as gases, models of interstellar clouds suggest that this route is unlikely to produce the abundance of water seen in them.

Most of the water that is seen has formed icy sheaths around tiny grains of dust in the clouds, and it is believed oxygen atoms accumulate on the grains and react with hydrogen to form water.
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Magnify

First Evidence Of Native Dendritic Cells In Brain Surprises Scientists


Science Daily
Tue, 20 May 2008 16:29 UTC
In a finding that has the potential to change the way researchers think about the brain, scientists at Rockefeller University have found dendritic cells where they've never been seen before: among this organ's neurons and connective cells. The immunity-directing dendritic cell had previously been seen in the human nervous system only after brain injury or disease. But the new study shows for the first time that the brain has its own, resident population of dendritic cells that may serve as a line of defense against pathogens that sneak past the blood-brain barrier.

dendritic cells
©Rockefeller University
Immunity inside. The brain's population of immunity-directing dendritic cells (green and yellow) can be seen here in the subventricular zone -- an area of postnatal neuron development.
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