Science & Technology

Russia Announces Space Hotel For 2016

redOrbit
Wed, 17 Aug 2011 12:20 UTC

A Russian company has announced plans to build a hotel in space in 2016.

According to the plans, the hotel would orbit 217 miles above ground and will have room for seven guests in four cabins, each with views of the Earth below.

The Commercial Space Station will reportedly be more comfortable than the International Space Station (ISS).

The tourists will arrive at the hotel by riding aboard a Soyuz rocket and stay for two days.

The guests will eat food prepared on Earth that can be reheated in a microwave, according to a report by the Daily Mail.

Astronauts from the ISS could also use the hotel as an emergency get away.

A five-day stay at the hotel will cost about $1,000,000 after adding the cost for transportation as well.

Sergei Kostenko, head of Orbital Technologies, the company building the hotel, said: "The hotel will be aimed at wealthy individuals and people working for private companies who want to do research in space."

Bid to Rename Homo Sapiens Is Called Unwise

Wynne Parry
Live Science
Wed, 17 Aug 2011 13:00 UTC

© Dannyphoto80 | Dreamstime
Humans received the species name, Homo sapiens, meaning "wise man," in 1758. But given our short-sighted behavior, that name needs to be changed, one writer proposes.

For about 250 years, our species has been known as Homo sapiens, a scientific name in Latin that means "wise man."

Given the havoc humans are wreaking on natural systems, putting ourselves and so many other living things in peril, we don't deserve this name, contends Julian Cribb, an Australian science writer and book author. In a letter published in the Aug. 18 issue of the journal Nature, Cribb makes a proposal.

"Changing our species name might risk infringing some of the hallowed rules of nomenclature, but it would send an important signal about our present collective behavior," he writes.

Cribb has no suggestion for a new name, "because I want humanity at large to discuss this issue - not just scientists," he said in an email to LiveScience.com.

Meanwhile, some scientists have a name for Cribb's suggestion. They call it silly.

"It's not a matter of changing names, it is a matter of changing actions," said Ken Caldeira, a climate scientist with the Carnegie Institution of Washington.

Is Evolution Predictable?

Elizabeth Pennisi
Science Now
Wed, 17 Aug 2011 12:01 UTC

If one could rewind the history of life, would the same species appear with the same sets of traits? Many biologists have argued that evolution depends on too many chance events to be repeatable. But a new study investigating evolution in three groups of microscopic worms, including the strain that survived the 2003 Columbia space shuttle crash, indicates otherwise. When raised in a lab under crowded conditions, all three underwent the same shift in their development by losing basically the same gene. The work suggests that, to some degree, evolution is predictable.

More than 50 years ago, researchers studying basic cell biology began raising a tiny soil worm, the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. A young worm takes one of two life paths: Either it matures in 3 days, reproduces, and dies within 2 weeks, or it goes into a state of suspended animation, remaining what's called a dauer larva. Dauer larvae don't eat, and they can survive stressful environmental conditions for months before turning into adults. Typically, too little food, the wrong temperature, or crowded conditions prompt young worms to become dauer larvae.

The animals know their numbers are too high because they can sense odor chemicals called pheromones emitted by their peers. When there's too much pheromone, they choose the dauer route.

SETI Project Back On Track

Mark Dunphy
Irish Weather Online
Wed, 17 Aug 2011 12:01 UTC

The SETI (the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute says it has received over $200,000 in donations from thousands of people around the world, and now hopes to resume observations in mid-September.

The Allen Telescope Array (ATA), which detects electromagnetic transmission from outer space, went offline in April this year following SETI'S funding announcement. The United States government contributed to early SETI projects, but recent work has been primarily funded by private sources.

Drifting Antarctic Dunes Sign of Changing Climate

Charles Q. Choi
OurAmazingPlanet
Wed, 17 Aug 2011 09:27 UTC

The greatest desert on Earth is not blazing hot but freezing cold: the icy wastes of Antarctica.

Now scientists find the speed at which sand dunes drift across the ground of this frigid desert has tripled in the past 40 years - a finding that could shed light on everything from the planet's warming climate to deserts on Mars.

Antarctica is not just the coldest of Earth's continents, but the driest and windiest. The scant areas that are free of snow and ice make up less than 0.4 percent of the continental land mass. In places there, the wind has built sand dunes.

The most extensive dune field is found in Victoria Valley, one of the McMurdo Dry Valleys, and it holds Antarctica's largest dune, 230 feet (70 meters) high and more than 650 feet (200 m) wide.

Mystery of giant arrow-shaped cloud on Titan solved as scientists claim it is massive atmospheric weather wave

DailyMail.co.uk
Wed, 17 Aug 2011 09:33 UTC

The baffling mystery of a vast arrow-shaped cloud on Titan looks to have been solved after scientists attributed the phenomenon to giant atmospheric weather waves.

The 'arrow' is bigger than the U.S state of Texas - around 930 miles long - and was was detected on the Saturn moon by Nasa's Cassini spacecraft in September 2010.

The discovery of its origins on Titan, described by researchers as Earth's 'strange sibling', could now be used to better understand weather systems on our own planet, particularly in relation to climate change.

© NASA/JPL/SSI
Methane rain: The huge white arrow-shaped cloud on the left of this image of Titan is thought to be caused by atmospheric pressure surges, say scientists

Brain Changes in Stutterers Involve More Than Speech

Wynne Parry
Live Science
Tue, 16 Aug 2011 17:00 UTC

© Bedlam Productions
King George VI suffered throughout life with a stuttering condition, which researchers are finding involves a brain rewiring that affects more than speech. This image is from The King's Speech, a movie about the king.

The brains of people who have stuttered since childhood show evidence of rewiring, with the right side taking on tasks generally handled by the left. A new study, in which participants tapped their fingers in time with sounds, shows that this rewiring extends beyond speech.

Research so far indicates that stutterers have problems linking what they hear with what they say, according to Martin Sommer, a study researcher with the Institute of Clinical Neuroscience and Medical Psychology at Heinrich Heine University in Germany. He compared stuttering speech to music from a disorganized orchestra.

"The question is not single elements themselves, not the instruments. They all know their parts. The question is how to activate them in a coordinated and well-timed fashion," Sommer said.

The musicians know when it's time to begin playing their instruments based on what they hear around them. So they fine-tune their actions in response to sound. Likewise, the part of the brain that controls the movement that creates speech must fine-tune its instructions based on what the person hears, including his or her own voice.

Earth Isn't Expanding, Scientists Say

OurAmazingPlanet
Tue, 16 Aug 2011 15:02 UTC

© NASA / JPL
Verdict: A planet without a secret weight problem. View of Earth from NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer aboard the Terra satellite.

At long last, scientists have laid to rest the vicious rumors that Earth is getting fatter.

Since Darwin's time, scientists have speculated the planet might be expanding or contracting. Even with the acceptance of plate tectonics half a century ago, which explained the large-scale motions of Earth's outermost shell, the accusations persisted; some Earth and space scientists continued to speculate on Earth's possible expansion or contraction on various scientific grounds.

Now, those speculations and rumors have been put to rest.

"Our study provides an independent confirmation that the solid Earth is not getting larger at present, within current measurement uncertainties," said Xiaoping Wu of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Using a cadre of space measurement tools and a new data calculation technique, a team of NASA scientists detected no statistically significant expansion of the solid Earth.

However, they did estimate the planet's radius changes, on average, by about 0.004 inches (0.1 millimeters) per year, or about the thickness of a human hair - a rate considered statistically insignificant.

Researchers Unravel the Magic of Flocks of Starlings

Science Daily
Tue, 16 Aug 2011 14:44 UTC

Do fish swimming in schools or birds flying in flocks have a collective spirit that enables them to move as one? Are they animals with highly developed cognition, a complex instinct or a telepathic gift? A recent study conducted by the research group led by Prof. Charlotte Hemelrijk of the University of Groningen points in another direction. Mathematical models of self-organization show that complicated collective behaviour can be the consequence of a few simple behavioural rules.

In an article in the online journal PLoS ONE, Hemelrijk and scientific programmer Hanno Hildenbrandt use the StarDisplay computer model to describe the causes of the miraculous variety of shapes in flocks of starlings.

Schools of fish

Previously, Hemelrijk and her collaborators used a comparable computer model to investigate schools of fish. Observations in nature showed that these are always elongated. "Our models showed that the elongated shape of schools of fish were the automatic result of self-organization," Hemelrijk says. In addition to the usual grouping and coordination, no extra rules are needed to achieve this. A fish swimming behind another one will slow down to avoid bumping into the one ahead of it and its former neighbours then move inwards to fill the gap that has opened up. This results in an elongated school.

Simple Surface Belies Complicated Nature of California Fault

OurAmazingPlanet
Tue, 16 Aug 2011 12:53 UTC

© Caltech Tectonics Observatory
This 3-D view of the surface rupture of the April 4, 2010, El Mayor-Cucapah earthquake (red line) reveals a new fault line connecting the Gulf of California with the Elsinore fault.

Fault lines that run across the Earth are usually more complicated at the Earth's surface than they are deeper down. But a new study of an April 2010 earthquake in Mexico reveals a reversal of this trend: While the fault involved in the event appeared to be superficially straight, the fault zone is warped and complicated at depth.

The El Mayor - Cucapah earthquake happened along a system of faults that run from Southern California into Mexico and form part of the boundary between the Pacific plate and the North American plate.

In a standard model, such faults - where two plates slide past one another - tend to be vertically oriented. However, it turns out that despite the somewhat straight line left on the Earth's surface, the portion of the fault that ruptured in the April quake is jagged and angled at depth.

"It was really surprising to see a straight fault trace that cuts through the Colorado delta and the rugged topography of the Sierra Cucapah as a result of this event," said Jean-Philippe Avouac, director of California Institute of Technology's Tectonics Observatory, in a statement.

Avouac was principal investigator on the study, which is published online in the journal Nature Geoscience.

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Science & Technology

Russia Announces Space Hotel For 2016

Bid to Rename Homo Sapiens Is Called Unwise

Is Evolution Predictable?

SETI Project Back On Track

Drifting Antarctic Dunes Sign of Changing Climate

Mystery of giant arrow-shaped cloud on Titan solved as scientists claim it is massive atmospheric weather wave

Brain Changes in Stutterers Involve More Than Speech

Earth Isn't Expanding, Scientists Say

Researchers Unravel the Magic of Flocks of Starlings

Simple Surface Belies Complicated Nature of California Fault

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