Science & TechnologyS


Magic Wand

Scientists seek ancient cosmic 'strings'


UPI
Wed, 13 Oct 2010 04:25 UTC
U.S. scientists say they may have evidence of the strangest structures believed to exist in the universe: ancient cosmic strings from the time of the Big Bang.

First predicted by astrophysicists in the 1970s, cosmic strings are believed to be enormous cosmic fault lines that formed billions of years ago just moments after the Big Bang when the universe was still an amorphous mass of hot matter, Inside Science New Service reported.

As different regions of the expanding universe cooled in different ways and at different rates, defects formed between the regions, like cracks in the ice on a frozen pond. These defects, scientists believe, were the cosmic strings.
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Cow Skull

Record long-distance dinosaur flights?


UPI
Tue, 12 Oct 2010 01:43 UTC
Image
© Heinrich Harder
Ancient flying dinosaurs may have been able to fly for 10,000 miles non-stop on wings stretching up to 30 feet, a U.S. scientist says.

The fliers belonged to four species some researchers call supergiant pterosaurs, flying reptiles such as Quetzalcoatlus northropi from Texas, ScienceNews.org reported.

First appearing 70 million years ago, they were about as tall as a modern giraffe and flew on membrane wings.
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War Whore

'HULC™' robot exoskeleton war-walker suit 'at gen 2.0'

Lewis Page
The Register
Thu, 28 Oct 2010 01:55 UTC
Luxury padded interior offers 'comfort and support'

American developers say they have produced a "next-generation" version of the well-known Human Universal Load Carrier (HULC™) robotic exoskeleton suit for the US Army. The machine is now to be tested in laboratories for resistance to "sand, wind, rain, temperature and humidity".

HULC
© The RegisterHalf a league, half a league, half a league onward to the next charging station
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Bulb

Boffins mount campaign against France's official kilogramme

Lewis Page
The Register
Thu, 28 Oct 2010 01:52 UTC
'Eet cannot be changing. Eet weighs exactly 1 kg - sacré vache'

International boffins are mounting a determined diplomatic push to end the practice of measuring mass by reference to a 130-year-old metal cylinder kept in France, saying that the French ingot is no longer up to the job.

The Consultative Committee for Units, whose chairman is Blighty's Professor I M Mills FRS, and which counts among its members the UK National Physical Laboratory and the US National Institute for Standards and Technology, has recommended that the Système International d'Unités (SI Units system) move to define the unit of mass - the kilogramme - more accurately.
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Better Earth

Alien Earthlike worlds 'like grains of sand', say 'wobble' boffins

Lewis Page
The Register
Fri, 29 Oct 2010 01:40 UTC
Five year NASA skyscan reveals planet cornucopia

In a boon for those anticipating future discovery of alien life and/or human colonisation of other worlds, NASA boffins say that their latest analysis indicates that almost one in four stars may be orbited by planets as small as Earth.

"We studied planets of many masses - like counting boulders, rocks and pebbles in a canyon - and found more rocks than boulders, and more pebbles than rocks. Our ground-based technology can't see the grains of sand, the Earth-size planets, but we can estimate their numbers," says Andrew Howard, boss scientist of the team conducting the study.

The result?
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Roses

Plants initiated evolutionary drama of Earth's oxygenation

Casa Paradiso Hyderabad
ANI
Sat, 09 Oct 2010 14:49 UTC
Image
© iStockphoto
An international team of scientists has taken a major step toward unlocking the secrets of oxygenation of the Earth's oceans and atmosphere.

The new research indicated that the appearance of large predatory fish as well as vascular plants approximately 400 million years ago coincided with an increase in oxygen, to levels comparable to those we experience today.

If so, then animals from before that time appeared and evolved under markedly lower oxygen conditions than previously thought.

The method can be used to estimate global oxygen levels in ancient oceans from the chemical composition of ancient seafloor sediments.
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Bad Guys

Can dreams be manipulated? And should they be?

Andrew Grimes
Manchester Media News
Fri, 29 Oct 2010 14:39 UTC
When people today say "I have a dream" they are not necessarily expressing an ambition to change the world for the better, as Martin Luther King did. They sometimes want to sell it - or at least to offer it - to a sleep laboratory. The important thing is it should be worth probing for neurological analysis.

It should be the kind of dream that most of us have now and then - a sequence of images and sensations that are jumbled, episodic, unlinked, possibly on the crazy side. At its grotesquely pictorial best, the ideal dream is depicted in Inception, the new blockbuster movie in which Leonardo DiCaprio and Ellen Page can bend streets, walk up walls, and obliterate a cafe by the force of thought. The actors are able to manipulate the scenario to their will. They know they are dreaming. They can, and do, change the dream's scenario.

Can ordinary folk do that? The departments of cognitive science at several western universities believe many of us can. At Swansea, for instance, Professor Mark Blagrove runs a sleep laboratory. He is an expert in lucid dreams, that is to say, dreams over which the slumberer has more or less complete control. Always, that sort of dreamer is aware that he is safely in bed experiencing a cinema of the mind. He can re-arrange the content.
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Meteor

Crash Scene in the Asteroid Belt

Kelly Beatty
Sky & Telescope
Fri, 29 Oct 2010 07:03 UTC
Image
© NASA / ESA / D. Jewitt (UCLA)At first astronomers though the object designated P/2010 A2 was a comet, but this Hubble Space Telescope image, taken January 29, 2010, with the Wide Field Camera 3, suggests that it wasn't behaving like a normal comet.
Planetary scientists have known for decades that there's no neat division between comets and asteroids. Some objects look rocky and inert when discovered, only to develop big, obvious gas-and-dust emissions later on (2060 Chiron comes to mind). Then again, occasionally a fuzzy, cometlike object ends up being a lifeless dud (such as "Comet" Wilson-Harrington).

Still, planetary astronomers acknowledge the existence of a handful of legitimate comets in the asteroid belt, and initially it appeared that the count had risen to five when the LINEAR survey spotted something with a tail last January 6th. Within hours it earned the designation P/2010 A2, indicating its stature as a periodic comet.
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Laptop

Chinese Supercomputer Claims World Speed Record

Stuart Fox
TechNewsDaily
Fri, 29 Oct 2010 06:48 UTC
Image
© Xinhua Operators check China's fastest super computer "Tianhe" meaning Milky way in Changsha on Oct. 29
While most Americans still associate China with cheap, knockoff electronics, the Middle Kingdom's indigenous computer industry has advanced so far that they now host the world's fastest supercomputer. The Tianhe-1A is 1.4-times faster than the previous record holder, and is the first computer to claim the speed title that wasn't built in the USA, USSR or Japan.
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Book

Need a Study Break to Refresh? Maybe Not

Adam Gorlick
Stanford University News
Thu, 14 Oct 2010 05:06 UTC
Image
© UnknownThe Stanford researchers' study suggests that the need to take a break to clear your mind is all in your head.
The researchers' findings challenge the long-held theory that willpower is a limited resource that needs to be replenished.

It could happen to students cramming for exams, people working long hours or just about anyone burning the candle at both ends: Something tells you to take a break. Watch some TV. Have a candy bar. Goof off, tune out for a bit and come back to the task at hand when you're feeling better. After all, you're physically exhausted.

But a new study from Stanford psychologists suggests the urge to refresh (or just procrastinate) is - well - all in your head.

In a paper published this week in Psychological Science, the researchers challenge a long-held theory that willpower - defined as the ability to resist temptation and stay focused on a demanding task - is a limited resource. Scientists have argued that when willpower is drained, the only way to restore it is by recharging our bodies with rest, food or some other physical distraction that takes you away from whatever is burning you out.

Not so, says the Stanford team. Instead, they've found that a person's mindset and personal beliefs about willpower determine how long and how well they'll be able to work on a tough mental exercise.
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