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Finding 'Beautiful' Symmetry Near Absolute Zero


National Public Radio
Mon, 11 Jan 2010 19:04 UTC
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© John StembridgeA two-dimensional representation of E8 symmetry, the type of symmetry exhibited by particles in the study.
There's beauty in the world of condensed matter physics, if you know where to look.

Physicist Alan Tennant found it in the transitions between quantum states of cobalt ions cooled to temperatures near absolute zero and then subjected to high magnetic fields.

Huh?
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Star

Mystery Of The Dimming Star Coming To An End?


National Public Radio
Mon, 11 Jan 2010 18:59 UTC
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© NASA/JPL-CaltechAn artist's conception of Epsilon Aurigae and its dusty companion.
Epsilon Aurigae is one of the few stars that you can see with your own eyes, even in the washed out, big-city sky. It's big and very bright - except when it isn't. Sometimes, it's just not there.

Epsilon Aurigae is what's known as an eclipsing star. Every 27 years or so, it dims dramatically. In fact, you would have a hard time finding Epsilon Aurigae right now, because the star began dimming last August - and it won't be fully visible again for more than a year. That's one of the longest eclipses known to man.

Astronomers have been puzzling over these drawn-out eclipses ever since they were first recorded early in the 19th century. Now, using data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, they've come up with a model that sheds new light on this 200-year-old mystery.
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Frog

A Deadly Scorpion Provides a Safe Pesticide


Tel Aviv University
Mon, 11 Jan 2010 17:53 UTC
scorpion
TAU researcher uses scorpion venom to develop a safe and ecologically sound pest control method.

Scorpions deliver a powerful, paralyzing venom - a complex cocktail of poisonous peptides - that immobilize animal prey on the spot. Some of the toxins in this cocktail damage only insects, which is why a Tel Aviv University researcher is harnessing them to create a safe and ecologically sound pesticide.

Prof. Michael Gurevitz of Tel Aviv University's Department of Plant Sciences has isolated the genetic sequences for important neurotoxins in the scorpion venom. He's also developed methods to produce and manipulate toxins to restrict their toxicity in certain insects or mammals.
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Magnify

Scientist Finding Many Negative Impacts of Roundup Ready GM Crops

Ken Roseboro
The Organic & Non-GMO Report
Fri, 08 Jan 2010 14:41 UTC
USDA doesn't want to publicize studies showing negative impacts

Robert Kremer is a microbiologist with the US Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service and an adjunct professor in the Division of Plant Sciences at the University of Missouri. He is co-author of one of five papers published in the October 2009 issue of The European Journal of Agronomy that found negative impacts of Roundup herbicide, which is used extensively with Roundup Ready genetically modified crops. Kremer has been studying the impacts of glyphosate, the primary ingredient in Monsanto's Roundup herbicide, since 1997.

The Organic & Non-GMO Report interviewed Mr. Kremer about his research and the reluctance of the USDA to publicize the findings of the five papers.
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Meteor

Australia: Aboriginal folklore leads to meteorite crater

Aaron Cook
Cosmos
Thu, 07 Jan 2010 11:24 UTC
Australian meteorite impact crater
© Google MapsResearchers are using Aboriginal dreaming stories and Google Maps to find new meteorite impact craters.
An Australian Aboriginal 'Dreaming' story has helped experts uncover a meteorite impact crater in the outback of the Northern Territory.

Duane Hamacher, an astrophysicist studying Aboriginal astronomy at Sydney's Macquarie University, used Google Maps to search for the signs of impact craters in areas related to Aboriginal stories of stars or stones falling from the sky.

One story, from the folklore of the Arrernte people, is about a star falling to Earth at a site called Puka. This led to a search on Google Maps of Palm Valley, about 130 km southwest of Alice Springs. Here Hamacher discovered what looked like a crater, which he confirmed with surveys in the field in September 2009.

Cosmic impact

The crater is 280 m in diameter and about 30 m deep. Magnetic and gravitational data collected from the site show the crater is bowl-shaped below the surface and was likely caused by a meteorite a few metres in diameter.

"There is no other way to explain this than as a cosmic impact," said Hamacher. "It couldn't have been erosion and there is no volcanic activity in the area."
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Magnify

Brain Activity Levels Affect Self-Perception: 'Rose-Colored Glasses' Correlate With Less Frontal Lobe Use


ScienceDaily
Mon, 11 Jan 2010 00:00 UTC
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© iStockphoto/Trista WeibellThe less you use your brain's frontal lobes, the more you see yourself through rose-colored glasses.
The less you use your brain's frontal lobes, the more you see yourself through rose-colored glasses, a University of Texas at Austin researcher says.

Those findings are being published in the February edition of the journal NeuroImage.

"In healthy people, the more you activate a portion of your frontal lobes, the more accurate your view of yourself is," says Jennifer Beer, an assistant professor of psychology, who conducted the research with graduate student Brent L. Hughes. "And the more you view yourself as desirable or better than your peers, the less you use those lobes."

The natural human tendency to see oneself in a positive light can be helpful and motivating in some situations but detrimental in others, Beer says.
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Blackbox

Why Won't the Supernova Explode?

Patrick Barry
SPX / Space Daily
Sun, 10 Jan 2010 19:56 UTC
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© Fiona Harrison/CaltechA supercomputer model of a rapidly-spinning, core-collapse supernova. NuSTAR observations of actual supernova remnants will provide vital data for such models and help explain how massive supernovas manage to explode.
A massive old star is about to die a spectacular death. As its nuclear fuel runs out, it begins to collapse under its own tremendous weight. The crushing pressure inside the star skyrockets, triggering new nuclear reactions, setting the stage for a terrifying blast. And then... nothing happens.

At least that's what supercomputers have been telling astrophysicists for decades. Many of the best computer models of supernova explosions fail to produce an explosion. Instead, according to the simulations, gravity wins the day and the star simply collapses. Clearly, physicists are missing something.

"We don't really understand how supernovas of massive stars work yet," says Fiona Harrison, an astrophysicist at the California Institute of Technology. The death of relatively small stars is better understood, but for larger stars - those with more than about 9 times the mass of our sun - the physics just doesn't add up.
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Info

Bering Strait influenced ice age climate patterns worldwide

David Hosansky
National Center for Atmospheric Research/University Corporation for Atmospheric Research
Sun, 10 Jan 2010 16:43 UTC
Boulder -- In a vivid example of how a small geographic feature can have far-reaching impacts on climate, new research shows that water levels in the Bering Strait helped drive global climate patterns during ice age episodes dating back more than 100,000 years.

The international study, led by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), found that the repeated opening and closing of the narrow strait due to fluctuating sea levels affected currents that transported heat and salinity in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. As a result, summer temperatures in parts of North America and Greenland oscillated between warmer and colder phases, causing ice sheets to alternate between expansion and retreat and affecting sea levels worldwide.

While the findings do not directly bear on current global warming, they highlight the complexity of Earth's climate system and the fact that seemingly insignificant changes can lead to dramatic tipping points for climate patterns, especially in and around the Arctic.
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Fossil footprints give land vertebrates a much longer history

Per Ahlberg
Uppsala University
Sun, 10 Jan 2010 16:38 UTC
The discovery of fossil footprints from early backboned land animals in Poland leads to the sensational conclusion that our ancestors left the water at least 18 million years earlier than previously thought. The results of the Polish-Swedish collaboration are published online this week in Nature.

- These results force us to reconsider our whole picture of the transition from fish to land animals, says Per Ahlberg of Uppsala University, one of the two leaders of the study.
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Pharoah

Egypt tombs suggest pyramids not built by slaves

Marwa Awad
Reuters
Sun, 10 Jan 2010 16:32 UTC
Cairo - New tombs found in Giza support the view that the Great Pyramids were built by free workers and not slaves, as widely believed, Egypt's chief archaeologist said on Sunday.

Films and media have long depicted slaves toiling away in the desert to build the mammoth pyramids only to meet a miserable death at the end of their efforts.

"These tombs were built beside the king's pyramid, which indicates that these people were not by any means slaves," Zahi Hawass, the chief archaeologist heading the Egyptian excavation team, said in a statement.
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