Science & TechnologyS


Robot

Robot's Gentle Touch Aids Delicate Cancer Surgery


ScienceDaily
Sun, 23 Aug 2009 05:49 UTC
New, delicate surgery techniques to hunt for tumours could benefit from a lighter touch - but from a robot, rather than from a human hand. Canadian researchers have created a touchy-feely robot that detects tougher tumour tissue in half the time, and with 40% more accuracy than a human. The technique also minimises tissue damage.

Surgeons have developed new minimally invasive surgery (MIS) techniques and instruments so that procedures that would previously have required a large incision can now be performed through a tiny 10mm cut. These new methods reduce tissue damage and infection compared with more traditional surgery, and can reduce recovery times and costs.
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Sherlock

Earliest Scottish Human Carving Unearthed


The Irvine Herald
Fri, 21 Aug 2009 14:00 UTC
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© Historic ScotlandThe discovery of the carving is said to be of great importance
The earliest carving of a human ever found in Scotland has been revealed by archaeologists.The sandstone figurine was unearthed during an excavation on Orkney and is the only Neolithic carving of a human form to have been discovered in Scotland.

Measuring 3.5cm by 3cm, the face of the carving has heavy brows, two dots for eyes and an oblong for a nose. Other scratches on top of the skull could be hair.
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Telescope

Happy Birthday Chandra


New Scientist
Sat, 22 Aug 2009 21:13 UTC
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© UIUC/Y. Chu et al./NASA/HSTCat's Eye nebula
To celebrate the 10th anniversary of the orbital Chandra X-ray Observatory, NASA has released this composite image of the Cat's Eye nebula. It is made with images from Chandra and the Hubble Space Telescope, two of NASA's four Great Observatories.

Since it took its first image on 19 August 1999, Chandra has captured unprecedented X-ray pictures of exotic environments, helping astrophysicists understand the evolution of the cosmos.
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Telescope

Making Jupiters


PhysOrg
Fri, 21 Aug 2009 14:00 UTC
Jupiter
© NASA/JPL-CaltechA three-color infrared image of the IC 348 Nebula. Some of the stars in this young cluster could have Jupiter-sized planets orbiting them.
IC348 is a glowing nebula of young stars, hot gas, and cold dust seen in the direction of the constellation of Perseus. It is the nearest rich cluster of young stars to earth, being only about one thousand light-years away. Its proximity has made it an important laboratory for astronomers probing the early stages of stellar evolution and star formation. At an estimated age of only two to three million years, it is also a somewhat young cluster; IC348 did not shine in the night sky of the first hominids. For comparison, our sun is about 4.5 billion years old.

Most stars less than about a million years old are still surrounded by the disks of material from which they formed. These primordial disks contain gas and dust that is also the raw material for planets. As the star ages, planets and smaller bodies form out of some of that material; the rest is soon expelled, or accreted onto the star. After about 3-7 million years, the initial disks are gone.

But then a new kind of disk begins to develop as orbiting rocky bodies collide with each other to produce a dusty disk of debris that can be seen with infrared instruments.
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Sherlock

Minnesota: Bones Found During Excavation in Avon


The Associated Press
Fri, 21 Aug 2009 19:00 UTC
The state archaeologist will try to determine the age and origin of some human bones uncovered in Avon during the construction of a new credit union.

The bones were found about 5 p.m. Thursday and work was stopped. Avon Police Chief Corey Nellis says State Archaeologist Scott Anfinson has agreed to let work resume.

Stearns County Sheriff's Office Chief Deputy Bruce Bechtold says an archaeologist from St. Cloud State University told investigators the bones could be hundreds of years old. Sheriff John Sanner calls them "pre-European."
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Magnify

German Archaeologists Labor to Solve Mystery of the Nok

Matthias Schulz
Spiegel Online International
Sat, 22 Aug 2009 02:21 UTC
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© Bert Bostelmann The mysterious Nok culture lived in a large area of modern-day Nigeria around 2,500 years ago. Peter Breunig, an archaeologist from the University of Frankfurt am Main, is trying to unearth the secrets of their culture.
Some 2,500 years ago, a mysterious culture emerged in Nigeria. The Nok people left behind bizarre terracotta statues -- and little else. German archaeologists are now looking for more clues to explain this obscure culture.

Half a ton of pottery shards is piled on the tables in Peter Breunig's workroom on the sixth floor of the University of Frankfurt am Main. There are broken pots, other storage vessels, a clay lizard and fragments of clay faces with immense nostrils.

The chipped head of a statue depicts an African man with a moustache, a fixed glare and hair piled high up on his head. He looks gloomy, almost sinister. Just a few days ago, the ceramics traveled 8,000 kilometers (5,000 miles) by sea from Nigeria, where they were unearthed.
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Magnify

Face to face with the 5,000-year-old 'first Scot'

Frank Urquhart
News.Scottsman.com
Sat, 22 Aug 2009 02:14 UTC
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© UnknownArchaeologist Jakob Kainz shows off the remarkable figure unearthed on the island of Westray. Picture: Historic Scotland.
At first glance, it appears little more than a tiny fragment of sandstone with a few crude scratches on the surface.

Yet this precious object is one of the most exciting archaeological discoveries made in Scotland - the earliest representation of a human face and body ever found north of the Border.

The face and its lozenge-shaped body - measuring just 3.5cm by 3cm - were carved on the Orkney island of Westray between 4,500 and 5,000 years ago.

The enigmatic figurine had lain undisturbed in the earth at the Links of Noltland - one of Orkney's richest archaeological sites - until just last week.
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Telescope

Storm Brews Over Titan's Tropical Desert


Saturn Daily / SPX
Fri, 21 Aug 2009 18:46 UTC
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© Gemini Observatory/AURA/Henry Roe, Lowell Observatory/Emily Schaller, Insitute for Astronomy, University of Hawai'iGemini North adaptive optics image of Titan showing storm feature (bright area).
While far from a tropical rain forest, the equatorial region of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, has recently displayed tantalizing evidence that the parched, dry desert can support large-scale storms.

The research, published in the journal Nature, announces the discovery of significant cloud formation (about three million square kilometers) within the moon's tropical zone near its equator. Prior to this event (in April 2008) it was not known whether significant cloud formation was possible in Titan's tropical regions.

This activity in Titan's tropics and mid-latitudes also seems to have triggered subsequent cloud development at the moon's south pole where it was considered improbable due to the sun's seasonal angle relative to Titan.

The evidence comes from a team of US astronomers using the Gemini North telescope and NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF) both on Hawaii's Mauna Kea.
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Sherlock

Genetic Link Between Physical Pain And Social Rejection Found

Naomi Eisenberger & Shelley E. Taylor
Science Daily
Fri, 21 Aug 2009 13:20 UTC
UCLA psychologists have determined for the first time that a gene linked with physical pain sensitivity is associated with social pain sensitivity as well.

Their study indicates that variation in the mu-opioid receptor gene (OPRM1), often associated with physical pain, is related to how much social pain a person feels in response to social rejection. People with a rare form of the gene are more sensitive to rejection and experience more brain evidence of distress in response to rejection than those with the more common form.

The research was published Aug. 14 in the early online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and will appear in the print version in the coming weeks.
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Evil Rays

Gravitational wave detectors home in on their quarry

Ivan Semeniuk
New Scientist
Fri, 21 Aug 2009 17:13 UTC
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© Joe McNally/GettyThe hunt continues
For the first time, detectors on Earth have put a meaningful limit on the strength of gravitational waves - the ripples in space-time - created during the first instants of the universe's existence.

According to Einstein's general relativity, gravitational waves should have been emitted during inflation, when the universe expanded exponentially moments after the big bang. "[Gravitational waves] can tell us how the laws of physics operated at that time," says Vuk Mandic of the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. "This is very valuable because we cannot reproduce these high-energy conditions in the lab."

The latest measurement, made jointly by the US-based Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) and VIRGO, its European counterpart, was sensitive to gravitational waves at frequencies around 100 hertz. But they found nothing. The null result, however, puts an upper limit on the energy density of gravitational waves in the infant universe, the most convincing yet. The results improve upon the limits set by the theory of big bang nucleosynthesis, based on the observed abundances of light elements such as hydrogen and helium (Nature, DOI: link).
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