Science & TechnologyS


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DNA Evidence Can Be Fabricated, Scientists Show

Andrew Pollack
New York Times
Tue, 18 Aug 2009 18:48 UTC
Scientists in Israel have demonstrated that it is possible to fabricate DNA evidence, undermining the credibility of what has been considered the gold standard of proof in criminal cases.

The scientists fabricated blood and saliva samples containing DNA from a person other than the donor of the blood and saliva. They also showed that if they had access to a DNA profile in a database, they could construct a sample of DNA to match that profile without obtaining any tissue from that person.
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Chalkboard

1 in 7 Scientists say: Colleagues fake "Scientific" Study Results

David Gutierrez
NaturalNews.com
Tue, 18 Aug 2009 07:42 UTC
One in seven scientists report that they have known colleagues to falsify or slant the findings of their research, according to a study conducted by researchers from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, and published in the journal PLoS One.

A number of scientific data falsification scandals have emerged in recent years, such as the case of a South Korean researcher who invented data on stem cell research. At the same time, increasing controversy over close industry ties to medical research has called into question whether researchers who take money from drug companies might be induced to falsify their data.
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Eye 2

Future Angst? Brain Scans Show Uncertainty Fuels Anxiety


ScienceDaily.com
Tue, 18 Aug 2009 07:23 UTC
Anyone who has spent a sleepless night anguishing over a possible job loss has experienced the central finding of a new brain scan study: Uncertainty makes a bad event feel even worse.

Jack Nitschke, a UW-Madison professor of psychiatry, has found that uncertainty intensifies a person's perception of a bad experience.

A new study by UW-Madison brain researcher Jack Nitschke shows that the emotional centers in the brain respond much more strongly to disturbing photos if the person didn't know what was coming.
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Telescope

Black hole parasites explain cosmic flashes

David Shiga
New Scientist
Tue, 18 Aug 2009 04:20 UTC
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© Dana Berry/SkyWorks DigitalCosmic explosions called gamma-ray bursts may be the result of black holes burrowing into stars and devouring them from the inside
Some of the brightest flashes in the universe may be the result of black holes burrowing into stars and devouring them from inside.

The flashes are known as gamma-ray bursts because most of their energy is in the form of high-energy radiation, including gamma rays and X-rays. The longer flashes, lasting at least a few seconds, have long been thought to signal the deaths of massive stars that have run out of fuel, causing them to collapse to form black holes, unleashing powerful jets of radiation in the process.

Now an alternative explanation has been given new lease of life: a black hole may instead be an external attacker that dives into the belly of a massive star and consumes it.
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Blackbox

Did asteroids flock together to build planets?

David Shiga
New Scientist
Tue, 18 Aug 2009 04:02 UTC
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© Rex FeaturesBuilding blocks of the solar system
Perhaps we should thank rapid-assembly asteroids for spawning the planets. New simulations suggest that dense swarms of boulders collapsed under their own gravity to make the building blocks of our solar system.

The planets are thought to have formed from a disc of dust and gas around the infant sun. The initial process is well known: dust grains clumped together, forming objects in the millimetre-to-metre range. However, it is not known how the growth process continued. The gas in the disc should have put a drag on the new boulders, causing them to spiral into the sun before they could grow further.

Evidence is now mounting that the next step was a sudden leap forward, skipping intermediate sizes to make asteroids hundreds of kilometres across - massive enough to resist gas drag.
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Ancient stone artwork discovered


British Broadcasting Corporation
Tue, 18 Aug 2009 01:21 UTC
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© BBCThe rock features about 90 cup marks, along with rings and linear grooves
Prehistoric artwork has been discovered by an amateur archaeologist at a Perthshire mountain range.

The ancient carvings were discovered by rock art enthusiast George Currie at Ben Lawers, near Loch Tay.

Mr Currie discovered a piece of rock which has more than 90 cup marks, which are circular depressions in the stone.
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16,000 year-old mother goddess figurine unearthed


The Anatolia News Agency
Tue, 18 Aug 2009 01:15 UTC
Archeologists unearthed 16,000 year-old mother goddess figurine during excavations in Direkli Cave in the southern province of Kahramanmaraş.

Gazi University Archeology Department lecturer Cevdet Merih Erek told the Anatolia news agency on Monday that the excavations in Direkli Cave, 65 km away from Kahramanmaras, started on July 15.
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Vanquishing infinity

James Riordon
American Physical Society
Tue, 18 Aug 2009 01:11 UTC
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© Adapted from Bern et al., Phys. Rev. D 76, 125020 (2007)]In the 1940s, Richard Feynman devised a graphical method for carrying out calculations. Bern et al. use different kinds of diagrams that permit large calculations. Owing to their resemblance to the work of artist Piet Mondrian, these graphical computational devices are sometimes referred to as Mondrian diagrams.
Quantum mechanics and Einstein's theory of general relativity are both extremely accurate theories of how the universe works, but all attempts to combine the two into a unified theory have ended in failure. When physicists try to calculate the properties of a quantum theory of gravity, they find quantities that become infinite -- infinities that are so bad they can't be removed by mathematical gambits that work in other areas of physics.
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Meteor

NASA Researchers Make First Discovery of Life's Building Block in Comet

Bill Steigerwald
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Tue, 18 Aug 2009 01:06 UTC
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© NASA/JPL This is an artist's concept of the Stardust spacecraft beginning its flight through gas and dust around comet Wild 2. The white area represents the comet. The collection grid is the tennis-racket-shaped object extending out from the back of the spacecraft.
NASA scientists have discovered glycine, a fundamental building block of life, in samples of comet Wild 2 returned by NASA's Stardust spacecraft.

"Glycine is an amino acid used by living organisms to make proteins, and this is the first time an amino acid has been found in a comet," said Dr. Jamie Elsila of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "Our discovery supports the theory that some of life's ingredients formed in space and were delivered to Earth long ago by meteorite and comet impacts."
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Magic Wand

New mathematic method for Active Cloaking developed


ScienceDaily
Mon, 17 Aug 2009 15:25 UTC
University of Utah mathematicians developed a new cloaking method, and it's unlikely to lead to invisibility cloaks like those used by Harry Potter or Romulan spaceships in "Star Trek." Instead, the new method someday might shield submarines from sonar, planes from radar, buildings from earthquakes, and oil rigs and coastal structures from tsunamis.

"We have shown that it is numerically possible to cloak objects of any shape that lie outside the cloaking devices, not just from single-frequency waves, but from actual pulses generated by a multi-frequency source," says Graeme Milton, senior author of the research and a distinguished professor of mathematics at the University of Utah.
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