Science & TechnologyS


Key

Can 'excited delirium' get cops off the hook?

Aria Pearson
New Scientist
Sun, 09 Aug 2009 16:04 UTC
Image
© John Chapple/Rex FeaturesHandle with care
The stories are always similar: a crack addict is running through the streets, semi-naked and delirious, aggressively challenging anyone that gets in his way. It takes a dozen police officers to subdue and restrain him, at which point he collapses and dies.

Rare as these deaths are, more often than not police brutality is blamed and officers are taken to court, but researchers now think that such events are the result of a rare disorder called "excited delirium".

Anecdotally, physicians use the term to describe a state in which a person becomes agitated and combative, with superhuman strength and skyrocketing body temperature. However, the American Medical Association does not recognise the disorder, which has led to claims that it does not exist and is merely an excuse used by police.
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Telescope

Fast-spinning black holes might reveal all

Marcus Chown
New Scientist
Sun, 09 Aug 2009 15:44 UTC
Image
It is the ultimate cosmic villain: space and time come to an abrupt end in its presence and the laws of physics break down. Now it seems a "naked" black hole may yet emerge in our universe, after spinning away its event horizon.

In 1969, physicist Roger Penrose postulated that every singularity, or black hole, must be shrouded by an event horizon from which nothing, including light, can escape. His cosmic censorship conjecture has it that singularities are always hidden.

If the conjecture doesn't hold, it would be bad news for cosmologists. If even one location in the universe cannot be described by the laws of physics, the future of the universe - as predicted by those laws - is cast into doubt. Our description of photons, for instance, may be undermined because those photons may have interacted with a naked singularity while zipping across the universe.
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Evil Rays

Radio Perseids


Space Weather
Sun, 09 Aug 2009 01:05 UTC
Awash in moonlight, the Perseid meteor shower is at present not very easy to see. Some observers have given up on looking, choosing instead to monitor the shower by means of radio. This plot from Dave Swan shows how he is counting more than 300 Perseid radio echoes per hour using a Yagi antenna and 55.25 MHz receiver in Bransgore, UK:

Image
© Dave Swan
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Meteor

Jupiter Impact Cloud Has Split Into Three Clouds


Space Weather
Sun, 09 Aug 2009 00:52 UTC
Debris from the July 19th mystery-impact on Jupiter has split into three clouds. The trifurcation is evident in this August 7th image taken by Rick Schrantz using a 10-inch telescope at his backyard observatory in Nicholasville, Kentucky:
Image
© Rick Schrantz

Other observers have noticed the same thing. "There appear to be 3 distinct impact scars now, somewhat linear in shape and perhaps larger than previous days," reports Joel Warren of Amarillo, Texas. He took these pictures using an 8-inch telescope.
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Meteor

Perseid Meteor Shower Might Dazzle

Joe Rao
SPACE.com
Sun, 09 Aug 2009 00:27 UTC
Image
© Unknown
For Northern Hemisphere observers, August is usually regarded as "meteor month," with one of the best displays of the year reaching its peak near midmonth.

That display is, of course, the annual Perseid Meteor Shower, beloved by everyone from meteor enthusiasts to summer campers. This year is expected to produce an above average number of "shooting stars" that could offer a rewarding experience to skywatchers around the globe.

There's just one problem: A bright moon will drown out fainter meteors.

The moon will be at last quarter the night of Aug. 13 and it will be at a rather bright waning gibbous phase a night or two earlier, seriously hampering observation of the peak of the Perseids, predicted to occur late on the nights of Aug. 11 and 12.

Moonrise on Aug. 11 comes at around 10:20 p.m., while on Aug. 12 it's around 10:50 p.m. The moon will be hovering below and to the left of the Great Square of Pegasus these nights and not all that far from the constellation Perseus, from where the meteors will appear to emanate (hence the name "Perseid").

Perseus, does not begin to climb high up into the northeast sky until around midnight; by dawn it's nearly overhead. But bright moonlight will flood the sky through most of those two key nights and will certainly play havoc with any serious attempts to observe these meteors.
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Telescope

Starry Cocoons and Double Moons: The Week In Space


New Scientist
Sat, 08 Aug 2009 18:44 UTC
Image
© NASA/JPL-Caltech
Despite warming 27 °C to a balmy 30 °C above absolute zero, the nearly six-year-old Spitzer Space Telescope can still take dazzling freeze-frames.

This image of a cloudy star-forming region near the constellation Cygnus is the telescope's first snapshot since it ran out of coolant in May. Two infrared detectors still work at the new temperature, while two other instruments are now too warm to function.

Though Spitzer's primary mission ended with the thaw, it will continue to observe objects from asteroids to galaxies in its "warm" mission, which began on 27 July.
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No Entry

Do Seed Companies Control GM Crop Research?

The Editors
Scientific American
Fri, 07 Aug 2009 18:46 UTC
Scientists must ask corporations for permission before publishing independent research on genetically modified crops. That restriction must end

Advances in agricultural technology - including, but not limited to, the genetic modification of food crops - have made fields more productive than ever. Farmers grow more crops and feed more people using less land. They are able to use fewer pesticides and to reduce the amount of tilling that leads to erosion. And within the next two years, agritech com­panies plan to introduce advanced crops that are designed to survive heat waves and droughts, resilient characteristics that will become increasingly important in a world marked by a changing climate.

Unfortunately, it is impossible to verify that genetically modified crops perform as advertised. That is because agritech companies have given themselves veto power over the work of independent researchers.
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Magnify

Squirrel Psychology: How Squirrels Learn From Others How To Steal Food


ScienceDaily
Fri, 07 Aug 2009 08:08 UTC
Grey squirrel
© iStockphoto/James FiglarGrey squirrel watching.
The ability of gray squirrels to learn from observing others is highlighted in a new study. The research shows how squirrels can quickly learn from watching their peers, particularly if it relates to stealing food. The research adds to growing evidence that animals are primed to learn quickly about what is most important to their survival and that they learn by observing others. It is the first study to test the ability of gray squirrels to learn from observation.

The research team tested the squirrels' ability to learn to choose between two pots of food after watching another squirrel remove a nut from one of the pots. One group was rewarded for choosing the same pot as the previous squirrel, the second group was rewarded for targeting the other pot.

Those that were rewarded for choosing food from the other pot learned more quickly than those that were rewarded for choosing the same pot. This suggests that grey squirrels learn more quickly to recognize the absence of food.
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Satellite

Saturnian Moon shows evidence of Ammonia


NASA
Wed, 22 Jul 2009 06:29 UTC
Enceladus
© NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute Saturn's moon Enceladus, seen by the Cassini spacecraft.
Data collected during two close flybys of Saturn's moon Enceladus by NASA's Cassini spacecraft add more fuel to the fire about the Saturnian ice world containing sub-surface liquid water. The data collected by Cassini's Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer during Enceladus flybys in July and Oct. 2008, were released in the July 23 issue of the journal Nature.

"When Cassini flew through the plume erupting from Enceladus on October 8 of last year, our spectrometer was able to sniff out many complex chemicals, including organic ones, in the vapor and icy particles," said Hunter Waite, the Cassini Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer Lead Scientist from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas. "One of the chemicals definitively identified was ammonia."
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Meteor

Mars Rover takes picture from Meteorite


nasa.gov
Fri, 07 Aug 2009 06:20 UTC
'Block Island' Meteorite on Mars
© NASA'Block Island' Meteorite on Mars. Left-eye view of stereo pair
Composition measurements by NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity confirm that this rock on the Martian surface is an iron-nickel meteorite.

This image combines exposures from the left eye and right eye of the rover's panoramic camera to provide a three-dimensional view when seen through red-green glasses with the red lens on the left. The camera took the component images during the 1,961st Martian day, or sol, of Opportunity's mission on Mars (July 31), after approaching close enough to touch the rock with tools on the rover's robotic arm.
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