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Scientists create liquid lens on a chip


United Press International
Tue, 12 May 2009 01:26 UTC
State College, Pa. -- U.S. scientists say they've created tunable fluidic micro lenses that can focus light at will while remaining stationary and can be fabricated on a chip.

The Pennsylvania State University research engineers said such fluidic lenses can be used for many applications, such as counting cells, evaluating molecules or creating on-chip optical tweezers. The lenses might also provide imaging in medical devices, eliminating the necessity of moving the tip of a probe, they added.
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Culture Minister: 132 archaeological sites in Egypt not excavated


Egypt State Wide Information Service
Tue, 12 May 2009 01:14 UTC
Culture Minister Farouk Hosni said that the researches conducted via satellites have confirmed the existence of 132 archaeological sites in Egypt that witnessed no excavations until now.
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The king of Stonehenge?

Paul Harris
Mail Online
Tue, 12 May 2009 01:02 UTC
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An artist's impression of the 'King of Stonehange' who was buried at Bush Barrow 4,000 years ago
Were artefacts at ancient chief's burial site Britain's first Crown Jewels?

He was a giant of a man, a chieftain who ruled with a royal sceptre and a warrior's axe.

When they laid him to rest they dressed him in his finest regalia and placed his weapons at his side. Then they turned his face towards the setting sun and sealed him in a burial mound that would keep him safe for the next 4,000 years.
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Twitter: sucker's game that boosts elite

Seth Finkelstein
The Guardian
Fri, 08 May 2009 19:15 UTC
Let me start by confessing I do have a Twitter account. But I won't be fooled again. That is, I refuse to once more play the attention-seeking game, where everyone enriches the contest runner and surrounding marketers for the privilege of aspiring to be one of the very few big winners.

Twitter is a "real-time short messaging service". Users can subscribe to quickly updated text messages from an entity, though the messages are limited to a maximum of 140 characters. Think blogs, but faster and constrained to extremely short postings.

If someone subscribes to you, they're called a "follower", while subscribing to someone is called "following". The language is already revealing of the structure.

When I first heard of Twitter, I made the mistake of thinking it was like Internet Relay Chat (IRC), an old system that allows a group to exchange text messages among themselves. So I wondered why there was such a fuss over a variant of that ancient idea.

Comment: This is one of many recent negative articles on Twitter that correctly point out the concerns of this latest social networking tool.

Facebook, Twitter Used For US Military Recruiting
Swine flu: Twitter 's power to misinform
Facebook and Twitter 'fuel an epidemic of online bullying'

There are positives of course, such as the presence of the best alternative news source on the web.

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The Asteroids Are Coming


Space Daily
Mon, 04 May 2009 01:51 UTC
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© UnknownScientists have demonstrated that several large NEO impacts in the past have altered both life and the environment.
This isn't just "buzz" to get you excited about a new movie coming; we really are being buzzed by asteroids and other NEOs (Near Earth Objects), and one day these conjunctions could become collisions! There are lots of NEOs out there orbiting the sun.

Some, like comets, are less worrisome since they are composed primarily of ice and small, rocky particles that dissipate upon entering Earth's atmosphere. Others, however, like asteroids are thought of as minor planets that are large enough to damage Earth and its environment if an encounter should take place.


Comment: It is quite likely that comets are as threatening to Earth as asteroids. Read Tunguska, Psychopathy and the Sixth Extinction, The Hazard to Civilization from Fireballs and Comets or Meteorites, Asteroids, and Comets: Damages, Disasters, Injuries, Deaths, and Very Close Calls for more in-depth reading.

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'Star Trek' Warp Speed? Physicists Have New Idea That Could Make It So


Science Daily
Sun, 10 May 2009 21:33 UTC
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© iStockphoto/Heidi KristensenCould traveling at warp speed to distant star systems ever become a reality?
With the new movie 'Star Trek' opening in theaters across the nation, one thing movie goers will undoubtedly see is the Starship Enterprise racing across the galaxy at the speed of light. But can traveling at warp speed ever become a reality?

Two Baylor University physicists believe they have an idea that can turn traveling at the speed of light from science fiction to science, and their idea does not break any laws of physics.

Dr. Gerald Cleaver, associate professor of physics at Baylor, and Dr. Richard Obousy, a Baylor post-doctoral student, theorize that by manipulating the space-time dimensions around the spaceship with a massive amount of energy, it would create a "bubble" that could push the ship faster than the speed of light. To create this bubble, the Baylor physicists believe manipulating the 11-dimension would create dark energy. Cleaver said positive dark energy is responsible for speeding up the universe as time moves on, just like it did after the Big Bang, when the universe expanded faster than the speed of light.
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New Robot With Artificial Skin To Improve Human Communication


ScienceDaily
Sun, 10 May 2009 04:07 UTC
robot with skin
Kaspar. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of Hertfordshire)

Work is beginning on a robot with artificial skin which is being developed as part of a project involving researchers at the University of Hertfordshire so that it can be used in their work investigating how robots can help children with autism to learn about social interaction.

Professor Kerstin Dautenhahn and her team at the University's School of Computer Science are part of a European consortium, which is working on the three-year Roboskin project to develop a robot with skin and embedded tactile sensors.

According to the researchers, this is the first time that this approach has been used in work with children with autism.
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200,000 year old human hair found in dung

Richard Gray
Telegraph
Sun, 10 May 2009 01:56 UTC
Strands of hair from a human who lived 200,000 years ago have been found preserved inside fossilised hyena dung from South Africa.

Palaeontologists found 40 strands of fossilised hair inside samples of coprolite, or fossilised dung, from a cave in South Africa that was used by brown hyaenas.

Until now the oldest samples of human hair were from a 9,000 year old mummy found in northern Chile. It is extremely rare for soft tissue such as hair, skin and muscle to survive more than a few hundred years and only hard tissue like bone is fossilised normally.
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Possible site of free will found in brain

Ewen Callaway
New Scientist
Thu, 07 May 2009 22:42 UTC
Free will, or at least the place where we decide to act, is sited in a part of the brain called the parietal cortex, new research suggests.

When a neurosurgeon electrically jolted this region in patients undergoing surgery, they felt a desire to, say, wiggle their finger, roll their tongue or move a limb. Stronger electrical pulses convinced patients they had actually performed these movements, although their bodies remained motionless.

"What it tells us is there are specific brain regions that are involved in the consciousness of your movement," says Angela Sirigu, a neuroscientist at the CNRS Cognitive Neuroscience Centre in Bron, France, who led the study.
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Sea 'snake' generates electricity with every wave

Colin Barras
New Scientist
Sat, 09 May 2009 21:34 UTC
Anaconda, a giant rubber "snake" that floats offshore and converts wave energy to electricity, is a step closer to commercialisation. An 8-metre long, 1/25th scale version is currently undergoing tests in a large wave tank in Gosport, UK, and a full-size working version could be a reality in five years.

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