Science & TechnologyS


Telescope

Pluto Has "Upside Down" Atmosphere

Ker Than
National Geographic News
Fri, 06 Mar 2009 20:00 UTC
Pluto
© L. Calcada/ESOPluto has an "upside down" atmosphere, a March 2009 study revealed. Temperatures rise, rather than drop, with altitude on the dwarf planet—the reverse of Earth.
Pluto, the solar system's oddball, has an upside-down atmosphere compared with Earth. Temperatures rise, rather than drop, with altitude on the dwarf planet, a new study finds.

Astronomers recently made the most detailed measurements to date of the concentration of the greenhouse gas methane in Pluto's atmosphere using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope.

The measurements showed that methane is the second most abundant gas in Pluto's atmosphere, and that the gas is actually warmer at higher elevations than at the icy surface.

As a result, Pluto's upper atmosphere is about 90 degrees Fahrenheit (50 degrees Celsius) warmer than the planet's surface.

The team, led by Emmanuel Lellouch of France's Paris Observatory, speculates that there is a thin frozen layer, or frozen patches, of methane and other gases on Pluto's surface.
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Bug

Koobface, Other Worms Target Facebook Friends


Yahoo! Tech News
Thu, 05 Mar 2009 11:51 UTC
As Facebook works to make itself more relevant and timely for its growing member base with a profile page makeover, attackers seem to be working overtime to steal the identities of the friends, fans and brands that connect though the social-networking site.

Indeed, Facebook has seen five different security threats in the past week. According to Trend Micro, four new hoax applications are attempting to trick members into divulging their usernames and passwords. And a new variant of the Koobface worm is running wild on the site, installing malware on the computers of victims who click on a link to a fake YouTube video.
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Info

Horses were tamed a millennium earlier than previously thought

Thomas H. Maugh II
Los Angeles Times
Fri, 06 Mar 2009 05:10 UTC
Image
© Scott Sommerdorf, Associated Press
The horse, its four slender legs accomplishing astonishing feats of strength and endurance, has provided humans with far more than transportation from point A to point B.

It has allowed us to travel long distances for trade, carry heavy loads, move our societies around more freely and, inevitably, conduct more efficient warfare. Arguably the most important domesticated animal, the horse also has provided humans with meat and milk.

Now we have a better idea of when this complex and vital human-horse relationship began.
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Info

'Vampire' discovered in mass grave


New Scientist
Fri, 06 Mar 2009 15:09 UTC
Image
© Matteo BorriniTo stop the "vampires" supposedly chewing shrouds and spreading disease, grave-diggers put bricks in the mouths of plague victims.

A skeleton exhumed from a grave in Venice is being claimed as the first known example of the "vampires" widely referred to in contemporary documents.

Matteo Borrini of the University of Florence in Italy found the skeleton of a woman with a small brick in her mouth while excavating mass graves of plague victims from the Middle Ages on Lazzaretto Nuovo Island in Venice.

At the time the woman died, many people believed that the plague was spread by "vampires" which, rather than drinking people's blood, spread disease by chewing on their shrouds after dying. Grave-diggers put bricks in the mouths of suspected vampires to stop them doing this, Borrini says.
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Magnify

Nanotechnology goes to war

David Hambling
The Guardian
Thu, 05 Mar 2009 09:57 UTC
Coloured scanning electron micrograph
© David Parker/Science Photo LibraryColoured scanning electron micrograph (SEM) of microcogs forming a microgear mechanism.

The Pentagon is pioneering micro technology for just about every device, from 10g video cameras to tiny atomic clocks on a chip

Wouldn't it be handy if everything we needed to build the next generation of portable devices and robots were available on a microchip? You could just plug in a navigation system, a radar sensor, cryogenic cooling system, or even a miniature power unit. For laboratory applications, there would be micro versions of everything from mass spectrometers to magnetic sensors. The Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa), the Pentagon's extreme science wing, aims to provide all this, and more, in handy "matchbook size" electronic packages.

Forty years ago, Gordon Moore, the co-founder of Intel, accurately predicted that the cost of processing power would halve every two years. We have come to expect devices to get smaller, cheaper and more powerful over time. Now the revolution is spreading to other types of device. The development of mems (microelectromechanical systems) has already paved the way for "lab-on-a-chip" chemical analysis. Such breakthroughs tend to come from the military rather than industry.
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Pharoah

Ancient pharaoh statues found in Egypt


NineMSN
Fri, 06 Mar 2009 07:08 UTC
Image
© unknownA statue of the pharaoh Amenhotep III has been found in the southern Egyptian city of Luxor.
A team of Egyptian and European archaeologists has discovered two large statutes of an ancient pharaoh who ruled Egypt some 3,400 years ago, the country's archaeology chief said on Thursday.

The two statues of Amenhotep III were found while the excavation team was clearing out a temple dedicated to this pharaoh on the west bank of the Nile in the southern city of Luxor, according to a statement by Zahi Hawass, head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities.

Hawass said one statute is made of black granite and shows Amenhotep wearing a traditional Pharaonic headcover, while the second one depicts him in the shape of sphinx - the mythological creature with a human head and the body of a lion.
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Cow Skull

Oldest sea turtle fossil unveiled in Mexico


Agence France-Presse
Thu, 05 Mar 2009 09:35 UTC
Chelonia
© Agence France-PresseGreen sea turtles (Chelonia mydas) head to the sea just after hatching.
Paleontologists on Thursday unveiled the oldest fossil remains of a sea turtle that lived 72 million years ago in northern Mexico, the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) said.

"It is the oldest sea turtle of its kind and it belongs to the chelonia family. The oldest specimen of this species up to now was 65 million years old and was found in New Jersey, United States," the INAH said in a statement.

The fossils of seven sea turtles were found at different sites in Coahuila, the state that Mexican scientists call "the paradise of paleontology."
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Evil Rays

Venezuela unveils $14 mobile phone


NineMSN
Fri, 06 Mar 2009 07:21 UTC
Venezuela is to start selling in May a mobile phone it is billing as one of the world's cheapest: a $US14 ($A21.57) handset that includes an MP3 player, radio and camera.

President Hugo Chavez unveiled the phone - named "El Vergatario" - on Thursday, saying it would be produced by a joint Venezuelan-Chinese firm and marketed across Latin America and the Caribbean.
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Saturn

NASA's Mars Rover Spirit Faces Circuitous Route


Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Fri, 06 Mar 2009 00:51 UTC
Image
© NASA/JPL-CaltechThe track dug by the dragged right-front wheel as Spirit drove backward is visible in this image, receding toward the southeast.
Pasadena, Calif. -- Loose soil piled against the northern edge of a low plateau called "Home Plate" has blocked NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit from taking the shortest route toward its southward destinations for the upcoming Martian summer and following winter.

The rover has begun a trek skirting at least partway around the plateau instead of directly over it.

However, Spirit has also gotten a jump start on its summer science plans, examining a silica-rich outcrop that adds information about a long-gone environment that had hot water or steam. And even a circuitous route to the destinations chosen for Spirit would be much shorter than the overland expedition Spirit's twin, Opportunity, is making on the opposite side of Mars.
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Display

Zillion TV Startup to Provide TV over the Internet

Alexander Toldt
eFluxMedia
Fri, 06 Mar 2009 00:31 UTC
Image
© eFluxMedia
Start up company Zillion TV promised to soon release a service that offers customers who had enough of cable and satellite TV, TV over the Internet.

Zillion TV already signed more than 40 deals with major Hollywood movie studios and TV networks such as Disney, 20th Century Fox Television, NBC Universal and Warner Bros. Digital Distribution. This is one of the most important factors in the equation because the deals give content owners the chance to make some advertising bucks from their films or TV shows.
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