Science & TechnologyS


Telescope

Opal hints at persistence of water on Mars

Maggie McKee
New Scientist
Wed, 29 Oct 2008 20:13 UTC
Opal, a mineral that needs water to form, is widespread in Martian terrain younger than 2.5 billion years old, new spacecraft observations suggest. The discovery offers the most recent mineralogical evidence yet of liquid water on the planet's surface - and suggests an intriguing new target for future searches for Martian life.
Valles Marineris Red Planet's Grand Canyon
© Viking Project/NASAThe 4000-km-long Valles Marineris is the Red Planet's Grand Canyon. Narrow outcrops of opal are found in and around the canyon. The minerals may be quite extensive – covering regions spanning 1000 km – but are only seen where erosion has cleared away overlying dust and rocks.

Two other types of water-containing, or hydrated, minerals have previously been found on Mars - clays and hydrated sulphates. Since scientists can date the age of a particular terrain by studying the number and sizes of its craters, they found that the two mineral types seem to have originated from different periods in the planet's history.
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Light Saber

Defending the Fruit Flies from Sarah Palin


insidehighered.com
Wed, 29 Oct 2008 18:52 UTC
Throughout his presidential campaign, Sen. John McCain has had a few choice earmarks to cite when he blasts the Congressional practice of setting aside funds for particular projects. One of his favorite targets is a study of bear DNA.

In a speech Friday, Gov. Sarah Palin, McCain's running mate, tried to highlight another earmark - and some supporters of science say that the campaign has gone too far.

Comment: "This is the most mindless, ignorant, uninformed comment that we have seen from Governor Palin so far, and there's been a lot of competition for that prize." - Richard Wolfe, Newsweek

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Info

Brain's Code For 3-D Structure


Science Daily
Wed, 29 Oct 2008 17:17 UTC
A team of Johns Hopkins University neuroscientists has discovered patterns of brain activity that may underlie our remarkable ability to see and understand the three-dimensional structure of objects.
teapot
© iStockphoto/Tjasa MaticicIt seems trivial to us to describe a teapot as having a C-shaped handle on one side, an S-shaped spout on the other and a disk-shaped lid on top. But sifting this three-dimensional information from the constantly changing, two-dimensional images coming in through our eyes is one of the most difficult tasks the brain performs.

Computers can beat us at math and chess, but humans are the experts at object vision. (That's why some Web sites use object recognition tasks as part of their authentication of human users.) It seems trivial to us to describe a teapot as having a C-shaped handle on one side, an S-shaped spout on the other and a disk-shaped lid on top. But sifting this three-dimensional information from the constantly changing, two-dimensional images coming in through our eyes is one of the most difficult tasks the brain performs. Even sophisticated computer vision systems have never been able to accomplish the same feat using two-dimensional camera images.
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Nuke

Nuclear-powered passenger aircraft 'to transport millions' says expert

Ben Webster
The TimesOnline
Mon, 27 Oct 2008 14:21 UTC
Nuclear-powered aircraft may sound like a concept from Thunderbirds, but they will be transporting millions of passengers around the world later this century, the leader of a Government-funded project to reduce environmental damage from aviation believes.

The consolation of sitting a few yards from a nuclear reactor will be non-stop flights from London to Australia or New Zealand, because the aircraft will no longer need to land to refuel. The flights will also produce no carbon emissions and therefore make no contribution to global warming.

Ian Poll, Professor of Aerospace Engineering at Cranfield university, and head of technology for the Government-funded Omega project, is calling for a big research programme to help the aviation industry convert from fossil fuels to nuclear energy.

In a lecture at the Royal Aeronautical Society tonight, Professor Poll will say that experiments conducted during the Cold War have already demonstrated that there are no insurmountable obstacles to developing a nuclear-powered aircraft.
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Cheeseburger

NASA Aims to Keep Moon's Skies Junk-Free

David Powell
Space.com
Wed, 29 Oct 2008 07:39 UTC
junk around earth
© NASAA NASA illustration showing space junk orbiting the Earth. There's an increased risk a space shuttle could be hit by orbiting debris on a mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope.
There are well over 100,000 objects in Earth orbit, the vast majority being non-functioning junk in the form of satellites and debris from rocket launches.

Nuts, bolts, chips of paint and other garbage all pose a threat to satellite operations.

Having all this material speeding along at 17,500 miles per hour only a few hundred miles above us isn't of much concern for people on the planet, because although hundreds of objects fall back to Earth every year, almost all burn up in the atmosphere (with the exception of a few huge rocket parts).
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Target

Wearing red 'boosts attraction'


BBC News
Tue, 28 Oct 2008 22:31 UTC
Women who don a little red dress before going out with a man may find their date more attentive and generous, according to scientists. The University of Rochester study, published in a psychology journal, supports other evidence linking the colour to attractiveness.

Men said they would spend more money on a woman pictured in red, compared with the same woman wearing a blue shirt. Experts say that red signals ovulation or attractiveness in other species.
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People

Transsexual gene link identified


BBC News
Sun, 26 Oct 2008 22:28 UTC
Australian researchers have identified a significant link between a gene involved in testosterone action and male-to-female transsexualism. DNA analysis from 112 male-to-female transsexual volunteers showed they were more likely to have a longer version of the androgen receptor gene.

The genetic difference may cause weaker testosterone signals, the team reported in Biological Psychiatry. However, other genes are also likely to play a part, they stressed. Increasingly, biological factors are being implicated in gender identity.
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Telescope

The Great Cosmic Challenge


Science Daily
Tue, 28 Oct 2008 19:33 UTC
Today cosmologists are challenging the world to solve a compelling statistical problem, to bring us closer to understanding the nature of dark matter and energy which makes up 95 per cent of the 'missing' universe.

The GRavitational lEnsing Accuracy Testing 2008 (GREAT08) PASCAL Challenge is being set by 38 scientists across 19 international institutions, with the aim of enticing other researchers to crack it by 30 April 2009.

"The GREAT08 PASCAL Challenge will help us answer the biggest question in cosmology today: what is the dark energy that seems to make up most of the universe? We realised that solving our image processing problem doesn't require knowledge of astronomy, so we're reaching out to attract novel approaches from other disciplines," says Dr Sarah Bridle, UCL Physics and Astronomy, who is leading the challenge alongside Professor John Shawe-Taylor, Director of the UCL Centre for Computational Statistics and Machine Learning.
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Info

King Solomon's Copper Mines?


Science Daily
Tue, 28 Oct 2008 17:56 UTC
Did the Bible's King David and his son Solomon control the copper industry in present-day southern Jordan? Though that remains an open question, the possibility is raised once again by research reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Industrial copper slag mound excavated at Khirbat en-Nahas
© Thomas Levy, UC San DiegoIndustrial copper slag mound excavated at Khirbat en-Nahas. The building and layers above it date to the mid-9th century BCE; slag deposits below the building date to the 10th century BCE.

Led by Thomas Levy of UC San Diego and Mohammad Najjar of Jordan's Friends of Archaeology, an international team of archaeologists has excavated an ancient copper-production center at Khirbat en-Nahas down to virgin soil, through more than 20 feet of industrial smelting debris, or slag. The 2006 dig has brought up new artifacts and with them a new suite of radiocarbon dates placing the bulk of industrial-scale production at Khirbat en-Nahas in the 10th century BCE - in line with biblical narrative on the legendary rule of David and Solomon. The new data pushes back the archaeological chronology some three centuries earlier than the current scholarly consensus.
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Chalkboard

UK: Teenagers of yesteryear 'were brighter'

Jessica Shepherd
The Guardian
Tue, 28 Oct 2008 03:14 UTC
Experiment shows best pupils are less able to analyse

The UK's brightest 14-year-olds are less clever than a generation ago, while their classmates of average intellect are more able, a study shows.

Michael Shayer, professor of applied psychology at King's College, University of London, tested the ability of 13- and 14-year-olds to think rationally and logically.
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