Science & TechnologyS


Better Earth

Flashback Soyuz spacecraft lands off-target


BBC News
Sat, 19 Apr 2008 17:27 UTC
A Russian Soyuz spacecraft has returned to Earth, but came down more than 400km (250 miles) away from its planned touchdown point, say Russian officials.

The crew are safe, but were subjected to severe G-forces during re-entry, said a spokesman for mission control.

He said they were examined at the landing site by medical staff.
Read More...
Telescope

Scientists Produce An Atlas Of Saturn's Moon Dione


Saturn Daily
Wed, 21 May 2008 13:46 UTC
Like the cartographers of old, scientists working with images from the Cassini spacecraft of Saturn"s icy airless moons have carefully crafted detailed maps that one day may guide future explorers across the surfaces of these remote bodies.

Dione third densest of Saturns moons
©NASA/JPL/Space Science InstituteUnknown
Dione is composed primarily of water ice, but as the third densest of Saturn's moons (aside from Enceladus and Titan, whose density is increased by gravitational compression) it must have a considerable fraction (~ 46%) of denser material like silicate rock in its interior. Though somewhat smaller and denser, Dione is otherwise very similar to Rhea. They both have similar albedo features and varied terrain, and both have dissimilar leading and trailing hemispheres.
Dione's leading hemisphere is heavily cratered and is uniformly bright. Its trailing hemisphere, meanwhile, contains an unusual and distinctive surface feature: a network of bright, wispy streaks on a dark background that overlay the craters, indicating that they are newer. These are now known to be ice cliffs.

A team of DLR scientists alongside colleagues from the Freie Universität Berlin has produced an atlas of Dione, a moon of Saturn released today, 20 May 2008, by NASA.
Read More...
Info

Clue To Mystery Crustacean In Parasite Form


Science Daily
Wed, 21 May 2008 12:16 UTC
First identified in 1899, y-larvae have been one of the greatest zoological mysteries for over a century. No one has ever found an adult of these puzzling crustaceans, despite the plethora of these larvae in plankton, leading generations of marine zoologists to wonder just what y- larvae grow up to be. A new study reports the transformation of the larvae into a previously unseen, wholly un-crustacean-like, parasitic form.

Y larvae
©Hoeg et al, BMC Biology
Y larvae.
Read More...
Sherlock

First dinosaur tracks found in Arabian Peninsula

Michael Kahn
News Daily
Wed, 21 May 2008 12:03 UTC
LONDON - Scientists have discovered the tracks of a herd of 11 long-necked sauropods walking along a coastal mudflat in what is now the Republic of Yemen, the first discovery of dinosaur footprints on the Arabian peninsula.

Sauropods, the largest land animals in earth's history, walked on four stout legs and ate plants.

dinosaur footprints on the Arabian peninsula
©REUTERS/Nancy Stevens/Handout
Researchers at the site of a newly-discovered sauropod in the Republic of Yemen in an undated photo. Scientists have discovered the tracks of a herd of 11 long-necked sauropods walking along a coastal mudflat in what is now the Republic of Yemen, the first discovery of dinosaur footprints on the Arabian peninsula.

"The nice thing is we finally filled in a bit of a blank spot in the dinosaur map," said Anne Schulp, a palaeontologist at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands, who worked on the study.
Read More...
Bulb

Sleep-deprived Brains Alternate Between Normal Activity And 'Power Failure'


Science Daily
Wed, 21 May 2008 11:46 UTC
Neuroscience researchers at the Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School in Singapore have shown for the first time what happens to the visual perceptions of healthy but sleep-deprived volunteers who fight to stay awake, like people who try to drive through the night.

The scientists found that even after sleep deprivation, people had periods of near-normal brain function in which they could finish tasks quickly. However, this normalcy mixed with periods of slow response and severe drops in visual processing and attention, according to their paper, published in the Journal of Neuroscience on May 21.
Read More...
Info

New Meaning For The Term 'Computer Bug': Genetically Altered Bacteria For Data Storage


Science Daily
Wed, 21 May 2008 11:31 UTC
US researchers have created 'living computers' by genetically altering bacteria. The findings of the research demonstrate that computing in living cells is feasible, opening the door to a number of applications including data storage and as a tool for manipulating genes for genetic engineering.

Three-dimensional computer-rendered E. coli bacteria
©iStockphoto/Sebastian Kaulitzki
Three-dimensional computer-rendered E. coli bacteria.

A research team from the biology and the mathematics departments of Davidson College, North Carolina and Missouri Western State University, Missouri, USA added genes to Escherichia coli bacteria, creating bacterial computers able to solve a classic mathematical puzzle, known as the burnt pancake problem.
Read More...
Bulb

Sunspot cycle more dud than radiation flood

Dan Sorenson
The Arizona Daily Star
Mon, 19 May 2008 10:30 UTC
Many solar scientists expected the new sunspot cycle to be a whopper, a prolonged solar tantrum that could fry satellites and raise hell with earthly communications, the power grid and modern electronics.

But there's scant proof Sunspot Cycle 24 is even here, let alone the debut of big trouble.

Comment: And again we see that last little twist pushing the Anthropogenic Global Warming agenda.

Read More...
Better Earth

Ralph Nader: A Trip Inside Google

Ralph Nader
Counterpunch
Wed, 21 May 2008 06:12 UTC
An invitation to visit Google's headquarters and meet some of the people who made this ten year old giant that is giving Microsoft the nervies has to start with wonder.
Read More...
Telescope

100 Explosions on the Moon

Dr. Tony Phillips
NASA
Wed, 21 May 2008 05:23 UTC
Not so long ago, anyone claiming to see flashes of light on the Moon would be viewed with deep suspicion by professional astronomers. Such reports were filed under "L" ... for lunatic.

Not anymore. Over the past two and a half years, NASA astronomers have observed the Moon flashing at them not just once but one hundred times.

Comment: Left unsaid here is that the earth, being approximately 3.7 times the diameter of the moon has an equally exposed area of about 14 times that of the moon. Therefore the earth got hit with about 1400 meteors in the same time period. But they're only seeing half the area of the moon. Thus the true number is double that.

Read More...
Telescope

Missing matter found in deep space

Maggie Fox
News Daily
Tue, 20 May 2008 16:57 UTC
WASHINGTON - Astronomers have found some matter that had been missing in deep space and say it is strung along web-like filaments that form the backbone of the universe.

The ethereal strands of hydrogen and oxygen atoms could account for up to half the matter that scientists knew must be there but simply could not see, the researchers reported on Tuesday.

missing baryons
©REUTERS/NASA/ESA/A. Feild (STScI)/Handout
This illustration shows how the Hubble Space Telescope searches for missing baryons or normal matter, by looking at the light from quasars several billion light-years away. In an extensive search of the local universe, astronomers say they have definitively found about half of the missing normal matter, called baryons, in the spaces between the galaxies.

Scientists have long known there is far more matter in the universe than can be accounted for by visible galaxies and stars. Not only is there invisible baryonic matter -- the protons and neutrons that make up atoms -- but there also is an even larger amount of invisible "dark" matter.
Read More...