Science & TechnologyS


Health

Gold-Plated Church Windows Purify Air


Live Science
Fri, 22 Aug 2008 13:02 UTC
stain glass windows church
© stock.xchng
Medieval stained-glass windows colored in gold nanoparticles help purify air when lit by the sun, a new study finds.

"For centuries people appreciated only the beautiful works of art, and long life of the colors, but little did they realize that these works of art are also, in modern language, photocatalytic air purifier with nanostructured gold catalyst," said Zhu Huai Yong, a material scientist at the Queensland University of Technology.
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Bulb

"Large Scale" Function for Endogenous Retroviruses: Intelligent Design Prediction Fulfilled While Another Darwinist Argument Bites the Dust

Casey Luskin
Evolution News & Views
Thu, 21 Aug 2008 13:49 UTC
In his "29+ Evidences for Macroevolution" on TalkOrigins, Douglas Theobald claims that "Endogenous retroviruses provide yet another example of molecular sequence evidence for universal common descent." The presumption behind his argument is that endogenous retroviruses (ERVs) are functionless stretches of "junk" DNA that persist because they are "selfish" - but they have no function for the organism. If we find the same ERVs in the same genetic loci in different species of primates, Theobald concludes they document common ancestry. But what if ERVs do perform important genetic functions? Even theistic evolutionist Francis Collins acknowledges that genetic similarity "alone does not, of course, prove a common ancestor" because a designer could have "used successful design principles over and over again." (The Language of God, pg. 134.) The force of Theobald's argument thus depends upon the premise that ERVs are selfish genetic "junk" that do not necessarily perform any useful function for their host.
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People

A personal map of your genome - a £30,000 bargain

Mark Henderson
Times Online
Thu, 21 Aug 2008 13:45 UTC
DNA sequences start to unravel the secrets of race and genetics

The most exclusive status symbol around is owned not by a super-rich playboy, but by a couple of scientists. While it should soon be possible to sequence anybody's entire genetic code for as little as £1,000, the only people who have yet had the privilege of reading every letter of their DNA are Jim Watson and Craig Venter.
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Hourglass

Iceman 'was a shepherd'


ANSA
Thu, 21 Aug 2008 13:16 UTC


iceman
©Unknown
Mass spectrometry study shows cowhide and sheepskin

Bolzano - The prehistoric mummy known as the Iceman was a shepherd and not a hunter, a new study from Germany claims.
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Star

Brown Dwarfs Revealed As Third Class Of Celestial Bodies After Stars And Planets


Science Daily
Fri, 22 Aug 2008 12:01 UTC
The systematics of celestial bodies apparently needs to be revised. Researchers at the Argelander Institute of Astronomy of the University of Bonn have discovered that brown dwarfs need to be treated as a separate class in addition to stars and planets.

brown dwarf orbiting a young binary star
©NASA/CXC/Chuo U./Y. Tsuboi et al.
X-rays produced by TWA 5B, a brown dwarf orbiting a young binary star system known as TWA 5A.

Until now, brown dwarfs had been merely regarded as stars which were below normal size. However, they may well be stellar 'miscarriages.'

Brown dwarfs (or BDs) are what scientists call objects which populate the galaxies apart from the stars. Unlike the latter, they cannot develop high-yield hydrogen fusion as in the interior of our sun due to their low mass (less than about 8% of the sun's mass). But in addition to this brown dwarfs and stars also seem to be different in their 'mating behaviour'.
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Telescope

Mystery Of Young Stars Near Black Holes Solved


Science Daily
Fri, 22 Aug 2008 11:25 UTC
The mystery of how young stars can form within the deep gravity of black holes has been solved by a team of astrophysicists at the Universities of St Andrews and Edinburgh.

Solar mass molecular cloud
©Science and Technology Facilities Council
Solar mass molecular cloud falling towards a black hole.

The team made the discovery after developing computer simulations of giant clouds of gas being sucked into black holes. The new research may help scientists gain better understanding of the origin of stars and supermassive black holes in our Galaxy and the Universe. The new discovery is published in the journal Science August 22, 2008.

Until now, scientists have puzzled over how stars could form around a black hole, since molecular clouds - the normal birth places of stars - would be ripped apart by the black hole's immense gravitational pull.
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Telescope

Flashback New Zealand researchers discovered new planet outside solar system


The New Zealand Herald
Sun, 20 Jul 2008 20:24 UTC
Researchers in New Zealand have taken measurements of the smallest planet outside the solar system. Using the new MOA-II telescope at the Mt John Observatory, near Lake Tekapo in South Canterbury, they found the planet is three times bigger than Earth.

More than 300 planets have been found outside the solar system, and the latest is the smallest planet orbiting a normal star, as little as one 20th the mass of Earth's sun.

"It turns out that the lowest mass ones are the ones that would be easiest to search for evidence of life on other planets," the leader of the international search team, David Bennett from the University of Notre Dame, said in a statement.
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Display

IBM invests $300 mln in disaster recovery centers


Reuters
Tue, 19 Aug 2008 19:32 UTC
BOSTON - IBM plans to spend $300 million this year to build 13 "cloud computing" data centers where businesses can store information for quick retrieval in case their computer systems are destroyed in a disaster.

Cloud computing refers to services accessed via the Web that seem to exist in a cloud over the Internet.

The computing giant, which will unveil the plan on Wednesday, is building the sites in 10 countries, including China, Japan, Turkey, Poland, France and the United States.

IBM has so far rolled out the cloud-computing data recovery technology to fewer than five of its 154 existing data centers, the oldest of which was built more than 40 years ago.

The technology encrypts data on computers, automatically sending it to IBM's cloud computing center over the Internet.

If a customer's computer breaks down or a data center is destroyed, lost data can be restored via the Web in two to six hours, IBM Vice President Mike Riegel said in an interview.
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Einstein

Large Hadron Collider Set To Unveil A New World Of Particle Physics


Science Daily
Thu, 21 Aug 2008 14:39 UTC
The field of particle physics is poised to enter unknown territory with the startup of a massive new accelerator--the Large Hadron Collider (LHC)--in Europe this summer. On September 10, LHC scientists will attempt to send the first beam of protons speeding around the accelerator.

Large Hadron Collider
©CERN
The massive ATLAS detector dwarfs a worker standing in front of it during installation at the Large Hadron Collider. UCSC physicists have been working on the ATLAS project since 1994.

The LHC will put hotly debated theories to the test as it generates a bonanza of new experimental data in the coming years. Potential breakthroughs include an explanation of what gives mass to fundamental particles and identification of the mysterious dark matter that makes up most of the mass in the universe. More exotic possibilities include evidence for new forces of nature or hidden extra dimensions of space and time.

"The LHC is a discovery machine. We don't know what we'll find," said Abraham Seiden, professor of physics and director of the Santa Cruz Institute for Particle Physics (SCIPP) at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
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Info

Google buries $10m in underground power


New Scientist
Wed, 20 Aug 2008 20:33 UTC
Search and advertising giant Google is investing $10 million in a relatively new approach to producing electricity from underground heat which could make geothermal power possible in many more areas of the world.

Google's philanthropic arm, Google.org, has recently declared an interest in sustainable technology. It has already pumped tens of millions of dollars into solar thermal and high-altitude wind energy.

Dan Reicher, Google's head of climate and energy initiatives, said that new technology could make extracting heat from beneath the ground a massive contributor to US electricity supplies.

"It's 24-7, it's potentially developable all over the country, all over the world, and for all that we really do think it could be the 'killer app' of the energy world," says Reicher. "Killer app" is a term used in the tech industry to describe an application that revolutionises a field and creates new opportunities.
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