Science & TechnologyS


Info

Robot Playmates Help Autistic Kids With Social Skills


Washington Post
Fri, 08 Aug 2008 03:09 UTC
Many children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) interact more easily with mechanical devices than with humans, according to new reports.

Researchers at the University of Southern California Viterbi School of Engineering, who have presented their finding at various conferences in the United States and in Europe this summer, found that Socially Assisted Robotics (SAR) that blow bubbles, toot horns and even make facial expressions appear to increase the child's speech and interaction levels.
Read More...
Info

US: Great 'planet' debate: Scientists could overturn official definition

Jeanna Bryner
SPACE.com
Tue, 05 Aug 2008 16:00 UTC


Great planet debate
©Unknown

Top astronomers and other planetary scientists will step into the ring this month to duke it out over a basic, yet controversial, question: What is a planet?

"The Great Planet Debate: Science as Process" conference will be held from Aug. 14-16 at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland.

Some astronomers see the conference as a way of cleaning up the mess created by the organization that names celestial bodies, the International Astronomical Union (IAU), which in August 2006 voted in a new definition of planet that demoted Pluto to "dwarf planet." (Under a more recent IAU decision, Pluto and similar objects are classified as "plutoids.")
Read More...
Telescope

US: Final Servicing Will Leave Hubble With Full Toolbox

Frank Morring, Jr.
Aviation Week
Sun, 03 Aug 2008 15:48 UTC
Astronauts and an army of engineers and technicians on the ground are working hard to ready themselves and the space shuttle Atlantis for the final servicing mission to NASA's Hubble Space Telescope (HST).

If it goes as planned, the risky shuttle flight will leave the 17-year-old telescope at "the apex" of its capability, able to probe the Universe with a full suite of instruments for the first time.

But in an extremely remote worst-case, Atlantis could wind up flying backward into the atmosphere with its payload bay doors open, the better to burn up rapidly over the Pacific, its seven-member crew crammed into the shuttle Endeavour after an unprecedented rescue in orbit.
Read More...
Info

Solar Sails Might be the Future of Space Travel

Ty Colfax
The Feed
Thu, 31 Jul 2008 15:22 UTC


Space sail
©Unknown

People smarter than us are saying the future of space travel may be in solar sailing. It's not a totally new concept, however, as Johannes Kepler's ideas about using solar wind to go great distances was first posited back in the 16th century.

But as technology has advanced, we've come to see that harnessing solar energy is a great lightweight way to drift at incredibly high speeds, utilizing the relative low drag of empty space and the gravitational slings of heavenly bodies to go large distances.
Read More...
Telescope

Jupiter And Saturn Full Of Liquid Metal Helium


Science Daily
Thu, 07 Aug 2008 13:36 UTC
A strange, metal brew lies buried deep within Jupiter and Saturn, according to a new study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, and in London.

Jupiter
©NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Results from UC Berkeley and London researchers suggest that giant, gaseous planets such as Jupiter, shown here in a mosaic constructed from images from the Cassini spacecraft, are filled with a liquid metal alloy of helium and hydrogen.

The study, just published the online edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, demonstrates that metallic helium is less rare than was previously thought and is produced under the kinds of conditions present at the centers of giant, gaseous planets, mixing with metal hydrogen and forming a liquid metal alloy.

"This is a breakthrough in terms of our understanding of materials, and that's important because in order to understand the long-term evolution of planets, we need to know more about their properties deep down," said Raymond Jeanloz, professor of astronomy and of earth and planetary science at UC Berkeley and one of the authors of the study. "The finding is also interesting from the point of view of understanding why materials are the way they are, and what determines their stability and their physical and chemical properties."
Read More...
Info

Even viruses get sick

Ben Hirschler
Reuters
Wed, 06 Aug 2008 16:51 UTC
Even viruses can go down with a viral infection, French scientists reported on Wednesday, in a discovery that may help explain how they swap genes and evolve so rapidly.

A new strain of giant virus was isolated from a cooling tower in Paris and found to be infected by a smaller type of virus, named Sputnik, after the first man-made satellite.

Sputnik is the first example of a virus infecting another virus to make it sick.

Bernard La Scola and colleagues from the Universite de la Mediterranee in Marseille reported in the journal Nature that Sputnik was able to achieve a remarkable degree of gene mixing by "looting" genes from its host virus and other organisms.

Viruses are already known to infect and sicken bacteria but this is the first example of a virus infecting one of its own kind.
Read More...
Info

Neurobiologists Discover Individuals Who 'Hear' Movement


Science Daily
Wed, 06 Aug 2008 16:40 UTC
Individuals with synesthesia perceive the world in a different way from the rest of us. Because their senses are cross-activated, some synesthetes perceive numbers or letters as having colors or days of the week as possessing personalities, even as they function normally in the world.

Image
©California Institute of Technology
Image from a short video of moving dots. Some people hear sound when watching the video. Link to video.

Now, researchers at the California Institute of Technology have discovered a type of synesthesia in which individuals hear sounds, such as tapping, beeping, or whirring, when they see things move or flash. Surprisingly, the scientists say, auditory synesthesia may not be unusual--and may simply represent an enhanced form of how the brain normally processes visual information.

Psychologists previously reported visual, tactile, and taste synesthesias, but auditory synesthesia had never been identified. Caltech lecturer in computation and neural systems Melissa Saenz discovered the phenomenon quite by accident.

Read More...
Eye 1

Eye spy: U.S. scientists develop eye-shaped camera

Julie Steenhuysen
Reuters
Wed, 06 Aug 2008 16:36 UTC
Borrowing one of nature's best designs, U.S. scientists have built an eye-shaped camera using standard sensor materials and say it could improve the performance of digital cameras and enhance imaging of the human body.

The device might even lead to the development of prosthetic devices including a bionic eye, they said.

"This is the first time we've demonstrated a camera on a curved surface to really make it look like a human eye," said Yonggang Huang of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, who reported his findings on Wednesday in the journal Nature.
Read More...
Better Earth

Genetic evidence traces ancient African migration

Erin Digitale
Stanford School of Medicine
Wed, 06 Aug 2008 15:09 UTC


Image
©Sarah Tishkoff
This man speaks a Nilotic language. Genetic evidence suggests Nilotic speakers migrated from eastern to southern Africa about 2,000 years ago.

Stanford researchers peering at history's footprints on human DNA have found new evidence for how prehistoric people shared knowledge that advanced civilization.

Using a genetic technique pioneered at Stanford, the team found that animal-herding methods arrived in southern Africa 2,000 years ago on a wave of human migration, rather than by movement of ideas between neighbors. The findings shed light on how early cultures interacted with each other and how societies learned to adopt advances.

"There's a tradition in archaeology of saying people don't move very much; they just transfer ideas through space," said Joanna Mountain, PhD, consulting assistant professor of anthropology. Mountain and Peter Underhill, PhD, senior research scientist in genetics at the School of Medicine, were the study's senior authors. Their findings appeared in the Aug. 5 online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Read More...
Pharoah

Egypt to test fetuses for Tutankhamun family tree

Will Rasmussen
Reuters
Wed, 06 Aug 2008 12:49 UTC
CAIRO - Egyptian scientists are doing DNA tests on stillborn children found in the tomb of the Pharaoh Tutankhamun in the hope of identifying their mother and grandmother, who may be the powerful queen Nefertiti, Egypt's chief archaeologist said on Wednesday.

mummy of King Tutankhamun
©REUTERS/Nasser Nuri
The stone sarcophagus containing the mummy of King Tutankhamun is seen in his underground tomb in the famed Valley of the Kings in Luxor November 4, 2007.

British archaeologist Howard Carter found the mummified fetuses when he discovered Tutankhamun's tomb in 1922. Archaeologists assume they are the children of the teenage pharaoh but their mother has not been identified.

Many scholars believe their mother to be Ankhesenamun, the boy king's only known wife. Ankhesenamun is the daughter of Nefertiti, renowned for her beauty.

"For the first time we will be able to identify the family of King Tut," Zahi Hawass, the head of Egypt's Supreme Council for Antiquities, told Reuters. "This should allow us for the first time to discover the mummy of Nefertiti."
Read More...