Science & TechnologyS


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UK computing Grid warming up for world's largest experiment


MatterNews.com
Sat, 26 Apr 2008 09:31 UTC
UK scientists building a computing Grid for particle physics have launched the next phase of their project, in advance of the start of the world's largest experiment. Over the last six years, the GridPP collaboration has successfully built a distributed computer system for scientists working on the world's biggest experiment, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN near Geneva. The Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), has extended the project for another three years which ensures that the expertise built up in the UK will be there for the start of the LHC later this year and for the crucial first years of data taking. The data crunching and storage capabilities of the Grid are essential to the LHC's science mission of exploring the fundamental particles and forces of nature.

GridPP
©Unknown
Cluster and racks at Queen Mary, University of London
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Magnify

Graphene Gazing Gives Glimpse of Foundations of Universe


MatterNews.com
Sat, 05 Apr 2008 09:25 UTC
Researchers at The University of Manchester have used graphene to measure an important and mysterious fundamental constant - and glimpse the foundations of the universe.

Graphene
©MatterNews
Magnified image of research samples with small holes covered by graphene. One can see light passing through them by the naked eye.
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Document

Researchers find gene defect that boosts glucose

Michael Kahn
News Daily
Thu, 01 May 2008 18:46 UTC
LONDON - An international research team has pinpointed a genetic mutation that can raise a healthy person's blood sugar to harmful levels, putting them at higher risk of serious problems like heart disease.

The defect could cause an increase of around 5 percent that can prove dangerous even for people without diabetes, the researchers reported in the journal Science said on Thursday.

Too much glucose in the blood can damage the eyes, kidneys and nerves, and also lead to heart disease, stroke and limb amputations. It is also a sign of diabetes, though the findings did not link the gene directly to the disease.
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Star

Astronomers Discover New Type of Pulsating White Dwarf Star


NSF
Thu, 01 May 2008 17:23 UTC
University of Texas at Austin astronomers Michael H. Montgomery and Kurtis A. Williams, along with graduate student Steven DeGennaro, have predicted and confirmed the existence of a new type of variable star, with the help of the 2.1-meter Otto Struve Telescope at McDonald Observatory. The discovery is announced in today's issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters.

This research was funded by the National Science Foundation and the Delaware Asteroseismic Research Center.

Called a "pulsating carbon white dwarf," this is the first new class of variable white dwarf star discovered in more than 25 years. Because the overwhelming majority of stars in the universe--including the sun--will end their lives as white dwarfs, studying the pulsations (i.e., variations in light output) of these newly discovered examples gives astronomers a window on an important end point in the lives of most stars.

Image
©NSF
Changes in light output over time of the first-discovered pulsating carbon white dwarf star.
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Bulb

Google diving into 3D mapping of oceans

Elinor Mills
Cnet
Wed, 30 Apr 2008 16:23 UTC
We've got Google Earth and Google Sky. Next up will be a map of the world below sea level--Google Ocean.

The company has assembled an advisory group of oceanography experts, and in December invited researchers from institutions around the world to the Mountain View, Calif., Googleplex. There, they discussed plans for creating a 3D oceanographic map, according to sources familiar with the matter.

The tool--for now called Google Ocean, the sources say, though that name could change--is expected to be similar to other 3D online mapping applications. People will be able to see the underwater topography, called bathymetry; search for particular spots or attractions; and navigate through the digital environment by zooming and panning. (The tool, however, is not to be confused with the "Google Ocean" project by France-based Magic Instinct Software that uses Google Earth as a visualization tool for marine data.)
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Magic Wand

Namibia: 500-year-old shipwreck found by diamond firm


The Telegraph
Thu, 01 May 2008 16:16 UTC
A shipwreck, believed to be 500 years old, containing a treasure trove of coins and ivory has been discovered off the southern African coast.

A Namibian diamond company, Namdeb, said on Wednesday that it found the wreck during mining operations in the Atlantic.

"The site yielded a wealth of objects including six bronze cannon, several tons of copper, more than 50 elephant tusks, pewter tableware, navigational instruments, weapons and thousands of Spanish and Portuguese gold coins, minted in the late 1400s and early 1500s," said Hilifa Mbako, a company spokesman.

Dieter Noli, an archaeologist, identified the cannon as Spanish, dating from about 1500.

Image
©Reuters
The site yielded a wealth of objects including thousands of Spanish and Portuguese gold coins
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Hourglass

Cracks In The Foundation: Fundamental Geological Assumption Relating To Planet Earth Not Quite True


Science Daily
Tue, 29 Apr 2008 14:06 UTC
Chondritic meteorites have a similar chemical composition to the sun and are therefore reliable witnesses as to what the solar nebula, from which the planets formed, was composed of. This can be used to deduce what the Earth consists of chemically. However, ETH Zurich researchers have now discovered that strictly speaking this fundamental geological assumption is not true.

Image
©NASA
This artistic impression shows what the solar system could have looked like once upon a time. However, how homogenous the solar nebula actually was is debatable.
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Einstein

High-flying Electrons May Provide New Test Of Quantum Theory


ScienceDaily.com
Wed, 30 Apr 2008 16:50 UTC
Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and Max Planck Institute for Physics in Germany believe they can achieve a significant increase in the accuracy of one of the fundamental constants of nature by boosting an electron to an orbit as far as possible from the atomic nucleus that binds it. The experiment, outlined in a new paper,* would not only mean more accurate identifications of elements in everything from stars to environmental pollutants but also could put the modern theory of the atom to the most stringent tests yet.

Rydberg atom
©NIST
(a) In a Rydberg atom, an electron (black dot) is far away from the atomic nucleus (red and grey core). (b) Probability map for an electron in a Rydberg atom shows that it has virtually no probability of being near the nucleus in the center. (c) An optical frequency comb for producing ultraprecise colors of light can trigger quantum energy jumps useful for accurately measuring the Rydberg constant.
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Telescope

Oldest Known Celestial Objects Are Surprisingly Immature


Science Daily
Tue, 29 Apr 2008 16:36 UTC
Some of the oldest objects in the Universe may still have a long way to go, according to a new study using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. These new results indicate that globular clusters might be surprisingly less mature in their development than previously thought.
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Info

New Findings Challenge Conventional Ideas On Evolution Of Human Diet, Natural Selection


ScienceDaily.com
Wed, 30 Apr 2008 16:33 UTC
New findings suggest that the ancient human "cousin" known as the "Nutcracker Man" wasn't regularly eating anything like nuts after all.

A University of Arkansas professor and his colleagues used a combination of microscopy and fractal analysis to examine marks on the teeth of members of an ancient human ancestor species and found that what it actually ate does not correspond with the size and shape of its teeth. This finding suggests that structure alone is not enough to predict dietary preferences and that evolutionary adaptation for eating may have been based on scarcity rather than on an animal's regular diet.

Nutcracker Man
©Nicolle Rager Fuller, National Science Foundation
Researchers examined the teeth of Paranthropus boisei, also called the "Nutcracker Man," an ancient hominin that lived between 2.3 and 1.2 million years ago. The "Nutcracker Man" had the biggest, flattest cheek teeth and the thickest enamel of any known human ancestor and was thought to have a regular diet of nuts and seeds or roots and tubers. But analysis of scratches on the teeth and other tooth wear reveal the pattern of eating for the "Nutcracker Man" was more consistent with modern-day fruit-eating animals.
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