Science & Technology
In work that could one day help prevent millions of dollars in economic losses for seaside communities, MIT chemists have demonstrated how tiny marine organisms likely produce the red tide toxin that periodically shuts down U.S. beaches and shellfish beds.
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| ©NIWA; photo by M. Godfrey
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| The dramatic appearance of a red tide algal bloom at Leigh, near Cape Rodney, New Zealand.
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In the Aug. 31 cover story of
Science, the MIT team describes an elegant method for synthesizing the lethal components of red tides. The researchers believe their method approximates the synthesis used by algae, a reaction that chemists have tried for decades to replicate, without success.
DUNCAN MANSFIELD
APFri, 31 Aug 2007 04:52 UTC
OAK RIDGE, Tenn. - The $1.4 billion Spallation Neutron Source facility, though still powering up, has established a new mark as the world's most powerful accelerator-based source of neutrons for scientific research.
The Oak Ridge National Laboratory announced Thursday that the SNS's neutron beam reached 183 kilowatts on Aug. 11, surpassing the 163-kilowatt record held by the ISIS facility at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory near Oxford, England.
Female beetles mate to quench their thirst according to new research by a scientist from the University of Exeter's School of Biosciences. The males of some insect species, including certain types of beetles, moths and crickets, produce unusually large ejaculates, which in some cases can account for around 10% of their body weight. The study shows that dehydrated females can accept sexual invitations simply to get hold of the water in the seminal fluid.
Two years ago, when Malcolm Gladwell published his best-selling "Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking," readers throughout the world were introduced to the ideas of Gerd Gigerenzer, a German social psychologist.
Dr. Gigerenzer, the director of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, is known in social science circles for his breakthrough studies on the nature of intuitive thinking. Before his research, this was a topic often dismissed as crazed superstition. Dr. Gigerenzer, 59, was able to show how aspects of intuition work and how ordinary people successfully use it in modern life.
Nat Worden
TheStreetWed, 29 Aug 2007 12:29 UTC
News Corp. and General Electric planted a flag in cyberspace Wednesday in their bid to steal YouTube's thunder with a rival video site, now called
Hulu.
Having
announced the partnership in March, the media giants have finally put a homepage up on the Web, though no videos are available yet.
Scientists hope to learn more about climate changes here on Earth by studying Venus. A prototype balloon could eventually study the planet's surface and examine its atmosphere and the bizarre winds and chemistry within it. A team of JPL, ILC Dover and NASA Wallops Flight Facility engineers designed, fabricated and tested the balloon.
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| ©ESA
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| Scientists believe the Venus balloons could also help us learn more about climate changes here on Earth. "Venus is a place where global warming has gone amuck," Hall said. "It's about the same size as our planet, but the surface is about 900 degrees Fahrenheit, and we want to find out why."
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Slightly smaller than Earth, Venus is often regarded as Earth's sister planet. Both have similar densities, chemical compositions and gravities. However, its atmosphere is nearly 100 times thicker than Earth's, which causes blazing temperatures at the surface. By flying in the cool skies above Venus, the balloons would avoid that environment.
Bacteria can survive in deep freeze for hundreds of thousands of years by staying just alive enough to keep their DNA in good repair, a new study says.
In earlier work, researchers had found ancient bacteria in permafrost and in deep ice cores from Antarctica.
I am lying on hot slab of rock on the coast of Maine. Fifty feet down to my right, the Atlantic Ocean crashes against a cliff face. I watch as the water spews upward and across a pile of boulders, leaving tide pools in its wake.
I am completely mesmerized. The waves come and they go and I stare and stare, my mind totally blank.
But then I realize it's not so much blank as content, mentally at rest, and that it's been a while since I've felt this good. The water has apparently washed away any thoughts of stuff I need to do for work, or personal troubles that days before were weighing me down.
I'm on vacation, I say to myself, and that's why happiness has taken over my brain.
Combined math and reading SAT scores for the high school class of 2007 were the lowest in eight years - a trend the College Board attributed largely to the good news that a more diverse pool of students is taking the exam.
ANIMon, 27 Aug 2007 19:03 UTC
British and Iranian archaeologists have discovered the ruins of a 200 kilometre long wall, the second longest wall in Asia after the Great Wall of China, in northern Iran.
Experts believe the Gorgan Great Wall in northern Iran's Golestan Province was built at about the same time as the 'Great Wall' and was used as a defence system against the invasions of the Ephthalites, a nomadic people who once lived in Central Asia.
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| ©Unknown
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| A view of Gorgan's Defensive Wall.
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