Science & TechnologyS


Robot

Robot wars 'will be a reality within 10 years'

Nic Fleming
Telegraph
Wed, 27 Feb 2008 22:05 UTC


Killer robot
©Unknown
US forces recently deployed remote-controlled robots equipped with automatic weapons in Iraq

The world is sleepwalking into an international robot arms race, a leading expert will warn today.

Prof Noel Sharkey fears increased research and spending on unmanned military systems by countries including the US, Russia, China and Israel will lead to the use of autonomous battlefield robots that can decide when to kill within a decade.
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Bizarro Earth

Mystery hum puzzles geologists

Catherine Brahic
The New Scientist
Sat, 23 Feb 2008 21:50 UTC
Geologists have detected a new continuous seismic signal in the Earth, but its cause is anybody's guess

Listen closely, and you'll hear the Earth humming - in not just one note, but two. The source of this second signal is a mystery.

For around a decade we've known about Earth's quiet "vertical" hum, probably caused by the steady thumping of deep waves on the ocean floor. Now a team in Germany has discovered a second "horizontal" note, too, and nobody knows what's causing this new signal.
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Magnet

Magnetic atoms of gold, silver and copper have been obtained


Basque Research
Thu, 28 Feb 2008 13:56 UTC
An international team led by Physics and Chemistry teams from the Faculty of Science and Technology at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) and directed by Professor Jose Javier Saiz Garitaonandia, has achieved, by means of a controlled chemical process, that atoms of gold, silver and copper - intrinsically non-magnetic (not attracted to a magnet) - become magnetic. The article has been published in the February issue of the prestigious international magazine in nanotechnology, Nanoletters (Vol.8, No. 2, 661-667 (2008)).
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Bulb

Scientists suspect mystery planet in solar system


thewest.com.au
Thu, 28 Feb 2008 03:43 UTC
Scientists at a Japanese university said today they believed another planet up to two-thirds the size of the Earth was orbiting in the far reaches of the solar system.

The researchers at Kobe University in western Japan said that theoretical calculations using computer simulations led them to conclude it was only a matter of time before the mysterious "Planet X" was found.
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Telescope

New Moon Map Is Best Ever

Dave Mosher
space.com
Wed, 27 Feb 2008 21:06 UTC
Earthlings have mapped the moon's surface for the past 4,000 years, but NASA's latest view is the best yet.

Scientists have created a new map of the south lunar pole with Earth-based telescopes that is 50 times more detailed than the last version, created with data from the Clementine spacecraft in 1994.

New Moon Map
©Unknown
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Telescope

NASA Takes Aim at Moon with Double Sledgehammer

Jeremy Hsu
space.com
Wed, 27 Feb 2008 21:01 UTC
Scientists are priming two spacecraft to slam into the moon's South Pole to see if the lunar double whammy reveals hidden water ice.

The Earth-on-moon violence may raise eyebrows, but NASA's history shows that such missions can yield extremely useful scientific observations.

"I think that people are apprehensive about it because it seems violent or crude, but it's very economical," said Tony Colaprete, the principal investigator for the mission at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif.

Image
©Unknown
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Telescope

Next-best Thing To Being On Mars


sciencedaily.com
Wed, 27 Feb 2008 20:44 UTC
Two MIT students are currently living, working and communicating with the outside world as if they were on a mission to Mars. Whenever they go outside their small, round habitat where eight people are spending a two-week "mission," they don spacesuits and pass through an airlock. When they send e-mail, it takes 20 minutes before the recipient can see it--the time it takes for radio waves to travel to and from the red planet.

Mars Society Desert Research Station
©The Mars Society
Crewmembers of an earlier mission at the Mars Society Desert Research Station in Utah set out for an exploratory trip on their all-terrain vehicles, wearing simulated space suits.
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Telescope

Did A Mega-collision Alter Venus?


sciencedaily.com
Wed, 27 Feb 2008 20:24 UTC
A mega-collision between two large embryonic planets could have created Venus as we know it, according to a new paper by a Cardiff University scientist.

venus
©JPL, NASA
NASA radar image of Venus.
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Magnify

Bacterial 'Battle For Survival' Leads To New Antibiotic


sciencedaily.com
Wed, 27 Feb 2008 20:19 UTC
MIT biologists have provoked soil-dwelling bacteria into producing a new type of antibiotic by pitting them against another strain of bacteria in a battle for survival.

The antibiotic holds promise for treatment of Helicobacter pylori, which causes stomach ulcers in humans. Also, figuring out the still murky explanation for how the new antibiotic was produced could help scientists develop strategies for finding other new antibiotics.

Rhodococcus rhodochrous
©CDC
Slide culture of Rhodococcus rhodochrous. Rhodococcus does not normally produce antibiotics.
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Roses

Earlier plantings underlie yield gains in northern Corn Belt

Chris Kucharik
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Wed, 27 Feb 2008 17:50 UTC
U.S. farmers plant corn much earlier today than ever before and it seems to be paying off, at least in the north. Earlier plantings could account for up to half of the yield gains seen in some parts of the northern Corn Belt since the late 1970s, a new study has found.

Comment: As the current trend in climate cooling continues, earlier plantings will soon become impossible.

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