Takanori Isshiki
ReutersMon, 27 Aug 2007 23:31 UTC
A researcher investigating underwater rock formations off the coast of Japan believes they are the remnants of an Asian equivalent of Atlantis -- an ancient civilization swallowed up by the ocean.
Marine geologist Masaaki Kimura says he has identified the ruins of a city off the coast of Yonaguni Island on the southwestern tip of Japan.
Some of the elements necessary to support life on Earth are widely known - oxygen, carbon and water, to name a few. Just as important in the existence of life as any other component is the presence of adenine, an essential organic molecule. Without it, the basic building blocks of life would not come together.
Scientists have been trying to find the origin of Earth's adenine and where else it might exist in the solar system. University of Missouri-Columbia researcher Rainer Glaser may have the answer.
Michael Hopkin
ScienceMon, 27 Aug 2007 10:54 UTC
A French-led team of geneticists has cemented the country's reputation as the world's wine capital - by compiling the complete genetic code of a Pinot Noir grape. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they have discovered that the species has a large repertoire of genes that produce compounds known to give complex flavours to fruit.
Among the almost half-billion DNA 'letters' pieced together by the researchers are a host of genes that encode terpenes and tannins - which any wine buff will tell you are essential for a fine vintage.
In October 1963, two cartographers with the Air Force Aeronautical Chart and Information Center saw a strange glow on the moon. Using the 24-inch refractor telescope at Lowell observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, James Greenacre and Edward Barr saw a deep, ruby-red glow coming from the crater Aristarchus. The sighting might have been glowing gas from volcanic activity, and a second sighting in November of that year was verified by Dr. John Hall, Director of the observatory at the time.
Throughout history, there have been many more. There have been rumbles from other areas on the moon as well. For example, when Dr. Yosio Nakamura of the University of Texas, Austin, and his colleagues reviewed seismology data from the Apollo missions, they discovered there was a magnitude 5.7 moonquake near the lunar south pole, a possible site for a future lunar base.
Peter Jenniskens, Ph.D., Meteor Astronomer, Carl Sagan Center, SETI Institute
Space.comThu, 23 Aug 2007 04:13 UTC
The meteors that are about to rain down in the early morning of September 1 date from around 4 A.D., the latest calculations show.
Charles Trueheart
BloombergSun, 26 Aug 2007 12:51 UTC
For two millennia, brilliant minds have been trying to find a logical system of measuring the world that everyone can agree upon. The stubborn persistence of yards, gallons and pounds in a world that mostly works in meters, liters and grams suggests how deep the disagreement has been.
While this doesn't bother British architect Robert Tavernor, it does fascinate him. In ''Smoot's Ear,'' he offers a brief history of humanity's effort to measure the world by scientific principle, even as science itself has changed our knowledge.
Lisa Rathke
AP NewsSun, 26 Aug 2007 00:29 UTC
It looks like a clump of soiled sheep's wool, a cottony green or white mass that's turning up on rocks and river bottoms, snarling waterways.
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| Mary Russ, executive director of the White River Partnership, holds a rock covered with didymo in the White River in Stockbridge, Vt., Friday, July 27, 2007. The aquatic algae didymo -- Didymosphenia geminata -- has infested rivers in New Zealand with gray floating growth but had never been seen in the Northeast before this summer when fishermen spotted it in the upper Connecticut and White rivers. Northeast states are on alert. They're warning anglers and boaters to scour their boats and clean their gear to prevent the algae's spread.
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Cooperation is widespread in the natural world but so too are cheats - mutants that do not contribute to the collective good but simply reap the benefits of others' cooperative efforts. In evolutionary terms, cheats should indeed prosper, so how cooperation persists despite the threat of cheat takeover is a fundamental question. Recently, biologists at the Universities of Edinburgh and Oxford have found that in bacteria, cheats actually orchestrate their own downfall.
Eight kg (17 lb) of radioactive uranium has gone missing in China, delaying the verdict in a trial of four men charged with attempting to sell it on the black market, state media said on Friday.
A court in Guangzhou, capital of China's southern province of Guangdong, heard the four tried to sell the material between 2005 and January 2007, the China Daily said.
The men were arrested in January after a potential buyer in Hong Kong reported them to the authorities, the paper said.
However, despite having the four men in custody, police were unable to locate the uranium.
Comment: Read Political ponerology to understand Hysteroidal cycle and Pathocracy of Human world.