Science & TechnologyS


Telescope

Big Chunk Of The Universe Is Missing -- Again


Science Daily
Tue, 06 Nov 2007 01:21 UTC
Not only has a large chunk of the universe thought to have been found in 2002 apparently gone missing again but it is taking some friends with it, according to new research at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH). The new calculations might leave the mass of the universe as much as ten to 20 percent lighter than previously calculated.

©NASA and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA) Acknowledgment: N. Scoville (Caltech) and T. Rector (NOAO))
The Whirlpool Galaxy in dust and stars. Astronomers have discovered that some x-rays thought to come from intergalactic clouds of "warm" gas are instead probably caused by lightweight electrons. New calculations might leave the mass of the universe as much as ten to 20 percent lighter than previously calculated
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Document

Lost in the middle: author order matters, new paper says

Shari Hawkins
Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation
Mon, 05 Nov 2007 22:09 UTC
Rare is the scientific paper today written by a single author. With research being conducted by teams of scientists, most studies now boast a half-dozen or so authors. According to a new study led by a scientist at the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation, credit for those papers is far from evenly distributed, and the order in which the authors' names are listed makes a big difference.
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Evil Rays

Is your mobile phone watching you?

Suzanne Tindal
ZDNet Australia
Mon, 05 Nov 2007 20:38 UTC
Software which links ordinary mobile phones into a smart camera surveillance network has been developed by Swiss researchers.

The software, named Facet, was conceived at the Institute of Pervasive Computing in Zurich by three researchers: Phillip Bolliger, Moritz Köhler and Kay Römer.
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Star

Comet Draws Scientific, Amateur Interest


Associated Press
Mon, 05 Nov 2007 20:43 UTC


©Unknown
Comet Holmes is seen among the stars of the constellation Perseus in the North-Eastern sky.

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. - A comet that unexpectedly brightened in the last couple of weeks and is now visible to the naked eye is attracting professional and amateur interest.
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Stop

Devices Enforce Silence of Cellphones, Illegally

Matt Richtel
The New York Times
Sun, 04 Nov 2007 01:36 UTC
One afternoon in early September, an architect boarded his commuter train and became a cellphone vigilante. He sat down next to a 20-something woman who he said was "blabbing away" into her phone.

"She was using the word 'like' all the time. She sounded like a Valley Girl," said the architect, Andrew, who declined to give his last name because what he did next was illegal.

Andrew reached into his shirt pocket and pushed a button on a black device the size of a cigarette pack. It sent out a powerful radio signal that cut off the chatterer's cellphone transmission - and any others in a 30-foot radius.
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Attention

A Robot Bride by 2050?

Sharon Gaudin
PC World
Sun, 04 Nov 2007 14:51 UTC
An artificial intelligence researcher predicts that robotics will make such dramatic advances in the coming years that humans will be marrying robots by the year 2050.

Robots will become so human-like -- having intelligent conversations, displaying emotions and responding to human emotions -- that they'll be very much like a new race of people, said David Levy, a British artificial intelligence researcher whose book, "Love and Sex with Robots," will be released on Nov. 6.

Gone, he says, will be the jerky movements and artificial-sounding voices generally associated with robots. These will be highly human-like machines that people fall in love with, becoming aides, friends and even spouses.

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Clock

King Tut's face unveiled to world


BBC
Sun, 04 Nov 2007 13:54 UTC
The face of Egypt's most famous ancient ruler, King Tutankhamun, has been put on public display for the first time.

Archaeologists took the mummy from its stone sarcophagus and placed it in a climate-controlled case inside his tomb in Luxor's Valley of the Kings.

The event comes 85 years to the day after the pharaoh's tomb was discovered by British explorer Howard Carter.
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Bizarro Earth

Scientists that make us proud? List of the most amusing, provocative and outrageous experiments of modern science

Fiona Macrae
Daily Mail
Sun, 04 Nov 2007 10:30 UTC
The thirst for knowledge often inspires research with life-changing results. But it can also fuel experiments that range from the slightly silly to the downright disgusting.

Now a list of the most amusing, provocative and outrageous experiments of modern science has been compiled by author Alex Boese, who scoured research journals, books and university archives.

Topics covered include what happens when you give an elephant LSD and how to make a turkey frisky.

Featured in this week's New Scientist magazine, his book, Elephants On Acid And Other Bizarre Experiments, also tells of attempts to bring dead dogs back to life.
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Key

No driver, no problem as robot cars finish race

Peter Henderson
Reuters
Sun, 04 Nov 2007 01:23 UTC
Cars sprouting whirling lasers on top, moving cameras on the sides, and banks of computers inside sped through the streets of a California desert ghost town on Saturday in a robot race -- no drivers needed.

©REUTERS/Hector Mata
A member of the Massachuset Institute of Technology (MIT) team tunes their autonomous vehicle's computer before the start of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Urban Challenge race in Victorville, California November 3, 2007.
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Bulb

Fine-Tuning Lasers To Destroy Blood-Borne Diseases Like AIDS


interndaily.com
Sat, 03 Nov 2007 22:39 UTC
Physicists in Arizona State University have designed a revolutionary laser technique which can destroy viruses and bacteria such as AIDS without damaging human cells and may also help reduce the spread of hospital infections such as MRSA. The research, published on Thursday November 1 in the Institute of Physics' Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter, discusses how pulses from an infrared laser can be fine-tuned to discriminate between problem microorganisms and human cells.

©unknown
Femtosecond lasers could find immediate application in hospitals as a way to disinfect blood supply or biomaterials and for the treatment of blood-borne diseases such as AIDS and Hepatitis.

Current laser treatments such as UV are indiscriminate and can cause aging of the skin, damage to the DNA or, at worst, skin cancer, and are far from 100 per cent effective.

Femtosecond laser pulses, through a process called Impulsive Stimulated Raman Scattering (ISRS), produces lethal vibrations in the protein coat of microorganisms, thereby destroying them. The effect of the vibrations is similar to that of high-pitched noise shattering glass.
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