Science & TechnologyS


Question

Flashback Is your brain really necessary?


Alternative Science
Fri, 08 Jun 2007 17:33 UTC
Is your brain you really necessary? The reason for my apparently absurd question is the remarkable research conducted at the University of Sheffield by neurology professor the late Dr. John Lorber.

When Sheffield's campus doctor was treating one of the mathematics students for a minor ailment, he noticed that the student's head was a little larger than normal. The doctor referred the student to professor Lorber for further examination.
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Magic Wand

One species, many genomes: Adaptation to the environment has a stronger effect on the genome than anticipated


Max Planck Society
Fri, 20 Jul 2007 18:11 UTC
Faster growth, darker leaves, a different way of branching - wild varieties of the plant Arabidopsis thaliana are often substantially different from the laboratory strain of this small mustard plant, a favorite of many plant biologists. Which detailed differences distinguish the genomes of strains from the polar circle or the subtropics, from America, Africa or Asia has been investigated for the first time by research teams from Tübingen, Germany, and California led by Detlef Weigel from the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology. The results were surprising: The extent of the genetic differences far exceeds the expectations for such a streamlined genome, as the scientists write in this week's edition of Science magazine.
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Magic Wand

Groundbreaking research changing geological map of Canada


EurekAlert / University of Alberta
Fri, 20 Jul 2007 17:45 UTC
Researchers exploring a remote terrain in Arctic Canada have made discoveries that may rock the world of Canadian geology.

Geologists from the University of Alberta have found that portions of Canada collided a minimum of 500 million years earlier than previously thought. Their research, published in the American journal Geology, is offering new insight into how the different continental fragments of North America assembled billions of years ago.

Lead researcher Michael Schultz, a graduate student at the U of A, took advantage of a rare opportunity to explore the Queen Maud block of Arctic Canada, a large bedrock terrain that is said to occupy a keystone tectonic position in Northern Canada.

Because of its remote location, the Queen Maud block has remained understudied. Until now. "In terms of trying to figure out how Canada formed, this block held a lot of secrets," said Schultz.
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Bizarro Earth

Robotic Insect Takes Off for the First Time

Rachel Ross
Technology Review
Fri, 20 Jul 2007 15:15 UTC
A life-size, robotic fly has taken flight at Harvard University. Weighing only 60 milligrams, with a wingspan of three centimeters, the tiny robot's movements are modeled on those of a real fly. While much work remains to be done on the mechanical insect, the researchers say that such small flying machines could one day be used as spies, or for detecting harmful chemicals.

©Robert Wood
This tiny robot weighs just 60 milligrams and has a wingspan of three centimeters. It's the first robot to achieve liftoff that's modeled on a fly and built on such a small scale.
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Chess

Checkers 'solved' after years of number crunching

Justin Mullins
New Scientist
Fri, 20 Jul 2007 13:51 UTC
The ancient game of checkers (or draughts) has been pronounced dead. The game was killed by the publication of a mathematical proof showing that draughts always results in a draw when neither player makes a mistake. For computer-game aficionados, the game is now "solved".

Draughts is merely the latest in a steady stream of games to have been solved using computers, following games such as Connect Four, which was solved more than 10 years ago.

The computer proof took Jonathan Schaeffer, a computer-games expert at the University of Alberta in Canada, 18 years to complete and is one of the longest running computations in history.
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Ark

Archaeologists Dig Up Roman Bath Complex

MARTA FALCONI
Associated Press
Thu, 19 Jul 2007 22:27 UTC


©AP Photo/Andrew Medichini
Archaeologists work in Rome, on the ruins of a 2nd-century bath complex believed to be part of a vast, luxurious residence of a billionaire who gathered his fellow Romans to party and relax.

ROME - Archaeologists said Thursday they have partly dug up a second-century bath complex believed to be part of the vast, luxurious residence of a wealthy Roman.
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Star

Scientists Unveil The Mystery Behind Saturn's "Walnut Moon"


AHN
Thu, 19 Jul 2007 13:20 UTC
A new study conducted on Saturn has solved the mystery of the "Walnut Moon" associated with the planet. Scientists at the NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California now say that a burst of radioactivity warmed and softened Saturn's moon Iapetus soon after it formed, allowing it to be molded into its walnut-like shape, rather than the expected sphere.

Iapetus, Saturn's icy moon, is now 20 miles wider at the equator than the poles. An Iapetus day is nearly 80 Earth days long. The moon also has a broad bulge around its equator capped by a narrow ridge, giving it the appearance of a walnut.

Since long time, scientists were working to find out how it acquired its distinctive walnut shape since the ridge was discovered in 2004 in images from the Cassini spacecraft.
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Snowman

Ice volcanoes in outer space? 'Cryovolcanoes' may spew snow over Pluto's neighbour.

Katharine Sanderson
Nature
Thu, 19 Jul 2007 08:46 UTC
Pluto's neighbouring object, Charon, could be spewing out liquid water from ultra-cold volcanoes, covering Charon's chilly surface with freshly-formed ice crystals.

This dramatic conclusion was made by Jason Cook at Arizona State University, Tempe, who looked at Charon's near-infrared spectrum using telescopes at the Gemini Observatory at Mauna Kea, Hawaii. Cook found traces of both crystalline water ice and ammonia, he reports in Astrophysical Journal1.

Cook says that icy crystals can only exist on Charon if they are regularly deposited there. Crystalline ice cannot exist for long on the surface because it is bombarded with ultra-violet radiation from the Sun and charged particles, and these smooth out the crystals, he says. This is where the volcanoes come in.
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Bulb

Elementary Particles Are Conscious

Jay Alfred
EzineArticles.com
Thu, 19 Jul 2007 06:37 UTC
"In some strange way an electron or a photon [or any other elementary particle] seems to 'know' about changes in the environment and appears to respond accordingly," says physicist Danah Zohar.
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Better Earth

Megaflood 'made Island Britain'

Jonathan Amos
BBC
Wed, 18 Jul 2007 23:10 UTC
Britain became separated from mainland Europe after a catastrophic flood some time before 200,000 years ago, a sonar study of the English Channel confirms.
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