Science & TechnologyS


Telescope

Sea Level Stargazing: Astronomers Make Key Sighting with Florida Telescope


University of Florida
Mon, 28 Sep 2009 18:54 UTC
This summer, University of Florida astronomers inaugurated the world's largest optical telescope on a nearly 8,000-foot mountaintop 3,480 miles away.

But it was a far more modest observatory, located just above sea level in rural Levy County and just down the road from the UF campus, that proved key to a new discovery about what one astronomer termed "one of the weirdest" planets outside our solar system.

Three UF astronomers are among the authors of a paper that will appear Thursday in Astrophysical Journal, the leading journal in astronomy, pinning down the extravagantly unusual orbit of HD 80606b, a Jupiter-sized planet nearly 200 light years away. The astronomers made observations of the planet eclipsing its star from a 41-year-old telescope at the department's Rosemary Hill Observatory 30 miles west of Gainesville in Bronson.
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Discovery Brings New Type of Fast Computers Closer to Reality

Kim McDonald
University of California, San Diego
Mon, 28 Sep 2009 18:48 UTC
Image
© UnknownAlex High and Aaron Hammack adjust the optics in their UCSD lab.
Physicists at UC San Diego have successfully created speedy integrated circuits with particles called "excitons" that operate at commercially cold temperatures, bringing the possibility of a new type of extremely fast computer based on excitons closer to reality.
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Sherlock

DNA Test Shows Hitler's Skull is That of a Woman


NEWS.com.au
Mon, 28 Sep 2009 13:15 UTC
Skull
© ReutersResearch on a skull fragment thought to be Adolf Hitler's has cast doubt on the circumstances of his death.
Adolf Hitler may not have died in a bunker after fresh research suggests the skull thought to be the tyrant's was from a woman.

US archaeologist Nick Bellantoni found fragments from the skull believed to be Hitler's were too thin to be from a male, and suspected it was the remains of a much younger woman, The Sun reports.

"The bone seemed very thin - male bone tends to be more robust. It corresponds to a woman between the ages of 20 and 40," Dr Bellantoni said.

DNA tests performed in a US laboratory confirmed the remains could not have belonged to the Nazi leader.

The discovery casts doubt on the exact circumstances of Hitler's death and could force history books to be rewritten.
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Light Saber

NASA Goddard Shoots The Moon To Track Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter

Bill Steigerwald
Moon Daily / SPX
Sun, 27 Sep 2009 21:31 UTC
Image
© Tom Zagwodzki/Goddard Space Flight CenterGoddard's Laser Ranging Facility directing a laser (green beam) toward the LRO spacecraft in orbit around the moon (white disk). The moon has been deliberately over-exposed to show the laser.
On certain nights, an arresting green line pierces the sky above NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. It's a laser directed at the moon, visible when the air is humid. No, we're not repelling an invasion. Instead, we're tracking our own spacecraft.

28 times per second, engineers at NASA Goddard fire a laser that travels about 250,000 miles to hit the minivan-sized Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft moving at nearly 3,600 miles per hour as it orbits the moon.

The first laser ranging effort to track a spacecraft beyond low-Earth orbit on a daily basis produces distance measurements accurate to about four inches (10 centimeters). For comparison, the microwave stations tracking LRO measure its range to a precision of about 65 feet (20 meters).
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Sherlock

If You Want to Catch a Liar, Make Him Draw

David DiSalvo
Neuronarrative
Tue, 22 Sep 2009 15:36 UTC
movie interrogation
© unknown
A man accused of a crime is brought into a police interrogation room and sits down at an empty table. There's no polygraph equipment in sight, and the typical two-cop questioning team isn't in the room either. Instead, one officer enters the room with a piece of paper and a pencil in his hands. He sets them in front of the suspect, steps back, and calmly says, "draw."

That's a greatly oversimplified description of what could happen in actual interrogation rooms if the results of a recent study in the journal Applied Cognitive Psychology are widely adopted. The study is the first to investigate whether drawing is an effective lie detection technique in comparison to verbal methods.
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Aryan-Dravidian Divide a Myth: Study


Times of India
Sun, 27 Sep 2009 14:59 UTC
Hyderabad - The great Indian divide along north-south lines now stands blurred. A pathbreaking study by Harvard and indigenous researchers on ancestral Indian populations says there is a genetic relationship between all Indians and more importantly, the hitherto believed ''fact'' that Aryans and Dravidians signify the ancestry of north and south Indians might after all, be a myth.

''This paper rewrites history... there is no north-south divide,'' Lalji Singh, former director of the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) and a co-author of the study, said at a press conference here on Thursday.

Senior CCMB scientist Kumarasamy Thangarajan said there was no truth to the Aryan-Dravidian theory as they came hundreds or thousands of years after the ancestral north and south Indians had settled in India.
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Telescope

Flashback Cash plea for space impact study

Dr David Whitehouse
BBC News
Tue, 08 Oct 2002 14:30 UTC
bollide
© Unknown
Scientists investigating what is believed to be a "significant" fresh meteoroid impact crater in a remote part of Siberia are begging for funds to mount an expedition.

A British meteorite expert has called on the international community to help Russian researchers get to the impact site, which may be of major scientific importance.

Hunters in the region say they have seen a large crater surrounded by burned forest.

Vladimir Polyakov, of the Institute of Solar and Terrestrial Physics in Moscow, said: Specialists have no doubt that it is a meteorite that fell into the taiga on Thursday."
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Cooling the hype: Poor, poor Ida, Or: "Overselling an Adapid"

Brian Switek
Laelaps
Tue, 19 May 2009 14:09 UTC
Darwinius
© PLoS OneRadiographs of the exceptionally preserved skeleton of Darwinius, known popularly as "Ida."
So the big day is finally here. "Ida", a 47-million-year-old primate skeleton from Messel, Germany has finally been unveiled on PLoS One and in a flurry of press releases, book announcements, and general media hubub. Under different circumstances I would be happy to see an exceptional fossil receiving such treatment, but I fear that Ida has become a victim of a sensationalistic media that values audience size over scientific substance.

Before I jump into my criticisms of the paper describing Darwinius masillae, Ida's scientific name, I do want to stress how spectacular the fossil really is. The primate fossil record is extremely fragmentary, and if you want to know anything about fossil primates you are going to have to know your teeth. That's usually all that is left of them. Ida, then, is a paleontologist's dream come true. Not only is it a complete specimen but parts of the primate's last meal were preserved inside its stomach and its body outline was marked by bacteria that fed on the decomposing carcass during fossilization. This is the first time a fossil primate has been found exhibiting such extraordinary preservation.

Comment: An interesting comment on the media splash given to this archeological find, especially in view of this article:

Science in Turmoil - Are we Funding Fraud?

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Attention

Evolution Rethink? Seeking a Missing Link, and a Mass Audience

Tim Arango
The Telegraph
Mon, 18 May 2009 12:57 UTC
Darwinius masillae
© Franzen JL, Gingerich PD, Habersetzer J, Hurum JH, von Koenigswald W, et al. 2009 Complete Primate Skeleton from the Middle Eocene of Messel in Germany: Morphology and Paleobiology. PLoS ONE 4(5): e5723. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0005723 Darwinius masillae / Ida took 47 million years to become an overnight celebrity.
It is science for the Mediacene age.

On Tuesday morning, researchers will unveil a 47-million-year-old fossil they say could revolutionize the understanding of human evolution at a ceremony at the American Museum of Natural History.

But the event, which will coincide with the publishing of a peer-reviewed article about the find, is the first stop in a coordinated, branded media event, orchestrated by the scientists and the History Channel, including a film detailing the secretive two-year study of the fossil, a book release, an exclusive arrangement with ABC News and an elaborate Web site.

"Any pop band is doing the same thing," said Jorn H. Hurum, a scientist at the University of Oslo who acquired the fossil and assembled the team of scientists that studied it. "Any athlete is doing the same thing. We have to start thinking the same way in science."

The specimen, designated Darwinius masillae, is of a monkeylike creature that is remarkably intact: even the contents of its stomach are preserved. The fossil was bought two years ago in Germany by the University of Oslo, and a team of scientists began work on their research. Some of the top paleontologists in the world were involved in the project, and it impressed the chief scientist at the Natural History museum enough to allow the press conference.
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Bad Guys

Science in Turmoil - Are We Funding Fraud?

Jeremy Dunning-Davies
Thunderbolts Project
Sat, 26 Sep 2009 23:30 UTC
There can be little doubt in the minds of those who are involved in attempting to disseminate research results among the entire scientific community that major problems exist. It is well documented that adopting certain stances will result in an inability to publish in the majority of the so-called high impact academic journals.

There are also well documented cases of people experiencing grave difficulties in their place of work and even, on some occasions, being driven out. Amazingly, there are even cases of attempts being made - some successful - to deny research students their doctorates because their theses contain material which may cause embarrassment for some person with an inflated sense of his/her own importance. Again, more and more academics, certainly in British universities, are coming under increasing pressure to draw funds into their establishments. Note the emphasis is not on good research, or even just research, but rather on attracting more and more money.
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