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11 Photos That Show Why The SR-71 'Blackbird' Is One Of The Greatest Planes Ever Flown

2015-01-23T11:52:00.000+03:00

When it comes to curb appeal, few airplanes can match the look of the SR-71 “Blackbird.” And nothing in the Air Force’s inventory — past or present — can beat its signature performance characteristics.
Here are 11 photos that show why the Blackbird remains the standard of aviation cool.

The SR-71 Blackbird was a high-speed, high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft developed by Lockheed’s legendary “Skunk Works” team in the 1960s.

NASAA NASA SR-71 on its first flight on Oct 31, 1997 at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center in Edwards, California.

The Blackbird was capable of speeds exceeding Mach 3 (2,200 mph). The fuselage was designed to expand at high speeds, which caused the plane to leak fuel on the ground because the panels fit very loosely when the jet was parked.

US Air Force

The Blackbird’s service ceiling (max altitude) was 85,000 feet, which forced crews to wear pressure suits and astronaut-type helmets.

US Air ForceSR-71 pilot Col. ‘Buz’ Carpenter.

SR-71s were manned by two aviators: a pilot and a reconnaissance systems officer, who monitored systems from the rear cockpit.

US Air Force

Only 32 Blackbirds were manufactured, and they were in service from 1964 to 1998. Despite over 4,000 combat sorties, none of the planes were lost because of enemy fire. But 12 were destroyed in accidents.

NASA

Claustrophobic types need not apply. The narrow space between canopy rails didn’t give crews much room to move around. The outer windscreen of the cockpit was made of quartz and was fused ultrasonically to the titanium frame. The temperature of the exterior of the windscreen reached 600 F during a mission.

US Air ForceA pilot mans the brakes as the SR-71 is towed out of the hangar.

There's nothing glass about the Blackbird's cockpit. The SR-71 presented the pilot with a dizzying array of steam gauges and switches. And visibility out the front wasn’t the greatest.

US Air Force

Although not technically a stealth aircraft, the SR-71 was hard for enemy SAM systems to spot because it was designed with a low radar cross section in mind.

US Air Force

Because of its high approach speed, the Blackbird used a drag chute to slow down on the runway after touchdown.

US Air Force

Aerial refueling capability allowed the SR-71 to perform long-range, high-endurance missions.

US Air Force

The Blackbird still holds the record for fastest air-breathing manned aircraft (a record it broke in 1976).

Although the SR-71 is no longer in service, the legend lives on.

US Air Force
Article from Yahoo.
Hillary Maruwa; 23rd January, 2015.

Google Patents Contact Lenses That Contain Microcameras

2014-04-15T13:22:00.000+03:00

Add this one to the list of unbelievably cool things Google has in the works: It has patented a contact lens system that would include built-in cameras.

The technology could potentially allow Google to shrink its wearable face computer — known as Google Glass — into the size of a single contact lens. Rather than be controlled by voice, those wearing the contacts would command their device through, as Patent Bolt analyzes it, “a sophisticated system” of “unique blinking patterns.” In other words, people wearing these contacts may look even weirder than people in Google Glass.

News of Google’s patent filing comes just a few months after the company revealed a prototype contact lens that monitors glucose levels. The invention, which was developed in the company’s secretive Google X Labs, could be a major aid for the millions of diabetics who must measure their blood sugar by drawing blood from their fingers.

Google’s latest breakthrough in contact lens technology could potentially grant the blind the ability to see certain things, according to Patent Bolt’s close reading of the patent application.

“For example, a blind person wearing Google’s contact lens with a built-in camera may be walking on a sidewalk and approaching an intersection. The analysis component of the contact lens can process the raw image data of the camera to determine … that there is a car approaching the intersection.”

Sounds rad. Let’s just hope it doesn’t spawn a whole new population of Glassholes.

Article from Yahoo

Hillary Maruwa 15th April, 2014

Hyperloop Transport System

2013-08-13T16:20:00.001+03:00

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - California billionaire Elon Musk took the wraps off his vision of a futuristic "Hyperloop" transport system on Monday, proposing to build a solar-powered network of crash-proof capsules that would whisk people from San Francisco to Los Angeles in half an hour.

In a blog post, Musk, the chief executive of electric car maker Tesla Motors Inc described in detail a system that, if successful, would do nothing short of revolutionizing intercity transportation. But first the plan would have to overcome questions about its safety and financing.

The Hyperloop, which Musk previously described as a cross between a Concorde, rail gun and air-hockey table, would cost an estimated $6 billion to build and construction would take 7 to 10 years. Eventually, according to the plan, it would jettison more than 7 million people a year along one of the U.S. West Coast's busiest traffic corridors.

As many as 28 passengers could ride in each pod and the system could even transport vehicles, according to the 57-page design plan.

Musk, who in the past has hinted at the hopes of building such a system, proposed the Hyperloop as an alternative to a $68 billion high-speed rail project that's a major priority of California Governor Jerry Brown. It would be safer, faster, less expensive and more convenient, Musk said in the blog post.

But not everyone is convinced the project is a good idea.

Jim Powell, a co-inventor of the bullet train and director of Maglev 2000, which develops high-speed transport systems using magnetic levitation, said the system would be highly vulnerable to a terrorist attack or accident.

"The biggest overall problem is the idea of the low pressure tube from a terrorist standpoint," he told Reuters after taking an initial look at Musk's specifications. "All a terrorist driving along the highway has to do is pull over, toss a net of explosives at it, and then everyone in the tube dies," he said.

Musk said that since the tube will be low- but not zero-pressure, standard air pumps could easily overcome an air leak. He also said the transport pods could handle variable air densities.

Musk may also have neglected to factor in a few costs. Powell said that since an extensive monitoring system would be needed to keep track of the tube's pressure, the cost of the project could double Musk's estimate, coming closer to $12 billion.

QUESTIONS STILL

Musk, who made his name as a PayPal founding member before going on to start SpaceX and Tesla, envisions capsules departing every 30 seconds at peak times and traversing the roughly 400 miles between Los Angeles and San Francisco along an elevated tube erected along the I-5 interstate highway.

The capsules ride an air cushion blasted from "skis" beneath, propelled via a magnetic linear accelerator.

The expected half-hour travel time for Hyperloop passengers compares with current travel times of an hour and 15 minutes by jet, about 5 and a half hours by car, as well as about 2 hours and 40 minutes via California's planned high-speed rail.

Other major questions remain, notably whether the California state government will ever approve the massive project, and whether any private companies are willing to step in and build it. The design remains theoretical and has yet to be tested in the field.

Musk has said he is too busy running electric car company Tesla and rocket manufacturer SpaceX to build the Hyperloop himself. He said the design plans were open-source, meaning others can build on them.

On Monday, however, he told reporters on a conference call he could kick off the project.

"I've come around a little bit on my thinking here," he said. "Maybe I could do the beginning bit... and then hand it over to somebody else."

He said he would be willing to put some of his personal fortune toward the project but stressed that building the Hyperloop was a low priority for him as he continues to focus primarily on SpaceX and Tesla.

He also asked the public for help to improve the design. Corporations have resorted in the past to public assistance on their products. In 2009, Netflix Inc awarded a cash prize to a team that succeeded in improving by 10 percent the accuracy of its system for movie recommendations.

Article from Yahoo.

Hillary Maruwa 13th August, 2013

2012-07-09T12:34:00.000+03:00

The Cassini spacecraft has made its lowest pass yet over the south pole of Enceladus, an active moon of Saturn which may harbour a liquid water ocean.

The flyby, at an altitude of 74km (46mi), allowed Cassini to "taste" the jets of ice and water vapour that gush from the moon's polar region.

Several lines of evidence suggest these jets are fed by a liquid water ocean beneath Enceladus' outer icy shell.

The spacecraft's closest approach took place at 1930 GMT on Tuesday.

The scientists are using Cassini's Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer instrument to learn more about the composition, density and variability of the plumes from Enceladus.

Scientists previously detected salts in these jets, which suggested the sub-surface liquid water ocean was probably in contact with Enceladus' rocky core.

This makes Enceladus an even more important target in the search for life elsewhere in the Solar System, as rocks could furnish the ocean with the chemical ingredients thought essential for life.

The plumes erupt from fissures at the south pole known as "tiger stripes".

Last week, scientists presented evidence of a connection between the jet activity on Enceladus and the way Saturn's gravity stretches and stresses the fissures.

Theresults were outlinedby Terry Hurford, from Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), at theLunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC)in The Woodlands, Texas.

However, about 35% of the observations could not be explained by tension in the jets' source regions.

Enceladus moves around Saturn in a distorted, oval-shaped orbit rather than a circular one. This causes the moon to be pulled and squeezed by Saturn's gravity, inducing the heat that enables geological activity on the icy moon.

Article From BBC.

Hillary Maruwa 9Th July, 2012

Stunning Barred Spiral Galaxy Image

2012-02-03T17:26:00.000+03:00

Hubble snaps stunning barred spiral galaxy image

The Hubble space telescope has captured an image of a "barred spiral" galaxy that could help us better understand our own Milky Way.
Most of the known spiral galaxies fall into this "barred" category - which are defined by the pronounced bar structure across their centres.
The presence of this structure may be an indication of a galaxy's age.
Two-thirds of nearby, younger galaxies have the bar, while only a fifth of older, more distant spirals have it.
The new picture also continues the Hubble space telescope's long heritage of striking astronomical images.
In the upper left of the image is a cluster showing recent star formation that is just visible to Hubble's cameras.
But it is a bright source in X-ray light; astronomers believe that this IXO-5 X-ray source is actually a "binary" system comprising a star and a black hole in mutual orbit.

Article From BBC,
Hillary Maruwa, 3rd February, 2012.

Mysterious Symbols in China Desert

2011-11-24T13:57:00.000+03:00

Mysterious Symbols in China Desert Are Spy Satellite Targets, Expert Says

A strange zigzag pattern in the Gobi Desert in China. Coordinates: 40.452107,93.742118.
CREDIT: Copyright 2011 Google - Imagery copyright Cnes/Spot Image, DigitalGlobe, GeoEye

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Newfound Google Maps images have revealed an array of mysterious structures and patterns etched into the surface of China's Gobi Desert. The media — from mainstream to fringe — has wildly speculated that they might be Chinese weapons-testing sites, satellite calibration targets, street maps of Washington, D.C., and New York City, or even messages to (or from) aliens.
It turns out that they are almost definitely used to calibrate China's spy satellites.
So says Jonathon Hill, a research technician and mission planner at the Mars Space Flight Facility at Arizona State University, which operates many of the cameras used during NASA's Mars missions. Hill works with images of the Martian surface taken by rovers and satellites, as well as data from Earth-orbiting NASA instruments.
The grids of zigzagging white lines seen in two of the images — the strangest of the various desert structures — are spy satellite calibration targets. Satellite cameras focus on the grids, which measure approximately 0.65 miles wide by 1.15 miles long, and use them to orient themselves in space. [Gallery: Mysterious Structures In China's Gobi Desert]

The existence of these calibration targets may seem suspicious or revelatory, but Hill said it really isn't; China was already known to operate spy satellites, and many other countries (including the United States) do so as well. In fact, the U.S. also uses calibration targets. "An example I found just now is a calibration target for the Corona spy satellites, built back in the 1960s, down in Casa Grande, Ariz., [at coordinates] 32° 48' 24.74" N, 111° 43' 21.30" W," Hill told Life's Little Mysteries, a sister site to LiveScience.
The 65-foot-wide white lines that make up China's grids are not made of reflective metal as many news sites have suggested. "They have gaps in them where they cross little natural drainage channels and the lines themselves are not perfectly filled in, with lots of little streaks and uneven coverage. I think it's safe to say these are some kind of paint," Hill said, noting that if they were made of white dust or chalk, the wind would have caused them to streak visibly.
The calibration targets are larger than might have been expected, he said, suggesting that the satellite cameras they are being used to calibrate have surprisingly poor ground resolution.
Another strange image taken not far away shows a Stonehenge-like arrangement of objects radiating outward, with fighter jets parked at its center. "This is almost certainly a calibration/test target for orbital radar instruments," Hill said. "Since a significant amount of radar return is due to differences in surface roughness, they're probably testing ways of making the areas around planes 'bumpy' enough that the planes are partially masked."
In other words, the Chinese military probably uses radar instruments to send signals down at the target from above, and determine how much radar bounces back to the instruments from the fighter jets, and how much gets scattered by the Stonehenge-like arrangement of bumps surrounding them. From this, the country's radar experts can learn how best to hide China's military operations from other countries' satellites, and possibly get clues for how to find carefully hidden objects in other countries. However, the fact that the planes are made out of metal will increase their radar return and make it very hard to completely mask them, Hill said.
Since the initial reports of these structures became widespread, industrious readers of the gadget blog Gizmodo have spotted a few more interesting structures in China. One, Hill said, appears to be a weapons testing zone, perhaps for evaluating explosives. Elsewhere, a giant grid resembles a Yagi antenna array. Instruments like this can be used for any number of things, such as weather tracking, space weather tracking and high-altitude atmospheric research.
Hill noted that most of these structures are quite closer to each other. "I think we're seeing some sort of military zone/test range, which explains the large amount of equipment and technology in an otherwise remote area," he said. "Sometimes the truth can be just as interesting, if not more so, than the conspiracies that people come up with."

Article from Livescience.
Hillary Maruwa 24th November, 2011

Einstein's Brain on Display

2011-11-24T13:45:00.000+03:00

Pieces of Einstein's Brain Go On Display For First Time

A box of 46 ultra-thin slices of Einstein's brain is only display in Philadelphia.
CREDIT: Evi Numen, 2011, for the Mütter Museum of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia.

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If you've ever wondered what the brain of a genius looks like, make your way to Philadelphia. There, the public can view for the first time 46 slivers of the brain of Albert Einstein, the theoretical physicist who developed the Theory of General Relativity.
The brain is on display at Philadelphia's Mütter Museum and Historical Medical Library, in a whirlwind exhibit built in about nine working days, according to museum curator Anna Dhody. Visitors can view 45 of the brain slides as-is, and see one magnified under a lens.
"He was a unique individual, and to have the organ that's most associated with intelligence of this great man is a wonderful opportunity," Dhody told Livescience. "What we're hoping to do is to showcase this and to really talk about the brain and the physiology."
Hand-me-down brain

The brain slices have had a strange journey since Einstein's death in 1955 at age 76 from an abdominal aneurism. The pathologist who completed Einstein's autopsy, a man named Thomas Harvey, removed Einstein's brain as part of standard autopsy procedure — and then failed to put it back. Harvey later said that Einstein's son had given him permission to take the scientist's brain, but the Einstein family disputed that claim.
Harvey lost his job over the Einstein scandal, but he kept the brain. Over the years, he would send portions to neuroscientists trying to understand if something about the man's brain structure made him so brilliant. It's some of these hair-thin sections that are now on display at Philadelphia's Mütter Museum and the Historical Medical Library. [Inside the Brain: A Journey Through Time]
"Dr. Harvey had done some of his training in Philadelphia, and he came back to Philadelphia and asked specifically for one of his slide technicians," Dhody said. "All the boxes and all the series of slides were done in Philadelphia."

A close-up scan of one of a slide of Albert Einstein's brain.
CREDIT: Evi Numen, 2011, for the Mütter Museum of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia.

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As a "thank you" to the Philadelphia pathologist who allowed the slides to be made in his lab, Harvey gifted him a box of 46 slides of ultra-thin brain slices, each just 20 to 50 microns thick. (For comparison, an average human hair is about 100 microns in diameter.)
When that pathologist, William Ehrich, died in 1967, his widow passed the slides to another local doctor, Allen Steinberg, who, in turn, gave the slides to Lucy Rorke-Adams, the senior neuropathologist at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Rorke-Adams recently decided to donate the slides to the Mütter Museum, which is run by the College of Physicians of Philadelphia.
"I think the time has come to turn them over to the College and the Mütter Museum as they are a part of medical history," Rorke-Adams said in a statement.
Brain and genius
Einstein's brain will be in good company at the museum, which also boasts displays of a tumor from President Glover Cleveland and neck tissue from John Wilkes Booth. The goal, Dhody said, is to let visitors see what the brain of a genius looks like, while emphasizing that no one really knows if anything about Einstein's brain structure made him great.
Various researchers have uncovered out-of-the-ordinary features in the brain, including extra support cells called glial cells in some regions involved in complex thinking. But human anatomy is notoriously individualistic, and it's tough to say whether any given aspect of Einstein's brain structure made him a genius, was the result of his genius, or was just a quirk. [Life's Extremes: Smart vs. Dumb]
According to Rorke-Adams, Einstein's brain does look unusually young on a microscopic level. He lacks a build-up of lipofuscin, cellular waste associated with aging. His blood vessels are also in remarkably good shape.
"He died at the age of 76, so he was an older individual," Dhody said. "But Dr. Rorke-Adams said looking at his brain, you would think it was the brain of a younger person."
The brain will stay on display for the foreseeable future at the museum, Dhody said, and the museum may consider loaning out slides for future neuroscience research. In the meantime, the museum staff hopes to expand the exhibit with micro-level photographs of the slides.
"It's Einstein's brain!" Dhody said. "It's one of the greatest minds of the 20th century in our museum. What more can you ask for?"

Article from Livescience.
Hillary Maruwa 24th November, 2011

Want to find Aliens?

2011-11-24T13:35:00.000+03:00

Want to Find Aliens? Look for More than Just Earth-Like Planets

An artist's concept of an Earth-like planet orbiting another star.
CREDIT: NASA/JPL

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When searching for alien planets that could host extraterrestrial life, scientists should broaden their minds beyond "Earth-like planets," researchers say.
To date, more than 700 alien planets have been discovered beyond our solar system, and scientists are eager to know if any of them harbor life. In a new study, astrobiologists propose two new planetary rating systems that could make it easier to denote potentially habitable worlds.
One of the new scales, called the Earth Similarity Index (ESI), would take the traditional tack and categorize a planet's likeness to our own. This makes sense, the researchers say, because Earth is still the only known planet to host life, so other worlds that resemble Earth are good bets in the search for extraterrestrials.
"As a practical matter, interest in exoplanets is going to focus initially on the search for terrestrial, Earth-like planets," explained study leader, Dirk Schulze-Makuch, an astrobiologist at Washington State University, in a statement. "With that in mind, we propose an Earth Similarity Index which provides a quick screening tool with which to detect exoplanets most similar to Earth."

But the researchers also propose a second scale, called the Planetary Habitability Index (PHI), which would take into account a range of chemical and physical parameters thought to be conducive to life in more extreme conditions not found on Earth.
"Our proposed PHI is informed by chemical and physical parameters that are conducive to life in general," Schulze-Makuch and his colleagues write in a paper published in the journal Astrobiology. "It relies on factors that, in principle, could be detected at the distance of exoplanets from Earth, given currently planned future (space) instrumentation.”
Limiting the search for life to planets that share a lot in common with Earth potentially restricts the field too narrowly, the researchers argue.
"Habitability in a wider sense is not necessarily restricted to water as a solvent or to a planet circling a star," the paper’s authors write. "For example, the hydrocarbon lakes on Titan could host a different form of life. Analog studies in hydrocarbon environments on Earth, in fact, clearly indicate that these environments are habitable in principle. Orphan planets wandering free of any central star could likewise conceivably feature conditions suitable for some form of life."

Article from Live Science
Hillary Maruwa 24th November, 2011

Andy Rooney ends '60 Minutes' run of 33 years

2011-10-03T12:04:00.000+03:00

In this Aug. 23, 2011 image taken from video and provided by CBS, Andy Rooney tapes his last regular appearance on “60 Minutes” in New York. Rooney, 92, who delivered regular essays on the broadcast since 1978, will have his last spot aired on the Oct. 2, “60 Minutes” broadcast. Rooney will also sit for an interview by "60 Minutes” correspondent Morley Safer.

NEW YORK — Andy Rooney insisted he's not retiring. He's a writer, and a writer never stops being a writer.

Even so, he delivered his final weekly essay on "60 Minutes" Sunday night, his last in his 33 years with the newsmagazine. It was a moment, he said he has dreaded.

"I wish I could do this forever. I can't, though," he said.

CBS News announced last week that the 92-year-old Rooney would be stepping down from his well-entrenched berth on "60 Minutes" after delivering his 1,097th commentary.

"I probably haven't said anything here that you didn't already know or have already thought," he said. "That's what a writer does. A writer's job is to tell the truth."

Rooney began his long career by writing the words for people to say who were on TV or radio. Then when he began his weekly "A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney" in 1978, he began saying them on camera himself, though not as a television personality, but as "a writer who reads what he's written."

Rooney said in his farewell piece that he has lived a lucky life, luckier than most. But befitting his trademark crotchety nature, he voiced one parting complaint: He doesn't like being famous, nor does he like being bothered by fans.

"I spent my first 50 years trying to become well known as a writer, and the next 30 trying to avoid being famous," he said. "I walk down the street now or go to a football game and people shout, 'Hey, Andy!' And I hate that."

So if you see him in a restaurant, Rooney said as he signed off, "please, just let me eat my dinner."

Article from CBC News.

Hillary Maruwa 3rd October, 2011

Einstein's General Relativity Confirmed

2011-09-29T13:43:00.000+03:00

Proof Is in the Cosmos: Einstein's General Relativity Confirmed

Composite image of the galaxy cluster Abell 2744, also known as Pandora's Cluster, taken by the Hubble and Chandra space telescopes and the Very Large Telescope in Chile. Hot intracluster gas is shown in pink, and the blue overlay maps the location of dark matter.
CREDIT: NASA, ESA, ESO, CXC, and D. Coe (STScI)/J. Merten (Heidelberg/Bologna)

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Albert Einstein wins again. His general theory of relativity has proved accurate in predicting how light travels from some of the most distant galaxy clusters in the universe, according to new measurements.

However, the findings still do not disprove an alternative theory of gravity invented to undo the need for dark energy, which is thought to be causing the accelerated expansion of the universe.

The new findings come from a study of light from hundreds of thousands of distant galaxies. General relativity predicts that the wavelength of this light will be shifted by a small amount due to the galaxies' mass, in an effect called gravitational redshift.

The effect is very difficult to measure, because it is the smallest of the three types of redshift, with redshift also being caused by the movement of the galaxies and the expansion of the universe as a whole. To disentangle the three sources of redshift, the researchers relied on the vast number of galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey sample, which allowed them to perform a statistical analysis. [Twisted Physics: 7 Mind-Blowing Findings]

The amount of redshift they found that appeared to be caused by gravity agreed exactly with the predictions of general relativity.

"We have independent measurements of the cluster masses, so we can calculate what the expectation for gravitational redshift based on general relativity is," said University of Copenhagen astrophysicist Rados?aw Wojtak. "It agrees exactly with the measurements of this effect."

Wojtak is lead author of a paper reporting the results in tomorrow's (Sept. 29) issue of the journal Nature.

Warped space-time

General relativity, proposed by Einstein in 1916, revolutionized the way physicists think about space and time. Specifically, it united the two concepts, which were thought to be independent, into one entity. And mass, Einstein showed, affects space-time profoundly, by warping it.

Where you have a large mass like a galaxy cluster, there is strong gravity and space-time is severely warped, causing time to move more quickly. Light emitted in this environment will have a certain frequency, which is related to the time scale (or the gravity strength) of the environment. When that light travels to a new environment, say to a telescope on Earth, where there is comparatively lower gravity, and time moves more slowly, the light's frequency will decrease. A decreased frequency is equivalent to a longer, or redder, wavelength. This is gravitational redshift.

It took physicists 43 years to detect evidence of gravitational redshift. This discovery came in 1959, when researchers measured the gravitational redshift in gamma-ray light emitted in a lab here on Earth.

"This was a groundbreaking experiment," Wojtak said.

Other studies confirmed the effect in the sun and in small nearby stars called white dwarfs. Yet no one had managed to detect a proof of this prediction of general relativity on the cosmic scale, until now.

"In our work we present for the first time the same effect but on a scale which is many orders of magnitude larger," Wojtak told LiveScience. "This is the only general relativistic effect which has been observed and confirmed locally on the Earth and on the scale corresponding to the universe. We have a link between our local scale of the Earth and galaxy clusters."

Alternative theories

The findings further support the already well-entrenched general theory of relativity, which has been successful in predicting many cosmic phenomena observed throughout the universe.

Yet there are still competing theories that have been proposed in recent years to accommodate the strange discovery that the universe seems to contain much more mass than simply the visible matter we can see, and that the cosmos seems to be accelerating in its expansion, propelled by an unknown force.

Within the framework of general relativity, scientists have invented concepts called dark matter and dark energy, respectively, to deal with these problems. But some researchers say these bizarre inventions aren't necessary if we simply tweak general relativity itself.

One such competing theory is called the f(R) theory. This model, too, agrees with Wojtak and his colleagues' new measurements. However, another alternative theory, called Tensor–vector–scalar gravity (TeVeS), does conflict with the new findings. To preserve the theory, physicists would have to make some changes. [Video: Dark Matter in 3-D]

Ultimately, as more data is gathered about distant galaxies, such cosmic measurements should become even more accurate, and physicists may be able to distinguish better between the competing models.

"Discussions of gravity's properties will continue, but Wojtak and colleagues' pioneering work gives a glimpse of the potential of new cosmological tests for achieving higher precision when millions of galaxy redshifts, from which gravitational redshifts can be extracted, become available in the future," physicist Gary Wegner of Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, who was not involved in the new research, wrote in an accompanying essay in the same issue of Nature.

Article from Livescience.

Hillary Maruwa; September 29th, 2011

Life's Little Mysteries

2011-09-07T16:01:00.000+03:00

Could NASA Launch a Secret Moon Mission?

If NASA were to launch a secret moon mission, setting off at night, as Apollo 17 is shown doing here, might be a good start.
CREDIT: NASA

The new film "Apollo 18" is like "The Blair Witch Project" of space travel flicks, couched as found footage shot by NASA astronauts during a secret mission to the moon in 1973. In the story, the astronauts encounter unfriendly lunar aliens, chaos ensues and NASA forever hushes the whole thing up.

It's science fiction, of course: History has it that Apollo 18, along with 19 and 20, was canceled — Apollo 17 was NASA's final lunar mission. But the new film will surely stoke conspiratorial fires about the agency's secret activities. Might NASA really have launched a secret human spaceflight during the Apollo era, without anyone noticing it?

Almost definitely not.

Too many eyes and ears

"Developing the entire manned program involved 400,000 people, so to cover up the whole thing you'd have to keep them all quiet," Craig Nelson, a space historian and author of "Rocket Men: The Epic Story of the First Men on the Moon" (Viking 2009), told Life's Little Mysteries. "Just to send astronauts up in the air required a crew of 300 people. Not only did you have all of them working as part of NASA, but a huge percentage worked for other contractors, so you'd have to have hundreds of people keeping a secret forever."

According to archival records, the number of NASA employees had, in fact, dropped to around 200,000 by 1973, the year Apollo 18 was originally scheduled to take off. That's half the peak employment of 1965, but still a huge number of people to keep silent, had NASA carried out a lunar mission in secret. [What If NASA Hadn't Canceled the Apollo Program?]

Furthermore, Nelson pointed out that the space agency would have somehow had to quiet the millions of people who saw each liftoff of the Saturn V rocket (which delivered Apollo's lunar capsules into space) as it left the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. "There's no way [NASA] could cover up a launch. They could claim that the Air Force was doing it, but even then they would have to completely disguise an Apollo mission as an Air Force satellite mission, and that would be extremely difficult," Nelson said.

If NASA were to attempt a secret launch in today's world, in which there are more watchful eyes and more avenues for information sharing, he thinks the space agency would be even less able to hide a launch from the public.

That's not to say that it couldn't be done at all, though.

Military secrecy

The "Apollo 18" trailer includes a snippet in which the astronauts are communicating with the Department of Defense (DoD), suggesting that it is involved in the secret mission. (The astronauts, however, are decked out in NASA gear and communicate with personnel in Houston, the location of NASA's mission control center.) Filmmakers might be playing off of the fact that the DoD's space program is much more secretive than NASA's, making the premise slightly more conceivable (though more confusing, too).

"The space budget at the Pentagon is much bigger than NASA's budget," Nelson said. "They launch missions all the time and they don't reveal hardly any of it. They have their own launch pad next to NASA's in Florida, and another launch pad in California." [7 Things That Create Convincing UFO Sightings]

The Department of Defense's space budget currently stands at $26 billion; by comparison, NASA's budget is $18 billion. The bulk of the DoD funds, according to Gregory Schulte, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for space policy, pay for satellites that aid in ground navigation, missile launch detection and smart bomb precision. The military satellite network also helps to relay unmanned aerial vehicle feeds to troops, and to track space junk, which can collide with satellites.

Satellites aren't the whole story when it comes to the military's space operations, though. Last year, the Pentagon sent a spacecraft called X-37B, which looks like a miniature space shuttle, into low-Earth orbit. The launch wasn't secret — the Pentagon has said that it couldn't hide a launch even if it tried — but everything else about the mission, including what it accomplished and why, is classified.

Nelson says there's no way of knowing whether the Pentagon has launched a manned mission, to the moon or otherwise. However, when reached for comment, DoD spokeswoman April Cunningham wrote in an email: "The Department of Defense has not launched a manned mission to space."

Article from Livescience.

Hillary Maruwa September 07, 2011

Space Science and Exploration

2011-08-26T17:40:00.000+03:00

Milky Way's Baby Stars Linked to Stellar Growth Spurt

This photo taken by astronomers using the South African Astronomical Observatory shows the center of our Milky Way galaxy and two beacon-like pulsating stars, known as Cepheids, that serve as distance signposts for astronomers. This image was released Aug. 24, 2011.
CREDIT: N. Matsunaga

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Star formation in the center of the Milky Way underwent a growth spurt approximately 25 million years ago.

After a slow period, the mass of baby stars that were created more than tripled, according to new research. Such a peak could indicate an influx of gas into the galactic bulge.

To figure out star birth rates, an accurate count of the ages of stars in the area first had to be determined.

An international team of astronomers turned the Infrared Survey Facility at the South African Astronomical Observatory toward the center of the galaxy in search of a special kind of pulsing star known as Cepheid variables. [Top 10 Star Mysteries]

"It is difficult to determine the ages of stars unless they have some special characteristic," primary author Noriyuki Matsunaga, of the University of Tokyo, told SPACE.com via email.

Counting stars

The steady strobe of Cepheids is related to their age. As they grow older, they flash faster and faster, allowing astronomers to determine just how long they've been around.

It takes stars approximately 10 million years to develop the pulse Cepheids are known for. The stars can last up to 200 million years before dying. This should have provided astronomers with a range of stars to study.

But oddly enough, the only Cepheids the astronomers located were all between 20 million and 30 million years old.

Matsunaga explained that the probability of seeing younger Cepheids was low. Because a star takes around 10 million years to evolve into a variable, it was possible that none of the stars within the field of view would have spent only 10 million years — a brief span of time, astronomically — as a Cepheid.

"On the other hand, the probability to see the older Cepheids is higher," Matsunaga said. "If stars 30 [million] to 70 million years old existed, we should have detected several." [Biggest Revelations of the Space Age]

Instead, they saw none.

"The absence of the shorter-period Cepheids was unexpected," Matsunaga said.

Stellar birth rates

Calculating star formation rates is an exercise in probability. Astronomers know how likely a Cepheid is to form, versus other, nonpulsing stars. The team took the three Cepheids they found and worked backward to determine star formation rates during the two periods.

Three Cepheid variable stars, pulsating stars used to measure distance and age of objects, are visible in this view of the heart of the Milky Way. This image was taken using the South African Astronomical Observatory and released Aug. 24, 2011.
CREDIT: N. Matsunaga

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When these three pulsing stars formed, the bulge of the Milky Way was churning out approximately 0.075 solar masses per year.

The lack of older pulsing stars implied that, overall, less stars were forming 30 million to 70 million years ago. If more stars were created, then more Cepheids would have been seen. Matsunaga's calculations put the rate of star formation at 0.02 solar masses a year.

"Stars are formed more actively in a region with more massive and more dense gas," Matsunaga said.

"Therefore, the change in star formation rate suggests that the gas density in the bulge was higher 25 million years ago."

He went on to explain that other research reveals that different formations within a galaxy could lead to random inflows of gas, which would fuel star formation.

Such an inflow seems to have occurred 20 million to 30 million years ago, bolstering the rate at which stars are created.

Understanding these inflows provides astronomers with a better idea of how the Milky Way evolved, and what it may do in the future.

Article From Livescience.

Hillary Maruwa August 26th, 2011

Monkeys...

2011-08-26T17:30:00.000+03:00

Amazon Expedition Discovers New Monkey

The researchers discovered what appears to be a new species of Callicebus, or titi, monkey, with unique features on its head and tail.
CREDIT: © Julio Dalponte

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A possible new species of monkey has been discovered during an expedition in an unexplored part of the Amazon in mid-western Brazil.

A specimen, which scientists know is a type of Callicebus, or titi, monkey has been turned over to experts at the Emílio Goeldi Museum in the Brazilian state of Para, where it will be studied and formally described. [Amazon Expedition: An Album]

"This primate has features on its head and tail that have never been observed before in other titi monkey species found in the same area," said Julio Dalpone, the biologist who discovered the monkey during the World Wide Fund for Nature-backed expedition.

The expedition found the monkey between the Guariba River and the Roosevelt River in the northwestern part of the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso.

The 20-day expedition undertaken in December of 2010 explored four protected areas of the Guariba-Roosevelt Extractive Reserve, the Tucumã State Park and the Roosevelt River and Madeirinha River. It was intended to gather information to improve the management of these areas.

The team found 48 species of mammal, including armadillos, anteaters, deer and monkeys, as well as 313 species of birds, including some that had only previously been seen in other South American countries. Their survey of fish turned up possible new species, including a catfish, a small, brightly colored tetra, and very small fish known locally as 'piaus.' [In Amazon, New Species Discovered Every Three Days]

They also found threatened species, including a giant anteater, giant armadillo, giant otter, jaguar and ocelot.

The area explored faces a litany of environmental and social problems, including illegal logging and fishing, pollution, the expansion of agriculture, violent conflicts over land, a lack of health or education services and electricity, plus a lack of oversight by state and federal authorities, according to the WWF.

Article from Livescience.
Hillary Maruwa August 26th, 2011

To amp up your brain health and slow cognitive decline

2011-08-19T12:55:00.000+03:00

Foods that are good for your Brain

Foods high in compounds such as antioxidants and omega-3 fatty acids can improve brain health and memory, experts say.

From fruit to fish, here are six things that, based on various studies, may perk up your gray matter.

Credit: Andrzej Gdula | Stock Xchng

Walnuts

They even look like little brains, so maybe that's Mother Nature's way of telling us what walnuts are good for.

Indeed, a 2009 study in the Journal of Nutrition found that diets in which nuts made up as little as 2 percent reversed signs of aging in the brains of old rats, including the ability of the brain to function and process information.

And a study presented in 2010 at the International Conference on Alzheimer's Disease reported that mice with Alzheimer's demonstrated improved learning, memory and motor coordination after being fed walnuts.

Walnuts contain high amounts of antioxidants, which some researchers say may combat the damage to brain cells' DNA caused by free radicals in our bodies.

Credit: Kata Szikora | Stock Xchng

Carrots

Carrots have long been known to be good for the eyes — and it turns out, they're good for the brain, too.

Carrots have high levels of a compound called luteolin, which could reduce age-related memory deficits and inflammation in the brain, according to a study published in 2010 in the journal Nutrition. In the study, mice whose daily diet was supplemented with 20 milligrams of luteolin had reduced inflammation in their brains. The researchers said the compound also restored the mice's memory to the level of younger mice's.

Olive oil, peppers and celery are also high in luteolin.

Berries

Adding some vitamin-rich berries to your diet may not be a bad idea if you want to improve your memory, according to several studies.

One study, published in 2010 in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, found that after 12 weeks of daily supplements of wild blueberry juice, nine older adults who had started to experience slight memory problems showed better learning and recall abilities than a similar group of adults who didn't take the supplements. The blueberry group also showed reduced symptoms of depression.

And in a 2009 report in the Journal of Nutrition, researchers said they examined a group of studies that showed fruits such as blueberries and strawberries, which are high in antioxidants, can decrease a type of stress in cells associated with aging and increase the signaling capabilities in brains. In one of the studies, researchers placed 6-month-old rats on a diet supplemented with blueberry and strawberry extracts (totaling 2 percent of their diet) for nine months. These rats had better spatial and memory skills than rats not given the supplements.

Fish

Although recent research has shown that taking fish oil supplements may not help slow the cognitive decline in people with Alzheimer's disease, other studies have shown that eating fish rich in omega-3 fatty acids could help slow typical cognitive decline that comes with age.

A 2005 study in the journal Archives of Neurology found that people 65 and older who ate two meals of fish a week for six years had a 13 percent decrease in cognitive decline, compared with people who didn't eat any fish regularly. And people who ate one meal of fish a week had a 10 percent decrease in cognitive decline.

Fish high in vitamin B12 may also help protect against Alzheimer's, according to a study published in 2010 in the journal Neurology.

Credit: Debbie Schiel | Stock Xchng

Coffee and tea

Coffee and tea do more than keep you awake in the mornings — studies have shown they may prevent Alzheimer's disease and improve cognitive function.

A 2010 study in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease found that when researchers gave caffeinated coffee to mice genetically engineered to develop Alzheimer's disease, the disease either slowed in progression or never developed. Based on the finding, coffee eventually could serve as a therapeutic treatment for people with Alzheimer's disease, the researchers said.

Tea showed protective effects on the brain, too. Tea drinkers did better on tests on memory and information processing than non-tea drinkers did, according to a 2010 study of 716 Chinese adults 55 and older in the Journal of Nutrition, Health and Aging.

Credit: Andreas Andersson | Stock Xchng

Spinach

Your mom always told you to eat your spinach, and there's science to back up her advice. The green leafy vegetable is loaded with vitamins C and E, which, studies have shown, help to improve cognitive abilities.

A 2000 study in the Journals of Gerontology showed that rats whose diet was supplemented with vitamin E experienced a 500 to 900 percent increase in brain and nerve tissue over an eight-month period, as well as an increase in the release of dopamine in the brain, the "pleasure" chemical that controls flow of information to different parts of the brain.

And a 2000 study in the journal Brain Research found that aging rats had some of their age-related memory and motor deficits reversed after they were fed diets supplemented with spinach, strawberries or blueberries.

Article from Live Science.
Hillary Maruwa Aug 19th, 2011

Brain Image Album

2011-08-19T12:14:00.000+03:00

Inside the Brain: A Journey Through Time

The Human BrainCredit: © Benjamin Albiach Galan | Dreamstime.comThe brain has long boggled the mind with its complexity, which is probably best summed up by Carl Sagan in "The Cosmos," when he said, "The brain is a very big place in a very small space." With modern technology, scientists are peering deeper and closer than ever before at the tangle of neurons and their billions of connections. Here's a peek at what the brain looks like, from antiquity to present-day.

Portraits of the MindCredit: Thomas Deerinck and Mark Ellisman, 2004.In the book, "Portraits of the Mind: Visualizing the Brain from Antiquity to the 21st Century" (Abrams 2010), astonishing images that reveal both the complexity and beauty of the brain. And through time as brain-imaging technology comes online, scientists have new ways of seeing and interpreting the brain. Check out some of the amazing photos from the book.

Canine ScentsCredit: Camillo GolgiThis 1875 drawing showing a dog's olfactory bulb was completed using a staining method named after Camillo Golgi in which certain chemicals are injected into nervous tissue so they can be seen. Some say its application to the study of brain tissue represents the beginning of modern neuroscience.

Dripping DendritesCredit: In-Jung Kim and Joshua Sanes, 2008.

While all cells in the body hold the same genome, only a particular set of its genes get turned on in various cells; each type of neuron switches on a gene set that defines its character.
In this picture, a gene called JAM-B had been switched on, which then turned on a fluorescent protein to reveal a small group of brain cells. The resulting image shows that all of the neurons' projections called dendrites are aligned in the same direction; moreover, these retinal neurons are known to detect only objects moving in an upward direction.

Baroque Blood VesselsCredit: Alfonso Rodríguez-Baeza and Marisa Ortega-Sánchez, 2009.A scanning electron microscope (SEM) image zooms in on the baroque branching structures that send blood to the human brain's cortex. The vessels are organized such that the large blood vessels surround the surface of the brain (top of image), sending thin, dense projections down into the depths of the cortex (bottom of image).

View of a StrokeCredit: Henning U. Voss and Nicholas D. Schiff, 2008.A brain-imaging method called diffusion MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) is relatively new to the field of neuroscience, though it shows promise as a diagnostic tool. Here, an image taken from the brain of a patient who suffered a stroke in the thalamus and midbrain, resulting in damage to certain axons (some are visible at the bottom of the image).

Mouse BrainCredit: Tamily Weissman, Jeff Lichtman, and Joshua Sanes, 2005.A cross-section of a mouse's hippocampus — one of the brain's memory centers — reveals its intricate network of neurons, whose soma are shown as small circles. The hippocampus is seen here nestled directly beneath the neocortex, which is the outer layer of the cerebral hemispheres.

Spiny NeuronCredit: Thomas Deerinck and Mark Ellisman, 2009.Most neurons have three parts: an axon, a cell body called a soma and dendrites. This scanning electron microscope (SEM) image shows a soma with dendrites (and their spines) radiating from it. To create SEM images, a beam of electrons is scanned across the surface of a sample, and a detector keeps track of electrons bouncing off its surface to reveal the specimen's outer shape.

Artsy Brain CellsCredit: Thomas Deerinck and Mark Ellisaman, 2004.Here, two types of cells in the cerebellum are shown: glia and Purkinje neurons. The cells can be distinguished because of a method that relies on the body's immune system and its antibodies — proteins that recognize and latch onto "foreign substances." Biologists now use antibodies to reveal where certain proteins are found in the brain. Here, red is an antibody staining of a protein that's found in glia cells, while green reveals a protein called IP3, of which Purkinje neurons are chockfull.

Color My CerebellumCredit: Tamily Weissman, Jeff Lichtman, and Joshua Sanes, 2007The colored splotches reveal so-called presynaptic terminals, or junctions through which neuron signals are sent, formed by the cerebellum's axons.

BrainbowCredit: Ryan Draft, Jeff Lichtman, and Joshua Sanes, 2007.

While Golgi's staining method did wonders for finding structures hidden in a tangle of neurons, it couldn't distinguish individual brain cells that were illuminated in the same color.
Enter a bit of genetic trickery called Brainbow: Robert Tsien and other chemists tinkered with and discovered fluorescent proteins responsible for the different colors emitted by various sea creatures (such as corals and jellyfish). By coaxing different sets of neurons or even different individuals of a species (say a male and female) to express different proteins, scientists could pick out the cells by the color they glowed.
Here, several motor-neuron axons (slender projections on neurons that transmit signals to other neurons) travel side by side as they lead to the muscles whose contractions they regulate.

Article from Live Science.

Hillary Maruwa Aug 19Th, 2011

Flaxseed may mitigate the effects of radiation exposure.

2011-08-15T11:42:00.000+03:00

Flaxseed Might Protect Against Death from Radiation

Credit: Monica Armstrong | Dreamstime

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Flaxseed may protect against the damaging effects of radiation, whether from a terrorist's dirty bomb or a routine cancer treatment, a new study in mice suggests.

Mice that ate flaxseed either before or up to six weeks after receiving a large radiation dose to the chest were more likely to survive and had fewer lung problems than mice not given flaxseed. Four months after receiving radiation, up to 88 percent of mice that ate flaxseed were still alive, compared with just 40 percent of mice who did not eat flaxseed.

Researchers have been particularly interested in finding a cheap, safe supplement to give to people who have been exposed to radiation in the event of a terrorist attack.

"You need to give something that's really safe as well as [easy] to deliver to a huge number of people all at once," said study researcher Dr. Keith Cengel, an assistant professor of radiation oncology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. Flaxseed meets these requirements and may provide additional health benefits, including improved heart health. "It’s as close to a no-brainer as you get," Cengel said.

However, the researchers are not certain the protective benefits will translate to people.

The new study was published online in the journal BMC Cancer on June 24.

Radiation dangers

Terrorist use of a "dirty bomb" could expose large numbers of people to radiation. This type of bomb disperses radioactive material in the form of an aerosolized powder, and poses great health risks, the researchers said. One type of lung injury that can follow is called fibrosis, in which scar tissue prevents the lung from being able to expand normally during breathing. This injury can also occur in lung cancer patients who have received too much radiation during treatment.

The mice in the new study received a single dose of radiation equivalent to getting about 10,000 X-rays, or what a cancer patient might receive over an entire course of radiation treatment, Cengel said.
One group of mice ate a diet of 10 percent flaxseed before radiation. In people, this would be the equivalent of eating four tablespoons of whole-grain flaxseed per day, the researchers said. Other mice were given that amount of flaxseed two, four or six weeks after radiation. A control group ate no flaxseed.

Aside from having a better chance of surviving, the mice that ate flaxseed also lost less weight and had a lower risk of inflammation and fibrosis than those who didn't eat flaxseed.

The researchers said they aren't sure how flaxseed mitigates radiation's effects. Most DNA damage occurs immediately after a radiation exposure, but flaxseed may prevent the body from reacting in an abnormal way to the radiation, and thus causing further damage, Cengel said.

What about people?

"This is extremely encouraging," Dr. Nagy Elsayyad, an assistant professor of radiation oncology at the University of Miami Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, said of the study's results. The results warrant more research in this area, said Elsayyad, who was not involved with the study.

It's possible providing flaxseed to lung cancer patients before radiation treatment could allow doctors to increase the radiation dose without increasing the risk of injury, Elsayyad said. "That could translate to better cure rates with radiation," he said.

But some are skeptical about whether flaxseed could be used after a terrorist attack or nuclear accident.

"I think there's a likelihood it might do some good," said Dr. Jacqueline Williams, a radiation expert at the University of Rochester in New York. "But I think what the decades of research that have gone into such attempts have shown is that a single drug or a single attempt like this is unlikely to be totally effective," Williams said. It's more likely a combination of agents will be needed to provide protection, she said.

And the mice used in the study were genetically identical, in contrast to people, who are genetically diverse, Williams said. It's unclear whether flaxseed would have the same effect on everyone, she said.

The researchers are now testing the effectives of flaxseed to prevent radiation damage in people receiving radiation treatments for cancer, Cengel said.

Article from Livescience.

Hillary Maruwa August 15th, 2011

Glowing Necklace in Space

2011-08-15T11:27:00.000+03:00

Hubble Telescope Finds Glowing 'Necklace' in Space

The Necklace Nebula is located 15,000 light-years away in the constellation Sagitta (the Arrow). This composite image was taken on July 2, 2011 by the Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field Camera 3.
CREDIT: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

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Talk about bling! A giant "necklace" glowing brightly in space is the centerpiece of a new photo from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope.

The cosmic object, which is appropriately named the Necklace Nebula, is a recently discovered planetary nebula, made up of the glowing remains of an ordinary, sun-like star. The Necklace Nebula is located about 15,000 light-years away in the constellation Sagitta.

Planetary nebulas form when stars similar to our sun deplete their store of hydrogen fuel. The stars' outer layers expand and cool, creating a massive envelope of dust and gas. Radiation flowing out from the dying star ionizes this envelope, causing it to glow. [See Hubble's photo of the Necklace Nebula]

Despite the implications of their name, planetary nebulas have nothing to do with planets. Rather, the term refers to their apparent resemblance to giant planets when they were observed through early telescopes.

The Necklace Nebula consists of a bright ring, measuring 12 trillion miles (more than 19 trillion kilometers) wide. The dense, luminescent knots of gas around the ring resemble the necklace's jewels. [50 Deep Space Nebula Photos]

A pair of stars orbiting close to one another produced this nebula, which is formally known as PN G054.2-03.4. About 10,000 years ago, one of the aging stars ballooned until it engulfed its companion star. The smaller star, though consumed, continued orbiting inside its larger companion, increasing the more massive star's rotation rate.

As a result, the bloated companion star spun so fast that a large part of its gaseous envelope expanded into space. Due to centrifugal force, most of the escaping gas seeped out along the star's equator, producing a ring. The embedded knots are densely packed clumps of gas in the ring.

The stars in the pair are so close — only a few million miles apart, they appear as one bright dot in the center of the ring. The stars are whirling so furiously around each other that they complete a full orbit in a little more than a day.

Article from Live Science.
Hillary Maruwa August 15th, 2011

2011-08-10T10:58:00.000+03:00

Lions Kill and Go Away, to Kill Again Another Day

A lioness leaving an elephant carcass; researchers have found lionesses often leave the scenes of their crimes since prey are likely on high alert.
CREDIT: Stéphanie Périquet

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Lions apparently flee the scenes of their crimes, withdrawing after successful kills while other potential prey are still on high alert, researchers have found by using satellites to track some of the deadly African cats.
This research into the minds of lions sheds light on why and when large predators move on from one hunting ground to the next, a crucial decision when the stakes are survival or starvation. In turn, such insights could lead to better designs of protected areas for African lions, whose numbers have shrunk by half in 30 years.
Deciphering the strategies of predators is difficult enough when they are captive, not to mention when they are free to range far in the wild.

"Such fieldwork is time-consuming, difficult and potentially dangerous," said researcher Marion Valeix, an ecologist at the University of Oxford in England and the French National Center for Scientific Research.
Scientists have had two ideas regarding why large mammalian carnivores depart a hunting ground. In the "unsuccessful hunt" hypothesis, predators hunt everything they can and then move on. In the alternate "patch disturbance" hypothesis, hunters leave after a successful kill to give remaining prey time to lower their guard — allowing the predators to return and blindside them. [Lions Attack Humans When Full Moon Wanes]
To see which strategy lions adopted, researchers followed the movements of eight African lions wearing global positioning system collars and ranging over about 2,700 square miles (7,000 square kilometers) in Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe.
Scientists matched the whereabouts of these big cats with 164 lion kills tracked down between 2005 and 2007. They found that after 87 percent of kills, the lions traveled at least three miles (five kilometers) or more, suggesting they were departing the scenes of their crimes.
"We showed the need for these animals to rotate their hunting between several hunting grounds — for example, waterholes in the Hwange ecosystem," Valeix told LiveScience. "This has implications regarding the configuration and size of lion home range and needs to be taken into account in the design of small conservation reserves."
Most studies focusing on large carnivores have considered them and large herbivores to be rather static variables.
"The most important implication of our findings is that they make a strong case for the crucial need to consider the behavior of large carnivores and large herbivores in a dynamic framework — lions continuously adjust to the behavior of their prey, which continuously adjust to the whereabouts of their predators."
In the future, the scientists plan to study both the behavior of predator and prey at the same time. They detailed their new findings in the August issue of the journal American Naturalist.

Article from Live Science.

Scientists Unravel Mysteries of Intelligence

2010-02-27T01:42:00.000+03:00

FRIDAY, Feb. 26 (HealthDay News) -- It's not a particular brain region that makes someone smart or not smart.

Nor is it the strength and speed of the connections throughout the brain or such features as total brain volume.
Instead, new research shows, it's the connections between very specific areas of the brain that determine intelligence and often, by extension, how well someone does in life.
"General intelligence actually relies on a specific network inside the brain, and this is the connections between the gray matter, or cell bodies, and the white matter, or connecting fibers between neurons," said Jan Glascher, lead author of a paper appearing in this week's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "General intelligence relies on the connection between the frontal and the parietal [situated behind the frontal] parts of the brain."
The results weren't entirely unexpected, said Keith Young, vice chairman of research in psychiatry and behavioral science at Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine in Temple, but "it is confirmation of the idea that good communication between various parts of brain are very important for this generalized intelligence."

General intelligence is an abstract notion developed in 1904 that has always been somewhat controversial.
"People noticed a long time ago that, in general, people who are good test-takers did well in a lot of different subjects," explained Young. "If you're good in mathematics, you're also usually good in English. Researchers came up with this idea that this represented a kind of overall intelligence."
"General intelligence is this notion that smart people tend to be smart across all different kinds of domains," added Glascher, who is a postdoctoral fellow in the department of humanities and social sciences at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
Hoping to learn more, the authors located 241 patients who had some sort of brain lesion. They then diagrammed the location of their lesions and had them take IQ tests.
"We took patients who had damaged parts of their brain, tested them on intelligence to see where they were good and where they were bad, then we correlated those scores across all the patients with the location of the brain lesions," Glascher explained. "That way, you can highlight the areas that are associated with reduced performance on these tests which, by the reverse inference, means these areas are really important for general intelligence."
"These studies infer results based on the absence of brain tissue," added Paul Sanberg, distinguished professor of neurosurgery and director of the University of South Florida Center for Aging and Brain Repair in Tampa. "It allows them to systemize and pinpoint areas important to intelligence."
Young said the findings echo what's come before. "The map they came up with was what we expected and involves areas of the cortex we thought would be involved -- the parietal and frontal cortex. They're important for language and mathematics," he said.
In an earlier study, the same team of investigators found that this brain network was also important for working memory, "the ability to hold a certain number of items [in your mind]," Glascher said. "In the past, people have associated general intelligence very strongly with enhanced working memory capacity so there's a close theoretical connection with that."

Article from Yahoo.
Hillary Maruwa Feb 26, 2010

Microsoft shuts down global spam network

2010-02-26T09:07:00.000+03:00

Microsoft has won court approval to shut down a global network of computers which it says is responsible for more than 1.5bn spam messages every day.
A US judge granted the firm's request to shut down 277 internet domains, which it said were used to "command and control" the so-called Waledac botnet.
A botnet is a network of infected computers under the control of hackers.
The firm said that closing the domains would mean that up to 90,000 PCs would stop receiving orders to send out spam.
A recent analysis by the firm found that between 3-21 December "approximately 651 million spam e-mails attributable to Waledac were directed to Hotmail accounts alone".
It said it was one of the 10 largest botnets in the US.
Machines in a botnet have usually been infected by a computer virus or worm. Typically, users do not know their machine has been hijacked.
Microsoft said that although it had effectively shut down the network, thousands of computers would still be infected with malware and advised people to run anti-virus software.
The court order was part of what was called "Operation b49".
Along with intelligence organisation Shadowserver, the University of Washington and security firm Symantec, Microsoft managed to get a court in Alexandria, Virginia, to force Verisign, which manages the .com domain, to temporarily switch off the domains.
Microsoft said it was the result of months of investigation and described it as a legal first.
"This action has quickly and effectively cut off traffic to Waledac at the .com or domain registry level, severing the connection between the command and control centres of the botnet and most of its thousands of zombie computers around the world."

Article from BBC

Hillary Maruwa Feb 26, 2010

Solar Panel Productivity Boosted by Origami

2010-02-26T06:43:00.000+03:00

Computer simulations of 3-D solar panels. The one on the left consists of 64 flat, triangular, double-sided panels; the one on the right is a simplified version. Credit: Jeffrey Grossman et al.

Solar panels nowadays are flat, but folding them in origami-like ways could help dramatically boost the amount of power they could generate, scientists say.

Research into solar or photovoltaic panels thus far have kept them flat largely to prevent them from casting any shadows that might diminish the amount of light they could harvest. Two-dimensional panels are also far easier to install on rooftops and are well suited to standard large-scale fabrication techniques.
Still, three-dimensional solar panels could in principle absorb more light and generate more power than a flat panel of the same area footprint, which could prove useful in circumstances where the available space is limited. The idea is that any light that might normally reflect unused off a solar panel surface could then get trapped on another panel.
"This was a fully 'bio-inspired' idea," said researcher Jeffrey Grossman, a theoretical physicist at MIT. "I was hiking up at Lake Tahoe in California and noticing the shapes of trees, and wondering, 'Why do they have a given shape over another?'"

Solar panel evolution

To investigate the optimal shape a 3-D panel might take in order to harvest the most light, scientists used a "genetic algorithm" to evolve solar panels in a computer simulation.
The model they developed randomly generated jumbles of flat, triangular double-sided solar panels and analyzed which generated the most power as a virtual sun moved across the sky. The best ones were then "mated" together for "offspring" that combined features of each with "mutations" that varied their structures. This process was then repeated for up to millions of generations, all in order to see what might evolve.
Assuming a roughly 1,075 square foot area (100 square meters), flat solar panels would generate roughly 50 kilowatt-hours daily. In comparison, the best 3-D structures the researchers came up with — jagged clusters of 64 triangles — could harvest more than 60 kilowatt-hours daily if the devices were 6.5 feet high (2 meters) and up to 120 kilowatt-hours daily if the designs was roughly 33 feet high (10 meters).

Since these jagged clusters would likely prove unwieldy to use, the scientists explored a simplified version they dubbed "the funnel," resembling a square box whose sides each caved in at the middle, a design that generates nearly as much energy as the best evolved structures.
"I originally thought that such structures would only be useful in situations where area is at a premium — for example, roof-tops," Grossman said. "Lately, though, we have been exploring more and more directions for ideas that may make 3-D structures more appealing than flat panels even when area is not limited."

No movable parts

For instance, 3-D solar panels could be as easy to implement as flat ones while generating more energy – for instance, by taking advantage of light reflected off the ground, Grossman said. Two-thirds of the cost of a panel for residential or commercial rooftop installation is due to the module and installation costs, not the cost of the silicon or other material that converts solar power to electricity. One could imagine shipping 3-D panels flat and then opening them up like origami for use.
Also, with 3-D solar panels, the way their components are set up, they generate power evenly throughout the day. To achieve the same with flat panels, one has to arrange them on systems that track the movement of the sun across the sky, "which is a big bummer, since you really don't want any moving parts sitting on your rooftop," Grossman said. "Anything that moves can break easily with time and needs more maintenance."
"I'm excited about the fact that such a seemingly simple idea could help lower the cost of solar power," Grossman added. The researchers are now teaming up with experimentalists to build prototypes of their computer-generated designs.

The scientists detailed their findings online February 16 in Applied Physics Letters

Article from Livescience.
Hillary Maruwa Feb 25, 2010

Brain Activity Measured While Flies Fly

2010-02-21T05:06:00.000+03:00

Researchers insert a dye-filled glass electrode (pink) into a fruit fly's brain as the fly is flapping its wings. The electrode and the brain are immersed in saline (colored blue). Credit: Gaby Maimon and Michael Dickinson/Caltech

In a freaky fruit fly experiment, scientists have used electrodes to measure the brain activity of the tiny insects while flapping their wings for the first time. When the animals began to fly, neurons in the visual region of the brain ramped up activity abruptly, they found.

Though fruit fly brains are tiny, packing just 300,000 brain cells, the findings have implications for understanding brain changes in larger animals. For comparison, an average human brain has about 100 billion neurons.
"Our work on Drosophila [fruit flies] is of general interest because sensory neurons in many species — including birds, rodents, and primates — change their response strength depending on the behavioral state of the animal, but why these changes in sensitivity take place is not entirely clear," said study researcher Gaby Maimon of Caltech.
The research was published Feb. 14 in the advance online edition of the journal Nature Neuroscience.
Past recordings of neural-cell activity in fruit flies involved animals that had been stuck or glued down. Working with such a small brain can be a challenge in itself, but Maimon and colleagues wanted to keep the fly alive and active.

"The challenge was to be able to gain access to the brain in a way that didn't compromise the animal's ability to fly, or to perform behavior," said study researcher Michael Dickinson of Caltech. "We couldn't just rip the brain out of the body and put it into a dish."

So the team tethered the fruit fly so that its head was clamped into place while its wings were free to flap. Then, the scientists sliced off a patch of the hard cuticle covering the insect's brain and placed the electrodes onto neurons in the visual region of the brain.

Beneath the hood, a fruit fly's brain looks kind of like a white blob, Dickinson told LiveScience.

"These cells basically help the fly detect when its body posture changes," Dickinson said. "The signals from these cells are thought to control tiny steering muscles that then change the pattern of wing motion and bring the animal back into equilibrium."

A visual display of moving stripes made the fly think it was on the move, either walking or flying – which was set off by a puff of air that got the fly's wings flapping. The electrical activity of the visual brain cells roughly doubled when in flight, they found. The activity boost suggests this visual system is extra sensitive when the animal has taken wing.
"What this really tells us, at least with respect to this visual system, is that the fly's brain is in a different state when it's flying than when it's quiescent, when it would just be walking on the ground," Dickinson said.
Next, the team hopes to figure out what is behind the extra sensitivity and its purpose for the fruit flies.

Article from Livescience
Hillary Maruwa Feb 20, 2010

Bill Gates and the 'nuclear Renaissance'

2010-02-17T22:45:00.002+03:00

(CNN) -- Say you were to give Bill Gates a really great present -- like the ability to cure crippling diseases or to pick all U.S. presidents for the next 50 years.

Gates would like those gifts, sure.
But you wouldn't have granted his one, true wish.
The Microsoft-founder-turned-philanthropist said at a recent speech in California that, more than new vaccines for AIDS or malaria or presidential selection power, what he really wants is clean energy at half its current cost.
To do that, he said, we'll need new technology.

Gates -- a father of the personal computer and quite the tech powerhouse -- said one of the brightest hopes for clean, cheap power is a new form of nuclear power plant that reuses waste uranium from existing nuclear reactors.
It's kind of like radioactive recycling, and, on its face, can sound like a miracle.
Gates actually described energy innovation in those terms: To prevent famine, poverty and the hardship that will come with global climate change we need "energy miracles," he said at the TED Conference in Long Beach.
Some nuclear scientists and critics say the nuclear technology Gates highlighted is misguided, naive and expensive.Others, like Craig Smith, a nuclear engineer at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, said Gates is helping put the world on the verge of a "nuclear Renaissance" that could provide cheap power for everyone in the world -- forever.

"There's a new enthusiasm not only in the United States but, I think, worldwide for the use of nuclear energy," Smith said.
Smith's argument is bolstered by the fact that President Obama on Tuesday announced $8.3 billion in loan guarantees for a new nuclear power plant.
The proposed project, to be located in Burke County, Georgia, would be the first nuclear power plant built in the United States in three decades.

How it works

Most nuclear power plants today use radioactive elements like uranium to create nuclear fission and then produce electricity.
One problem: That reaction leaves behind uranium waste. To make matters worse, the United States hasn't identified a safe place to store the waste from the country's 104 nuclear reactors in the long term.
That's where the technology promoted by Gates comes in.
Gates has invested tens of millions of dollars in a Bellevue, Washington, company called TerraPower, according to TerraPower CEO John Gilleland.
TerraPower is working to create nuclear reactors that generate hyper-fast nuclear reactions able to eat away at the dangerous nuclear waste.
This has a number of potential benefits, Gilleland said. Among them:

• The Uranium isotope that's food for the new nuclear reactors doesn't have to be enriched, which means it's less likely to be used in atomic weapons.

• The fission reaction in the new process burns through the nuclear waste slowly, which makes the process safer. One supply of spent uranium could burn for 60 years.

• The process creates a large amount of energy from relatively small amounts of uranium, which is important as global supplies run short.

• The process generates uranium that can be burned again to create "effectively an infinite fuel supply."

Gilleland said it's not a matter of if the technology works.
"It's going to work -- for sure," he said. "The question will be precisely how well and how economically. But right now there are lots of people in the world who think it could begin to see common application in the 2020s."

'Pie-in-the-sky'

Others scoff at the idea.
Gates is looking for a "silver bullet" technology to fix the world's climate problems, but no such technology exists, said Thomas B. Cochran, a nuclear physicist and senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy group that opposes new nuclear power plants.
"The idea that Gates is going to throw some money at a couple of guys that think they've got a new idea and this is gonna blossom into something that really works is a pretty low probability," he said.
Cochran compared Gates' call for investment in nuclear technology that would reuse uranium to Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme. It's a scam, he said.
Researchers have been working on similar, utopian ideas for more than 60 years, he said, and with no tangible result.
Action needs to be taken now to blunt the effects of climate change, he said; and new nuclear power technologies will take too long to develop and will be too expensive.
"If you're trying to address climate change mitigation, this is not the way to go in any case because it's too far into the future," he said.

"We need the solutions now. The focus on research and development ought to be on improvements in near-term applications, not these pie-in-the-sky reactor concepts that won't be deployed for decades."
Michael Mariotte, executive director of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, an environmental and public-safety group, said the timeline is too slow.
The technology could be ready for testing in 20 years and ready for commercial use 20 years after that, Gates said in California.
"Our belief is that we need to make near-term carbon emissions reductions -- and in that sense, this doesn't help," Mariotte said.
"It diverts resources away from technologies that do work."

Optimism

Others applaud Gates, one of the richest men in the world, for taking on a big problem like climate change with gusto and optimism.
"Look, I think this is the backing of a creative and innovative reactor concept," said Smith, the nuclear engineer at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
"That is a very good thing -- to allow people to stretch their minds and come up with new concepts."
It's unclear where the best clean-energy technology solutions will come from, Smith said, but many varieties of next-generation nuclear tech are under development, and the U.S. government has invested in several.
Ted Quinn, a former president of the American Nuclear Society and a consultant for the nuclear industry, said it's important for the United States to find a valuable use for nuclear waste.
"This is like an ultimate design that can burn a different type of fuel than we burn today. This burns the part of the fuel that we can't burn," he said of the Gates-backed project. "It helps the fuel cycle issues."
In his remarks in California, Gates said there will be no easy fix for climate change.
He encouraged optimism, along with heavier investment in solar, wind, battery and nuclear technologies.
That's the only way he will get his biggest wish, he said. "We have to drive full speed and get a miracle in a pretty tight timeline."

Article from CNN.
Hillary Maruwa Feb 17, 2010

why advetrised broadband speeds lag behind reality

2010-02-15T04:49:00.000+03:00

Downloading music from the Internet, streaming video or even browsing most websites nowadays requires fast broadband Internet connections such as a digital subscriber line (DSL) or cable. But slower-than-advertised connection speeds caused by growing network congestion and artificial restrictions by some Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have left broadband consumers frustrated at times, and for good reason.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced in September that actual broadband speeds lag behind advertised speeds by as much as 50 percent to 80 percent. The FCC defines broadband as being at least 768 kilobits per second (Kbps) for download speeds.

One kilobit is equal to one thousand bits, and 8 bits equal 1 byte. As a point of reference, downloading a 5 megabyte (MB) file such as a music mp3 with a 768Kbps connection takes about 52 seconds.

Upload speeds typically have less priority and run slower for broadband connections.

Fact is, advertised broadband speeds typically represent best-case scenarios, or maximum speed limits. It's certainly possible to reach advertised speeds if all conditions are right, but people are only setting themselves up for disappointment if they expect a guaranteed high speed at all times when they buy into ISP plans.

"It's like asking the local government to guarantee a certain speed when you commute to work," said Andrew Odlyzko, a mathematician at the University of Minnesota who studies Internet economics. "They can widen the street and try to synchronize the light, but [speed] guarantees are impossible."

The bottlenecks

Myriad problems out of your control — beyond your computer — can slow data transfer speeds, even if you have a DSL, cable or fiber optic connection with advertised speeds of tens or hundreds of megabits per second (Mbps).

With DSL, Internet users who live far from the line's point of origin, or central node, can experience slower speeds than people who live near a node.

Network congestion between an Internet user and the ISP nodes can also make for sluggish connection speeds — peak usage occurs when many at-home users crowd on, typically from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m.

Even if there's no congestion, data transfer speeds depend on many factors outside of the control of any one ISP. For instance, a website receiving too many hits from online visitors may suffer from lag because its server cannot handle the load. Visiting a website being hosted by a server halfway across the world can also mean slower loading speeds.

"What your ISP handles is just a small piece of the puzzle," Odlyzko told TechNewsDaily.

ISPs can certainly take steps to improve broadband speeds, such as building the infrastructure to support more Internet users and managing network congestion better. They could also tone down advertising that may currently mislead customers, Odlyzko noted.

ISPs face lawsuits

The failure of broadband to reach promised speeds has led to more than just complaints. In 2005, unhappy customers of AT&T's DSL service filed a lawsuit in a St. Louis Circuit Court. That lawsuit gained class-action status in December 2009, and could potentially affect thousands of customers in Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Texas, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

One part of the St. Louis lawsuit notes that AT&T puts artificial caps on the connection speeds of some customers. Comcast also uses the practice of bandwidth caps to limit the amount of data that customers can download per month, based on preventing heavy Internet users from hogging networks and causing congestion.

The idea of restricting heavy Internet users has some basis in lopsided usage patterns. According to the FCC, about 1 percent of users drive 20 percent of Internet traffic, and 20 percent of users drive up to 80 percent of traffic.

Yet the capping practice has often enraged Web surfers, with 81 percent of U.S. consumers expressing their dislike of capping and metering in a 2008 survey by the International Data Corporation.

For now, the FCC is focused on unveiling its National Broadband Plan that would supposedly ensure that everyone has access to purchasing broadband, now delayed until March. Almost two-thirds of Americans stay connected to the Internet with broadband at home, according to the FCC and surveys by the Pew Internet & American Life project. Just 7 percent of Pew survey respondents said that they still use dialup modems, which represent an extremely slow connection method for today's Internet, which is designed for broadband speeds.

"Ten years ago, people were pretty happy with 56 Kbps modems," Odlyzko said. "These days you can't even do e-mail — Web-surfing with 56 Kpbs modem is really awful."

Article from Livescience.
Hillary Maruwa Feb 14, 2010

tiles that changes color

2010-02-14T16:00:00.000+03:00

On a blazing summer day, a black roof gets miserably hot, while a white roof reflects the sun and keeps a home cooler. In winter, the warmth generated by a solar-radiation-absorbing black roof can save energy.
That's well-known and simple enough. Unfortunately, you can't have it both ways. Well ...
A team of recent MIT graduates has developed roof tiles that change color based on the temperature. The tiles become white on a hot day and turn black when it's cold outside.
When white, the tiles reflect about 80 percent of the sunlight that hits them. When they are black, they reflect only about 30 percent. The white state could save up to 20 percent of present cooling costs, according to other recent studies on the theory of all this. Savings from the black state in winter have yet to be quantified.
The tiles rely on a polymer similar to that used in hair gels and water, in a solution encapsulated between layers of flexible plastic. When cool, the polymer stays dissolved, letting a black background show through. When warmed, the polymer condenses to form tiny droplets, whose small sizes scatter light and thus produce a white surface, reflecting the sun's heat.

More work is needed to make the setup commercial-ready.
"It's got to stand up to very harsh conditions," said Nick Orf, a member of the team that calls itself Thermeleon (get it?). "Those sorts of tests would have to be done before we'll know if we have a viable product."

Article from Livescience.
Hillary Maruwa Feb, 14 2010