tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9452032162041203952024-11-05T18:48:24.909-08:00A place to spread knowledge to people in the entire planetwhiskey in the jarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17711488914728216142noreply@blogger.comBlogger105125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-945203216204120395.post-88745660755076393582011-12-14T03:21:00.000-08:002011-12-14T03:29:31.361-08:00

So that's what a digital revolt looks like. A million-and-a-half emails and almost 90,000 phone calls to US Congress. Public complaints from Google and Facebook. Even a few thousand old-fashioned letters to the US House of Representatives. This internet ire, marshalled under the banner of American Censorship Day on 16 November, came in opposition to the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA),

whiskey in the jarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17711488914728216142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-945203216204120395.post-25979456887903087172011-12-11T07:53:00.000-08:002011-12-11T07:53:05.489-08:00

The words "science" and "censorship"clo not sit easily together. And yet over the past decade, science has come to occupy an increasingly important role in debates over free speech. This is partly due to public clashes between science and politics, from the censoring of climate science in the US under the Bush administration to David Nutt's dismissal as the UK government's adviser on drugs after

whiskey in the jarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17711488914728216142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-945203216204120395.post-74264732362975726382011-12-11T01:43:00.000-08:002011-12-11T01:43:14.966-08:00

THE surface of Mars may be cold and desolate, but it is not unchanging.  New images show that avalanches of dust scour dozens of Martian sites each year. Without the abundant water and plate tectonics that keep Earth's surface in motion, the surface of Mars is much slower to change. But in one way it is more active.While Earth's atmosphere shields us from asteroids smaller than 30 metres

whiskey in the jarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17711488914728216142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-945203216204120395.post-28244559384063025652011-12-08T23:56:00.000-08:002011-12-08T23:56:07.851-08:00

How do you capture a raven's heart? Arrest its attention by showing it a twig or stone. Ravens use referential gestures — one of the foundations of human language —to initiate relationships. From an early age we learn to use referential gestures such as pointing to direct another's attention. "People think that this pointing forms the basis of language," says Simone Pika at the Max Planck

whiskey in the jarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17711488914728216142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-945203216204120395.post-27195291512044003052011-12-08T23:47:00.000-08:002011-12-08T23:47:23.673-08:00

Getting a more accurate picture of someone's brainwaves could simply be a case of lying them down. The boost this gives to the electrical signals that can be read from the brain could improve diagnosis of brain disorders and enhance control of brain-machine interfaces. Electroencephalography, or EEG, is a relatively cheap, non-invasive way to measure brain activity using a cap of electrodes

whiskey in the jarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17711488914728216142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-945203216204120395.post-48061162245042511682011-12-08T21:38:00.000-08:002011-12-08T21:38:39.095-08:00

HIV doesn't play by the rules: instead of dodging the immune system it attacks it head on. Now it seems our best hope for a vaccine against the killer virus might also involve tearing up the rule book — by fighting an infection without help from the immune system. Using this approach, mice can keep HIV at bay even when given loo times the virus that would be needed to cause a lethal infection.

whiskey in the jarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17711488914728216142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-945203216204120395.post-47314987956754099782011-12-08T01:06:00.001-08:002011-12-08T01:06:59.406-08:00

AS THE latest round of United Nations climate negotiations began in Durban, South Africa. on Monday. expectations could scarcely have been lower. A globally binding deal is further away than ever. That makes considerable warming from climate change inevitable. In the last few weeks major reports by the International Energy Agency and the UN Environment Programme (UN EP) have concluded that we can

whiskey in the jarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17711488914728216142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-945203216204120395.post-33872084078971828502011-11-29T23:51:00.000-08:002011-11-29T23:51:09.380-08:00

The contention that molecular platforms known as lipid rails sail on the cell's outer, or plasma. membrane has kept researchers debating for more than a decade. Although many scientists argue that rafts either don't exist or have no biological relevance, their supporters insist the idea remains afloat. Cell biologist Kai Simons. now at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and

whiskey in the jarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17711488914728216142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-945203216204120395.post-47753173207511279872011-11-28T01:16:00.001-08:002011-11-28T01:16:37.444-08:00

Handheld gadgets could one day diagnose infections at the push of a button by using the supersensitive touchscreens in today's smartphones. Many believe that in the future collecting samples of saliva, urine or blood could be performed using a cheap, USB-stick-sized throwaway device called a lab-on-a-chip. The user would inject a droplet of the fluid in the chip, and micropumps inside it would

whiskey in the jarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17711488914728216142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-945203216204120395.post-79140852343755212042011-11-27T20:17:00.000-08:002011-11-27T20:17:49.087-08:00

An international scientific assessment finds for the first time that human activity has indeed driven not just global warming but also increases in some extreme weather and climate events around the world in recent decades. And those and likely other weather extremes will worsen in coming decades as greenhouse gases mount, the report finds. But uncertainties are rife in the still-emerging field

whiskey in the jarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17711488914728216142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-945203216204120395.post-62728086612313631272011-11-27T18:06:00.001-08:002011-11-27T18:06:48.006-08:00

That warm, fuzzy feeling you get from sitting in a sauna isn't in your imagination — and it may also help your heart. People with chronic heart failure who took saunas five times a week for three weeks improved their heart function and the amount of exercise they could do. Meanwhile, neurons that release the "happiness molecule" serotonin respond to increases in body temperature, perhaps

whiskey in the jarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17711488914728216142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-945203216204120395.post-20716609963138110012011-11-25T22:27:00.000-08:002011-11-25T22:31:12.111-08:00

Brain shrinkage in people with Alzheimer's disease can be reversed in some cases - by jolting the degenerating tissue with electrical impulses. Moreover, doing so reduces the cognitive decline associated with the disease. "In Alzheimer's disease it is known that the brain shrinks, particularly the hippocampus," says Andres Lozano at Toronto Western Hospital in Ontario, Canada. What's more,

whiskey in the jarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17711488914728216142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-945203216204120395.post-1770825682436997642011-11-25T21:05:00.001-08:002011-11-25T21:05:44.720-08:00

You may think humanity's first words are lost in the noise of ancient history, but an unlikely experiment using plastic tubes and puffs of air is helping to recreate the first sounds uttered by our distant ancestors. Many animals communicate with sounds, but it is the variety of our language that sets us apart. Over millions of years, changes to our vocal organs have allowed us to produce a rich

whiskey in the jarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17711488914728216142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-945203216204120395.post-86821164186166344722011-11-25T20:16:00.000-08:002011-11-25T20:21:00.540-08:00

ONCE upon a time, 3 billion years ago, there lived a single organism called LUCA. It was enormous: a mega-organism like none seen since, it filled the planet's oceans before splitting into three and giving birth to the ancestors of all living things on Earth today. This strange picture is emerging from efforts to pin down the last universal common ancestor — not the first life that emerged

whiskey in the jarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17711488914728216142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-945203216204120395.post-79674387424903637252011-11-24T19:20:00.000-08:002011-11-24T19:20:34.693-08:00

THE mathematicians' version of nothing is the empty set. This is a collection that doesn't actually contain anything, such as my own collection of vintage Rolls-Royces. The empty set may seem a bit feeble, but appearances deceive; it provides a vital building block for the whole of mathematics. It all started in the late 1800s. While most mathematicians were busy adding a nice piece of furniture,

whiskey in the jarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17711488914728216142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-945203216204120395.post-35205363966020231862011-11-23T01:52:00.000-08:002011-11-23T01:52:11.660-08:00

Meat is bad: bad for you, bad for the environment. At least that's the usual argument. Each year, the doors to the UN climate negotiations, which kick off again in Durban, South Africa, on 28 November, are assailed by demonstrators brandishing pro-vegetarian placards. The fact is that livestock farming accounts for a whopping 15 per cent of all greenhouse gas emissions. We can't all go veggie, so

whiskey in the jarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17711488914728216142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-945203216204120395.post-78623823075040446972011-11-22T03:11:00.000-08:002011-11-22T03:11:44.068-08:00

An era of ice that has gripped Earth's poles for 35 million years could come to an end as extreme global warming really begins to bite. Previously unknown sources of positive feedback — including "hyperwarming" that was last seen on Earth half a billion years ago— may push global temperatures high enough to send Earth into a hothouse state with tropical forests growing close to the poles.

whiskey in the jarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17711488914728216142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-945203216204120395.post-90338742130393391092011-11-22T02:05:00.000-08:002011-11-22T02:12:59.531-08:00

DEEP in the heart of the cell, your DNA may be undergoing subtle changes that could lead to a devastating disease several years down the line. New microscopy techniques are now lifting the lid on this inner world, potentially offering an early-warning system for cancer or Alzheirner's long before the diseases begin to bite. Full-blown disease may be preceded by a long build-up. For example, a

whiskey in the jarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17711488914728216142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-945203216204120395.post-30697980195011195042011-11-22T00:32:00.000-08:002011-11-23T01:10:58.304-08:00

MOST of us want to reach our full potential. We might drink a cup of coffee to stay alert, or go for a run to feel on top of the job. So where's the harm in taking a pill that can do the same thing? So-called cognitive-enhancing drugs are usually prescribed to treat medical conditions, but they are also known for their ability to improve memory or focus. Many people buy them over the internet,

whiskey in the jarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17711488914728216142noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-945203216204120395.post-66489337544751996882011-11-21T01:51:00.000-08:002011-11-21T01:51:29.422-08:00

GETTING microchips wet is normally best avoided. But a new type of chip that is both powered and cooled by fluid pumping through it could power the computers, srnartphones and tablets of the future. If the design is successful, its inventors at IBM argue an entire supercomputer—like Watson, the firm's natural-language-processing trivia savant— could one day be squeezed onto mobile devices small

whiskey in the jarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17711488914728216142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-945203216204120395.post-5078188600114413732011-11-20T23:50:00.000-08:002011-11-25T03:26:40.625-08:00

Embryonic-like stein cells have been discovered in breast milk in large numbers. This is the first time such cells have been found in an adult. If the cells live up to their potential we may soon have stem cells for medical therapy, without destroying any embryos. Back in 2008, Peter Hartrnann at the University of Western Australia in Crawley and his colleagues announced they had discovered stem

whiskey in the jarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17711488914728216142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-945203216204120395.post-7514274448270733512011-11-20T23:23:00.000-08:002011-11-20T23:25:25.370-08:00

You can get something from nothing — as long as you are moving close to the speed of light. The discovery confirms a 41-year-old prediction on how to pull energy from empty space and produce light. The phenomenon relies on the long-established fact that empty space is not at all empty, but fizzing with particles that pop in and out of existence. This is down to the laws of quantum mechanics,

whiskey in the jarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17711488914728216142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-945203216204120395.post-7268129840805359392011-11-17T23:41:00.000-08:002011-11-17T23:41:14.219-08:00

FORTY years ago a secret military project In communist China yielded one of the greatest drug discoveries in modern medicine. Artemisinin remains the most effective treatment for malaria today and has saved millions of lives. Until recently, though, the drug's origins were a mystery."I was at a meeting in Shanghai in 2005 with all of the Chinese inalariologists and tasked who discovered

whiskey in the jarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17711488914728216142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-945203216204120395.post-51438117538788531262011-11-17T21:11:00.000-08:002011-11-17T21:12:42.001-08:00

Even the most ardent fans of the Red Planet must occasionally wish for more than just hints of water popping up in ever-new places. So why not send a robot to hunt directly for little green men? One word: Viking. NASA's Viking landers did just that in 1976, laying out a tasty solution of nutrients to attract any microbes that might be living in a soil sample, like cookies left on a plate for

whiskey in the jarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17711488914728216142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-945203216204120395.post-72786952807372688922011-11-16T18:33:00.000-08:002011-11-16T18:34:40.004-08:00

In the aftermath of hurricane Katrina in 2005, a vigorous debate raged as to whether it was a "normal " natural disaster or a consequence of global warming. Al Gore depicted the devastation of New Orleans in his movie An Inconvenient Truth and linked it to climate change. I became involved during a case before the High Court in London challenging a UK government decision to distribute the movie

whiskey in the jarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17711488914728216142noreply@blogger.com0