Naps May Improve Performance Later In The Day

(NPR) Looking for an excuse to work in a quick snooze in the afternoon? Here you go: Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley have found that naps may help your brain work better later. Matthew Walker, who led the study, says we know that sleeping is critical to cementing new memories, but this research looked at whether getting sleep before learning is equally important to prepare your brain to soak up information. "Despite us all knowing the sort of subjective benefits of sleep, what may be surprising to the general public is that scientists and doctors do not still have a satisfying answer as to why we sleep — and that, of course, is one-third of our lives," Walker tells NPR's Guy Raz.

Kindness Breeds More Kindness, Study Shows

(Brandon Keim, Wired.com) In findings sure to gladden the heart of anyone who’s ever wondered whether tiny acts of kindness have larger consequences, researchers have shown that generosity is contagious. Goodness spurs goodness, they found: A single act can influence dozens more. In a game where selfishness made more sense than cooperation, acts of giving were "tripled over the course of the experiment by other subjects who are directly or indirectly influenced to contribute more," wrote political scientist James Fowler of the University of California, San Diego, and medical sociologist Nicholas Christakis of Harvard University.

'Skinput' Turns Your Body Into Touchscreen Interface

(Dan Hope, TechNewsDaily) Touchscreens may be popular both in science fiction and real life as the symbol of next-gen technology, but an innovation called Skinput suggests the true interface of the future might be us. Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon University unveiled Skinput recently, showing how it can turn your own body into a touchscreen interface. Skinput uses a series of sensors to track where a user taps on his arm. Previous attempts at using projected interfaces used motion-tracking to determine where a person taps. Skinput uses a different and novel technique: It "listens" to the vibrations in your body.

Happy People Talk More, and With More Substance

(LiveScience.com) Happy people tend to talk more than unhappy people, but when they do, it tends to be less small talk and more substance, a new study finds. A group of psychologists from the University of Arizona and Washington University in St. Louis set out to find whether happy and unhappy people differ in the types of conversations they tend to have. For their study, volunteers wore an unobtrusive recording device called the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR) over four days. The device periodically records snippets of sounds as participants go about their lives.

Dog DNA Diversity Helps Show How Genes Work

(Andrea Thompson, LiveScience.com) Dogs are possibly the most varied-looking mammal species on the planet. It's this diversity of looks that make man's best friend the perfect laboratory for connecting sets of genes to particular traits and understanding the molecular mechanisms that govern variation in dogs as well as humans and other mammals. The genome of the domesticated dog (Canis familiaris) was first sequenced in 2005. The more than 300 dog breeds that exist in the world (170 of which are recognized by the American Kennel Club) developed first through domestication of the gray wolf and then by human breeding.

Perfect Insulator Could Eliminate Heating Bills

(Eric Bland, ABC News) A perfect insulator, or a material that reflects heat while absorbing none of it, has been created by scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Sandia National Laboratories. Besides eliminating your heating bill, perfect insulators could make computers cooler and speed up cell phone downloads. "All the heat that hits it gets shot back in the other direction," said Edwin Thomas, a scientist at MIT and co-author of a recent paper in the journal ACS Nano Letters describing the creation of a low-temperature perfect insulator. "If you could put the right material on the wall (of a home), the heat from your body would be enough to heat it."

Massive head of pharaoh unearthed in Egypt

(Hadeel Al-Shalchi, AP) Archaeologists have unearthed a massive red granite head of one Egypt's most famous pharaohs who ruled nearly 3,400 years ago, the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities announced Sunday. The head of Amenhotep III, which alone is about the height of a person, was dug out of the ruins of the pharaoh's mortuary temple in the southern city of Luxor. The leader of the expedition that discovered the head described it as the best preserved sculpture of Amenhotep III's face found to date.

Accidental Discovery Pieces Together Ancient Biblical Manuscript

(AP) Two parts of an ancient biblical manuscript separated across centuries and continents were reunited for the first time in a joint display Friday, thanks to an accidental discovery that is helping illuminate a dark period in the history of the Hebrew Bible. The 1,300-year-old fragments, which are among only a handful of Hebrew biblical manuscripts known to have survived the era in which they were written, existed separately and with their relationship unknown, until a news photograph of one's public unveiling in 2007 caught the attention of the scholars who would eventually link them.

Solar Panel Productivity Boosted by Origami

(Charles Q. Choi, TechNewsDaily) 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.

The Death and Rebirth of the RickRoll

(FOXNews.com) YouTube temporarily pulled the video behind the RickRoll -- one of the most popular Internet memes ever -- leading to fears of the last RickRoll. Fear not, he's still rolling. A RickRoll refers to replacing an expect piece of Web content -- a link, image, or whatever -- to a picture of '80s singer Rick Astley, tricking someone into watching Astley's big chart hit, "Never Gonna Give You Up." And ever so briefly, the net was roiled on Wednesday by the possibility that RickRolling was over. YouTube had pulled the video. Fortunately, a YouTube spokesman confirmed that it was all a big misunderstanding.

New species of dinosaur found in US

(AP) Fossils of a previously undiscovered species of dinosaur have been found in slabs of Utah sandstone that were so hard that explosives had to be used to free some of the remains. The bones found at Dinosaur National Monument belonged to a type of sauropod - long-necked plant-eaters that were said to be the largest animal ever to roam land. The discovery included two complete skulls from other types of sauropods - an extremely rare find, scientists said. The fossils offer fresh insight into lives of dinosaurs some 105 million years ago, including the evolution of sauropod teeth, which reveal eating habits and other information, said Dan Chure, a paleontologist at the monument that straddles the Utah-Colorado border.

Cal physicist helps confirm Einstein theory

(David Perlman, San Francisco Chronicle) A UC Berkeley physicist and a Nobel prize-winning colleague now in President Obama's Cabinet report they have confirmed one of Albert Einstein's most revolutionary theories 10,000 times more accurately than ever before. Einstein's theory of general relativity has already been tested and confirmed to a degree as a true picture of reality by scores of experimenters, ever since he proposed it to the world nearly a century ago. In the immediate decades after the theory's publication, legend had it that only 12 people in the world could understand it, although physicists have long revered it.

Ancient Wall Possibly Built by King Solomon

(LiveScience.com) A section of an ancient city wall of Jerusalem from the tenth century B.C.E. (between 1000 BC and 901 BC), possibly built by King Solomon, has been revealed in archaeological excavations. The section of wall, about 230 feet long (70 meters) and 19 feet (6 meters) high, is located in the area known as the Ophel, between the City of David and the southern wall of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Found in the city wall complex: an inner gatehouse for access into the royal quarter of the city; a royal structure adjacent to the gatehouse; and a corner tower that overlooks a substantial section of the adjacent Kidron valley.

Take That, Chevy Volt! Cal Poly Car Gets 2,752 MPG

(Keith Barry, Wired.com) A team of mechanical engineering students at California Polytechnic State University is prepping an ultra high-mileage, three-wheeled car for the upcoming Shell Eco-Marathon student competition. If all goes well, they’ll take first place with fuel economy more than 13 times higher than the 230 mpg General Motors claims the Chevrolet Volt will deliver — and Cal Poly car doesn’t even need batteries. The Cal Poly Supermileage Team, launched in the late ’80s and resurrected in 2005, combines students from a senior project team and a department club to work on vehicles that deliver numbers that make hypermilers and plug-in hybrid enthusiasts weep.

WISE gifts from the universe

(Good News Gazette) NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, has been hard at work since it was launched into orbit in December, 2009 and on January 14th began scanning the beauty of the entire sky in infrared light. It has since sent back more than a quarter of a million raw, infrared images ranging from comets and asteroids to star-forming clouds and galaxies.

On Wednesday, NASA revealed four new, processed images to provide a sample of the mission's targets. "We've got a candy store of images coming down from space," said Edward Wright of UCLA, the principal investigator for WISE. "Everyone has their favorite flavors, and we've got them all."

Astronauts Hold Winter Olympics in Space

(Tariq Malik, Space.com) They don't have snow or ice, but an international team of astronauts held their own weightless Winter Olympics this week. Their venue: a $100 billion space station. The 11 astronauts aboard the linked shuttle Endeavour and International Space Station (ISS) tried their hand at several space Winter Olympics events this week during breaks from adding a new room and observation deck to the outpost. Their events? Space skiing, the zero-G luge and a graceful weightless figure skating. The crew beamed some space sports video of their antics to Mission Control. Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi, a space station resident, even donned a pair of short space skis for his slalom and jump events.

Ancient Arabic Inscription Found During Jerusalem Home Renovation

(AP) A home renovation in Jerusalem's Old City has yielded a rare Arabic inscription offering insight into the city's history under Muslim rule, Israeli archaeologists said Wednesday. The fragment of a 1,100-year-old plaque is thought to have been made by an army veteran to express his thanks for a land grant from the Caliph al-Muqtadir, whom the inscription calls "Emir of the Faithful." Dating from a time when Jerusalem was ruled from Baghdad by the Abbasid empire, the plaque shows how rulers rewarded their troops and ensured their loyalty, archaeologists said.

Cheap Solar Cell Could Be Incorporated Into Clothing

(Charles Q. Choi, LiveScience.com) A new solar cell can produce the same amount of energy as the best conventional solar panels while using less expensive material. The novel flexible device could help make solar cells far more practical for products ranging from sunroofs to clothing, scientists say. "It could be extremely rugged – you could roll it up, even perforate it, shoot holes in it with a gun, and it'd still operate, whereas normal crystalline silicon would just shatter like glass," said researcher Harry Atwater, an applied physicist at the California Institute of Technology at Pasadena, Calif.

Astronauts on ISS get first look out of new 'room with a view'

(Peter N. Spotts, Christian Science Monitor) Astronauts aboard the International Space Station got their first views of Earth from a new cupola today – the kind of sweeping panoramas that have largely remained the domain of space walkers. By all accounts, it was a seminal experience. "The astronauts, who are accustomed to views you and I can’t really describe, were moved to tears when they looked outside the windows of the cupola for the first time," said the mission’s lead space-station flight director, Bob Dempsey, during a pre-dawn briefing on the progress of the space shuttle Endeavour’s 14-day mission to the International Space Station.

Quark Soup: Physicists create conditions not seen since the big bang

(Sharon Begley, Newsweek.com) While the Large Hadron Collider gets all the attention (it never hurts a physics experiment's street cred when rumors spread that it might create a mini black hole and swallow up the Earth), a lesser-known particle collider has been quietly making soup—quark soup. For the field of experimental particle physics, in which progress has been at a near-standstill since the glory days of the 1970s (yes, the top quark was discovered in an experiment at Fermilab in 1995, but really, everyone knew this last of the six quarks existed), this counts as the most notable achievement in years: a discovery that doesn't merely confirm what theory has long held, but points the way to new revelations about the creation and evolution of the universe.

Space station gets a room with a view

(Irene Klotz, Reuters) Astronauts aboard the International Space Station on Monday added an observation deck that will give residents of the orbital outpost a panoramic view of the station and Earth below. After struggling with some jammed bolts, crew of the shuttle Endeavour used the station's robot arm to connect the Italian-made cupola to the newly delivered Tranquility connecting hub. "It's going to help when we do robotic operations," Endeavour astronaut Terry Virts said in an in-flight interview. "It'll give us a big view in a lot of different directions."

From Space, With Love: Astronauts Send Earth Cosmic Valentine

(Tariq Malik, Space.com) It may be the ultimate long-distance relationship, but the gulf between Earth and space hasn't kept astronauts in orbit from sending a valentine to their favorite planet. Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi beamed the cosmic love note to Earth from 220 miles (354 km) up aboard the International Space Station just in time for Valentine's Day. "Happy Valentines Day from Space to all of my followers on this beautiful planet!" Noguchi posted on his Twitter page late Saturday. He writes as @Astro_Soichi and has more than 75,400 followers as of this morning.

Scientists identify 4,000 year old man

(Dick Ahlstrom, Irish Times) Scientists have identified the physical characteristics of a man who lived 4,000 year ago using nothing more than a few strands of his hair. They extracted DNA and built a near complete copy of his genome, the first time this has been done with ancient human remains. They also managed to put together a family tree for the man, who the research team named "Inuk." In the process they learned of a previously unknown wave of immigrants to the New World, a migration that had nothing to do with the colonisations that later led to the Amerindian and Inuit populations in North and Central America.

Orion in a New Light

(ESO) The Orion Nebula reveals many of its hidden secrets in a dramatic image taken by ESO’s new VISTA survey telescope. The telescope’s huge field of view can show the full splendour of the whole nebula and VISTA’s infrared vision also allows it to peer deeply into dusty regions that are normally hidden and expose the curious behaviour of the very active young stars buried there. VISTA — the Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy — is the latest addition to ESO’s Paranal Observatory (eso0949). It is the largest survey telescope in the world and is dedicated to mapping the sky at infrared wavelengths. The large (4.1-metre) mirror, wide field of view and very sensitive detectors make VISTA a unique instrument. This dramatic new image of the Orion Nebula illustrates VISTA’s remarkable powers.

Good Deeds Fuel Good Deeds

(Rachael Rettner, LiveScience.com) The warm and fuzzy feelings you may experience after watching others perform virtuous deeds may in turn lead you to act altruistically as well, according to a new study based on the results of two separate experiments. Among the findings: People who watch inspirational clips from the Oprah Winfrey Show are more likely to commit to helping others, and spend more time doing a "good deed." However, since the study was based on a small number of participants who were all female, more research is needed to back up the findings. Past research has shown when we watch others lend a helping hand, we feel inspired and uplifted. Few studies, however, have actually looked at whether or not we're really more likely to follow suit after witnessing the do-gooder behavior.

Evidence of liquid water on Saturn's moon

(Ian O'Neill, Discovery News) Saturn's moon Enceladus contains a large body of water under its surface, new research has confirmed. And the icy moon may even have conditions suitable for life. Data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft revealed negatively charged water molecules in the moon's atmosphere. "While it's no surprise that there is water there, these short-lived ions are extra evidence for subsurface water and where there’s water, carbon and energy, some of the major ingredients for life are present," said Andrew Coates from University College London's Mullard Space Science Laboratory.

Byzantine-era street found in Jerusalem

(Shira Rubin, AP) With the help of an ancient mosaic map, Israeli archaeologists said Wednesday they have unearthed a section of an old stone-flagged street in Jerusalem that provides important new evidence about the city's commercial life 1,500 years ago. The 20-foot (6-meter) section of street passes from the west into the center of Jerusalem's Old City, and stands upon a large cistern that supplied water to the city's 30,000 to 40,000 residents. Pottery, coins and bronze weights used to measure precious metals from Byzantine times also were found.

iPhone App Opens World to Boy with Rare Syndrome

(Matthew Nojiri, ABC News) For the first seven years of his life, Andrew struggled to tell his mother, Beth Patitucci, when he was hungry or when he wanted to sit on her lap. On an almost daily basis, his family and teachers at school would see Andrew cry, bite on his thumbs and lash out as if in pain. But he was unable to let them know what was wrong. Andrew, who at age 8 is the size of a 3- or 4-year-old, has Cornelia de Lange syndrome, a developmental disorder that affects communication and social interaction. It is characterized by low birth weight, slow growth, distinctive facial features and small stature. But a new iPhone application Andrew uses on an iPod has opened the doors to Andrew's mind.

China dinosaur footprints found in Zhucheng

(BBC News) Scientists in China say they have discovered more than 3,000 dinosaur footprints, all facing the same way. The footprints - thought to belong to at least six dinosaur types - were found in eastern Shandong province, state news agency Xinhua reports. Experts believe the prints are more than 100 million years old and say they could represent a migration or a panicked attempt to escape predators.

Tiny Bubbles Destroy Cancer Cells

(LiveScience.com) Tiny bubbles can pack quite a punch — creating nanoscale explosions that destroy cancer cells. Using lasers and nanoparticles, scientists discovered a new technique for singling out individual diseased cells and demolishing them. The scientists used lasers to make "nanobubbles" by zapping gold nanoparticles inside cells. In tests on cancer cells, they found they could tune the lasers to create either small, bright bubbles that were visible but harmless or large bubbles that burst the cells.

Pluto images show a dynamic world

(Thomas H. Maugh II, Los Angeles Times) Newly computer-processed images of Pluto taken by the Hubble Space Telescope show that it is not simply a ball of ice and rock, but a dynamic world that undergoes dramatic atmospheric changes produced by its seasons, NASA said Thursday. The images show an icy and dark molasses-colored world that is highly mottled and whose northern hemisphere is now getting brighter. The images show that the body -- once considered the ninth and most distant planet but now reduced to the status of dwarf planet -- also turned noticeably redder in the two years after the turn of the millennium for reasons that are not clear, and that its equator features a large bright spot whose origin remains a mystery.

First Internet, now bay window at space station

(Marcia Dunn, AP) Life has never been so good off the planet, and it's about to get better. Just two weeks after the arrival of the Internet, the space station astronauts are getting an observation deck that will offer panoramic views of Earth. Space shuttle Endeavour will deliver the seven-windowed dome to the International Space Station next week, along with more living space in a chamber called Tranquility.

The cosmic factory that created the largest known star in our galaxy

(Claire Bates, Daily Mail) A magnificent stellar nursery in our own galaxy has been revealed in all its glory by the European Southern Observatory. It includes the most massive known star in the Milky Way. The scenic nebula was captured by the Very Large Telescope in Chile. It reveals the most luminous and compact cluster of the region called NGC 3603. The starburst region is a cosmic factory where stars form frantically from the nebula’s extended clouds of gas and dust.

How Oil-Filled Lenses are Bringing Sight to Those in Need

(Joel Johnson, Gizmodo.com) This isn't a review. It's not even breaking news. It's just a reminder that someone somewhere is doing something awesome. I've been fascinated by the "Adspecs" since I first heard of them a few years ago. The glasses have oil-filled lenses which, when adjusted with the attached syringes, allow anyone to dial in their own prescription just by looking at a chart. (I've tried to show how the lens work in the video above.) This story originally started with a question: Hey, did that project ever actually get off the ground? I'm happy to report that it has—to the tune of 30,000 pairs of Adspecs already in the field around the world, distributed through a variety of aid organizations.

New Spider-Man Device Could Let Humans Walk on Walls

(LiveScience.com) A new high-tech suction device could allow humans to walk on walls like Spider-Man or create adhesive devices that could be turned on and off with the flick of a switch. The contraption, inspired by a beetle that can hold on to a leaf with a force 100 times its weight, uses the surface tension of water to make an adhesive bond, but it does so with a creative twist. It could be used to create sticky shoes or gloves, researchers said today.

New source of insulin blossoming on the Prairies

(CTV) Canada made its mark in the fight against diabetes a century ago with the discovery of insulin, and now, our country may be poised to change the face of diabetes again by creating insulin in a whole new way. A group of pioneering Canadian scientists is working on a way to make a much cheaper form of insulin using an easily grown plant: the safflower. Insulin has been a Canadian claim to fame since the 1920s, when Dr. Fred Banting and Dr. Charles Best discovered insulin and how it controls blood sugar levels.

Egypt to Announce King Tut DNA Results

(AP) Egypt will soon reveal the results of DNA tests made on the world's most famous ancient king, the young Pharaoh Tutankhamun, to answer lingering mysteries over his lineage, the antiquities department said Sunday. Speaking at a conference, archaeology chief Zahi Hawass said he would announce the results of the DNA tests and the CAT scans on Feb. 17. The results will be compared to those made of King Amenhotep III, who may have been Tutankamun's grandfather. The effort is part of a wider program to check the DNA of hundreds of mummies to determine their identities and family relations.

New Tyrannosaur Species Discovered

(Rachael Rettner, LiveScience.com) T. rex's family tree just got one member larger. Scientists unearthed bones from a new dinosaur species, including an adult specimen and bones from a "teenager" that lived some 75 million years ago. Called Bistahieversor sealeyi, the dinosaur lived about 10 million years before Tyrannosaurus rex appeared on the scene. Even so, B. sealeyi belongs to the same dinosaur linage as the famous T. rex. Fossils from Bistahieversor (pronounced: bistah-he-ee-versor) were discovered in New Mexico back in 1998, and after many years of studying the bones, the paleontologists just announced the findings as a new genus and species, which they detail in the January issue of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

America's 1st Commercial Spaceport Blooms in the Desert

(Leonard David, Space.com) New Mexico's Spaceport America is no longer the stuff of fancy graphics. The scene is now one of bulldozers and other heavy equipment. Loads of asphalt and concrete are being spread. The initial phase of building the rambling complex within remote desert scenery is quickening. One could easily call it "hard hat heaven" for those that have pushed for Spaceport America's development over many years. Spaceport America, billed as the world's first purpose-built commercial spaceport, is taking shape some 30 miles (48 km) east of Truth or Consequences and 45 miles (72 km) north of Las Cruces, New Mexico.

New findings: dinosaurs were birds of a colored feather

(Peter N. Spotts, Christian Science Monitor) The link between dinosaurs and birds – already tight – grew tighter still this week. Scientists say they have uncovered a bird-like dinosaur – a distant relative to the oldest known bird, Archaeopteryx. But it's millions of years older. Another team says it has identified coloring agents in fossilized feathers from ancient birds and non-avian theropod dinosaurs – a group that includes velociraptor and Tyrannosaurus rex. The coloring agents are similar to those in the feathers of modern birds. It appears many avian and non-avian dinosaurs may have sported their own versions of Joseph's Technicolor dream coat.

Evidence of Stone Age amputation forces rethink over history of surgery

(Adam Sage, Times Online) The surgeon was dressed in a goat or sheep skin and used a sharpened stone to amputate the arm of his patient. The operating theatre was not exactly Harley Street — more probably a wooden shelter — but the intervention was a success, and it has shed light on the medical talents of our Stone Age ancestors. Scientists unearthed evidence of the surgery during work on an Early Neolithic tomb discovered at Buthiers-Boulancourt, about 40 miles (65km) south of Paris. They found that a remarkable degree of medical knowledge had been used to remove the left forearm of an elderly man about 6,900 years ago — suggesting that the true Flintstones were more developed than previously thought.

Video game makes mastering math a blast

(Melissa B. Taboada, Austin American-Statesman) In 14-year-old Sydney Williams' eighth-grade math class, video games are a required part of the lesson plan. In a digital version of king of the hill called "Tower Storm," Sydney's avatar — wearing a sleek pink-and-white space suit, jet pack and white helmet with pink face shield — runs quickly through an obstacle course, grabbing spheres and collecting points along the way. The game allows Sydney to compete with 30 of her classmates at Garcia Middle School in a race to reach a tower, solving algebra problems to gain points and get ahead. It's one way the Austin school district is hoping to help struggling students improve in math.

Charities fight for piece of $5 million prize on Facebook

(Eric Kuhn, CNN) This week, 100 charities are battling for votes on Facebook to win $1 million. The competition is a new approach to philanthropic giving and is led by JPMorgan Chase, which throughout the competition will donate a total of $5 million to 100 charities chosen by Facebook users. Traditionally, organizations would go through a grant process, and Chase would choose who would get its money and how much. However, late last year, Chase decided to take a different approach and put the power of choosing charities into the hands of Americans.

Tech camp yields programs for Haiti

(Doug Gross, CNN) A weekend meeting of technology pros looking to help victims of the Haiti earthquake yielded some ready-to-roll projects and a few more nearing completion. Perhaps more important, participants say, the gathering produced a framework that could keep aiding disaster-relief efforts in the months and years to come. CrisisCamp Haiti brought together developers, programmers and other volunteers for meetings in Washington, Los Angeles, California, and other cities. Results included a digital map to help relief groups in Haiti coordinate their efforts and applications for the iPhone and other smartphones, including a Creole-to-English dictionary.

Red Cross text donations pass $21 million

(Doug Gross, CNN) A campaign using text messages to raise money for the Red Cross has tallied more than $21 million for relief efforts in Haiti. The electronic fundraiser, boosted in its early days by widespread posting on social-networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, has outstripped the organization's expectations and is showing no signs of letting up, an official said Monday. "It's blown me away and it continues to," said Wendy Harman, the director of social media for the Red Cross.

Newton's Original Manuscripts Going Online

(AP) It always falls down. That's how the apple helped Isaac Newton. An 18th-century account of how Newton developed the theory of gravity was posted to the Web Monday, making the fragile paper manuscript widely available to the public for the first time. Newton's encounter with the apple ranks among science's most celebrated anecdotes, and it can now be read in the faded cursive script in which it was recorded by William Stukeley, Newton's contemporary. Royal Society librarian Keith Moore said the apple story has resonated for centuries because it packs in so much — an illustration of how modern science works, an implicit reference to the solar system and even an allusion to the Bible.

Top young scientist designs stove for use in poor countries

(Dick Ahlstrom, Irish Times) The building of an innovative cooking stove designed for use in developing countries has won the top prize in the BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition. Cork student Richard O’Shea becomes the Young Scientist of 2010, taking home a trophy and a cheque for €5,000. Richard (18) accepted his award last night at the RDS in Dublin from Minister of State for Science Conor Lenihan. "This is just incredible, I can’t take it in," the shocked student admitted as cameras flashed and television microphones were thrust forward. "I just can’t describe it. I didn’t think I’d get that far."

Mathematician finds magic in numbers

(Catherine Masters, New Zealand Herald) The 64-year-old shuffling an imaginary pack cards in the maths department at Auckland University was five when he discovered a book of magic in the attic and started doing tricks. Persi Diaconis is still doing tricks but all those decades later they have a wider purpose than mere entertainment, entertaining though they are. The former professional magician uses card tricks, or sometimes coin tossing, to demonstrate the "beauty" of mathematics. In New Zealand he is delivering a lecture series on how the two professions intertwine. In his world, there is literally magic in maths and maths in magic in his world.

Haiti text donations to Red Cross pass $5M

(Barbara Ortutay, AP) U.S. cell phone users have contributed more than $5 million in $10 increments to the Red Cross for Haiti disaster relief, by far the largest outpouring of support via mobile devices in history. The response to the devastating earthquake produced the highest amount of mobile donations "that we have ever seen," said Jenifer Snyder, executive director of mGive Foundation, the nonprofit group that is working with the Red Cross and wireless carriers to channel the donations.

Controlling your genes: The promise -- and the hype -- of changing your DNA through behavior

(Sharon Begley, Newsweek) Of all the discoveries about how experiences can reach into a creature's very DNA to turn genes on or off, I confess that my favorite is still one of the earliest, from 2004. That summer, scientists unveiled experiments in which they showed that how a mother rat treats her newborns—specifically, whether she attentively licks and grooms them, in the rodent version of mother love—affects whether certain genes in the brain are silenced or activated, with dramatic consequences for the rats' later behavior. But despite a lot of hope and hype, studies showing how experience alters genes have been few and far between—which is why a new one on smoking and diet caught my eye.

Google Earth helps find El Dorado

(Ed Caesar, TimesOnline) Since the time of the conquistadors, the legend of an ancient, lost civilisation deep in the Amazon forest has beguiled hundreds of explorers and led many to their deaths. Some called their dream El Dorado. Others, most notably Colonel Percy Fawcett, the gloriously moustached British explorer (and real-life model for Indiana Jones) named it the City of Z. But no one has ever returned from the Amazon with conclusive proof that such a place existed. Three scientists have now come close to doing just that.

Egypt tombs suggest free men built pyramids, not slaves

(BBC News) Tombs discovered near Egypt's great pyramids reinforce the theory they were built by free workers rather than slaves. The location of the tombs, where workers who built the pyramids of Khufu (Cheops) and Khafre (Chephren) are buried, suggests they were not slaves. The tombs, made from bricks of dried mud, date back 4,500 years. They are the first to be discovered since the first such workers' tombs were found in 1990.

Scientists discover oldest footprints on Earth

(CNN) Scientists have found the oldest fossilized footprints made by a four-legged creature forcing a rethink on when fish first crawled out of water and onto land. The discovery of the footprints in a former quarry in the Holy Cross Mountains in south-eastern Poland are thought to be 395-million years old -- 18 million years older than the earliest tetrapod (a vertebrate with limbs rather than fins) body fossils. The report published Thursday in the science journal Nature says the footprints of the tetrapod measure up to 26 (10 inches) centimeters wide, which scientists say is indicative of an animal around 2.5 (7.5 feet) meters in length.

BigShot: Snap-together camera introduces kids to tech, and to their world

(Jina Moore, Christian Science Monitor) Nicholas Serbedio, a sixth-grader, has never seen a camera like this before. It’s bigger and heavier than usual, with a wide, gaping wheel on the front. On the back, where the viewing screen is “supposed” to be, there is a shimmering green circuit board. "I was amazed," Nicholas says of the moment a few hours earlier, when he first picked it up. "I thought, ‘How can a camera look like this? How can somebody build this?’ "

Hubble telescope glimpses universe's earliest galaxies

(Peter N. Spotts, Christian Science Monitor) The recently refurbished Hubble Space Telescope has drawn back a curtain on a group of galaxies that are the earliest the universe has yet produced. The galaxies, hot, small, and blue, appear as faint patches of fuzz in the image Hubble took of a patch of sky over four days last August, peering back into a period when the cosmos was only 600 million to 800 million years old - less than one-twentieth of its current age - and a little more than 10 percent of its current size.

NASA's Kepler planet-hunter detects five worlds

(Jonathan Amos, BBC News) Nasa's Kepler Space Telescope has detected its first five exoplanets, or planets beyond our Solar System. The observatory, which was launched last year to find other Earths, made the discoveries in its first few weeks of science operations. Although the new worlds are all bigger than our Neptune, the US space agency says the haul shows the telescope is working well and is very sensitive. The exoplanets have been given the names Kepler 4b, 5b, 6b, 7b and 8b. They were announced at an American Astronomical Society meeting in Washington DC.

Strange Geoglyphs Discovered Beneath Clearcut Amazon

(Stephen Messenger, TreeHugger.com) With the aid of satellite imagery from Google Earth, soon archeologists in Brazil will be finding more and more large geometric designs carved into the ground in the Amazon rainforest. The geoglyphs are believed to have been sculpted by ancient people from the Amazon region around 700 years ago, though their purpose is still unknown. So far, nearly 300 geoglyphs have been identified, but with advances in satellite imaging--and increased clearing of the jungle coverage--scientists are hoping to discover many more of these strange, geometric designs.

Ex-Hedge Fund Analyst Finds Calling On YouTube

(NPR) These days you can learn just about anything from a YouTube video: tying a bow tie, playing the piano or learning math. Salman Khan, a former hedge fund analyst turned online tutor, has produced more than 1,000 YouTube videos ranging from basic multiplication of fractions to polynomial approximation of functions. He says his Khan Academy Channel started when he worked as a hedge fund analyst in Boston and began tutoring his cousin in New Orleans.

House uncovered in Nazareth dating to the time of Jesus

(CNN) Archaeologists in Israel say they have discovered the remains of a home from the time of Jesus in the heart of Nazareth. The Israeli Antiquities Authority said the find "sheds light on the way of life at the time of Jesus" in the Jewish settlement of Nazareth, where Christians believe Jesus grew up.

Scientists spot nearby 'super-Earth'

(John D. Sutter, CNN) Astronomers announced this week they found a water-rich and relatively nearby planet that's similar in size to Earth. While the planet probably has too thick of an atmosphere and is too hot to support life similar to that found on Earth, the discovery is being heralded as a major breakthrough in humanity's search for life on other planets. "The big excitement is that we have found a watery world orbiting a very nearby and very small star," said David Charbonneau, a Harvard professor of astronomy and lead author of an article on the discovery.

Cosmic Christmas Spotted in Space

(Space.com) The Hubble Space Telescope has captured a festive view of the cosmos in time for the holiday season, with some saying the picture of a star nursery looks like a wreath, maybe a Christmas tree, or even Santa. The spacecraft observed a group of young stars called R136, which is only a few million years old and inhabits the 30 Doradus Nebula, part of a relatively nearby satellite galaxy of our Milky Way called the Large Magellanic Cloud.

Super-Earths Found Around Sun-Like Stars

(Jeanna Bryner, Space.com) Four newfound planets orbiting two nearby stars add weight to the promise of detecting habitable worlds within the next few years, researchers said today. Two of the extrasolar planets are considered super-Earths, more massive than Earth but less massive than Uranus and Neptune. Spotting true Earth-sized planets is challenging with current technology, but the presence of super-Earths suggests finding a world like ours is just a matter of time, researchers say.

Scientists expected to unveil the discovery of dark matter

(Claire Bates, Daily Mail) Physicists have detected a particle of dark matter for the first time in human history, according to rumours buzzing around the internet. Should it prove correct the finding would have an Earth-shattering effect on our understanding of how galaxies form. Dark matter is believed to make up 90 per cent of the mass of the Universe. We can't see it but scientists think it is there due to the gravitational force it exerts. It could help account for the 'missing mass' in the Universe that would explain why galaxies rotate at their current speeds.

Reading Practice Can Strengthen Brain 'Highways'

(Jon Hamilton, NPR) Intensive reading programs can produce measurable changes in the structure of a child's brain, according to a study in the journal Neuron. The study found that several different programs improved the integrity of fibers that carry information from one part of the brain to another. "That helped areas of the brain work together," says Marcel Just, director of the Center for Cognitive Brain Imaging at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

Scientists unveil a helping 'Terminator' hand with the world's first bionic fingers

(Daily Mail) The world's first bionic fingers have been unveiled by scientists. Made of tough, lightweight plastic and loaded with tiny motors, they can bend, grip, point and pick up items. The brainchild of British inventors, the 'ProDigits' could transform the lives of tens of thousands of people with missing fingers by allowing them to cradle a wine glass, pick a chocolate out of a box or punch a PIN number into a cash machine.

New NASA Telescope to Scan for Undiscovered Galaxies, Stars

(AP) NASA's latest space telescope will scan the sky in search of never-before-seen asteroids, comets, stars and galaxies, with one of its main tasks to catalog objects posing a danger to Earth. The sky-mapping WISE, or Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer, is scheduled to launch no earlier than before dawn Friday from Vandenberg Air Force Base on the central California coast aboard a Delta 2 rocket. If all goes as planned, WISE will orbit some 325 miles above the Earth and produce the most detailed map yet of the cosmos.

Skype takes holiday gatherings to new level

(Andrae Gonzales, Bakersfield Californian) It's quite the tradition for my family to be together during the winter holidays. This Thanksgiving was a bit different. My sister and brother-in-law live with their two daughters in Tennessee, and there was no way they could head home for the holiday. Rising airline ticket prices and tough economic times made it impossible for the family to physically be at the same table together. But where there's a will, there's an information superhighway. We may have been 2,000 miles apart from one another, but our family was able to celebrate Thanksgiving together, thanks to the six-year-old software application called "Skype."

Amputee able to move robotic hand with his mind

(AP) A group of European scientists said Wednesday that they have successfully connected a robotic hand to an amputee, enabling him to feel sensations in the artificial limb and control it with his thoughts. The experiment lasted a month, and scientists say it was the first time a patient has been able to make complex movements using his mind to control a biomechanic hand connected to his nervous system. The Italian-led team said at a news conference in Rome that last year it implanted electrodes into the arm of the patient who had lost his left hand and forearm in a car accident.

Hottest star in the galaxy pictured for the first time

(Daily Mail) One of the hottest stars in the galaxy has been discovered by astronomers. The dying star at the centre of the Bug Nebula is 35 times hotter than the sun with a surface temperature of 200,000 degrees. This is the first time the star has been pictured despite numerous attempts by stargazers across the world. Astronomers at The University of Manchester's Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics were amazed to find they had captured the central star using the recently refurbished Hubble Space Telescope.

Fossilized Bacteria May Point to Life on Mars

(Times Online) NASA scientists have produced the most compelling evidence yet that bacterial life exists on Mars. It showed that microscopic worm-like structures found in a Martian meteorite that hit the Earth 13,000 years ago are almost certainly fossilized bacteria. The so-called bio-morphs are embedded beneath the surface layers of the rock, suggesting that they were already present when the meteorite arrived, rather than being the result of subsequent contamination by Earthly bacteria.

Hubble Photographs Billowing Clouds of Cosmic Dust

(Space.com) A recent image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope reveals the perfect dust laboratory in the sky and could help astronomers pin down the raw ingredients needed to give birth to baby stars. The stellar photo is a composite of four images taken with different filters by Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys. The resulting close-up shot reveals the northwest region of the Iris Nebula, or NGC 7023. The nebula is a region of star formation that lies about 1,400 light-years away in the constellation of Cepheus.

A texted health reminder worked

(Anna Tong, Sacramento Bee) Texting could be :-) for ur health. A UC Davis study has found sending texts reminding people to put on sunscreen actually works. The success of the simple method shows the potential behind texting as a health tool, something few health care providers have tapped into. Published this month in the Archives of Dermatology, the study found that people who received daily reminder text messages on their mobile phones were nearly twice as likely to use sunscreen as those who did not.

People Hear With Their Skin as Well as Their Ears

(Henry Fountain, New York Times) We hear with our ears, right? Yes, but scientists have known for years that we also hear with our eyes. In a landmark study published in 1976, researchers found that people integrated both auditory cues and visual ones, like mouth and face movements, when they heard speech. That study, and many that followed, raised this fundamental question about speech perception: If humans can integrate different sensory cues, do they do so through experience (through seeing countless speaking faces over time), or has evolution hard-wired them to do it?

Color E-readers Inspired by Butterflies

(Leslie Meredith, TopTenREVIEWS) Full-color displays for e-readers could really take off soon — on the wings of butterflies. Qualcomm MEMS Technologies new Mirasol is the first full color, video-capable display on a prototype e-reader. Built on the concept of the iridescence of a butterfly’s wing, the new technology reflects light rather than transmitting light the way LCD screens do. The display is readable in sunlight and offers unprecedented energy savings for longer battery life. E-readers may just be the beginning for Mirasol displays as consumers seek color in every device they use, better visibility in bright light, and days or even weeks worth of battery life.

Sounds During Sleep May Help You Remember

(Jon Hamilton, NPR) You may not be able to learn a foreign language in your sleep, but you can strengthen certain memories, according to a study in the journal Science. The study, led by researchers at Northwestern University, found that hearing certain sounds during a nap helped people remember information associated with those sounds once they woke up. "They were a little bit better, a little more accurate," says John Rudoy, a graduate student at Northwestern and the study's lead author.

World's Largest Radio Telescope Network Goes Live

(Space.com) The world's largest collection of radio telescopes is being tied together for 24 hours starting today to observe more than two hundred energetic galaxies known as quasars. During those 24 hours, 35 telescopes on all seven continents will observe 243 distant quasars in an effort to improve the precision of the reference frame scientists use to measure positions in the sky.

Scientists discover a new type of star

(John Johnson Jr., Los Angeles Times) Scientists have added a new member to the stellar zoo, a type of white dwarf star that had been long predicted but never before found. White dwarfs are end-of-life stars that have burned up most of their nuclear fuel and shrunk to the size of Earth. Other stars shrink further, collapsing into neutron stars smaller than Los Angeles. The new type of star, called an oxygen-rich white dwarf, is a kind of "missing link" between the so-called normal white dwarfs and neutron stars, according to study coauthor Boris Gaensicke, a physicist at the University of Warwick in Britain.

The amazing man who drives car with thought-powered arms after losing limbs in accident

(Allan Hall, Daily Mail) A former mechanic who lost his arms in an industrial accident four years ago is able to drive again thanks to thought-powered artificial limbs. Christian Kandlbauer, who lost his arms after being electrocuted by 20,000 volts, retook his driving test and passed. Using the nerves that previously controlled the healthy limbs, the 22-year-old Austrian merely has to think what he wants his arms to do and the command is obeyed.

A neutron star is born: Stellar core just 12 miles across spotted 11,000 light years away

(Daily Mail) An infant neutron star, the super-dense core of a stellar explosion, has been observed for the first time. The 12.4 mile-wide object is the youngest object of its kind ever discovered, having appeared just 330 years ago. It has been cloaked in mystery since it was identified as a powerful X-ray source in 1999. Astronomers now know the source is a neutron star 11,000 light years from Earth at the centre of the supernova Cassiopeia A.

Seattle Team Wins $900,000 in Space Elevator Games

(John Antczak, AP) A Seattle team has collected a $900,000 prize in a NASA-backed competition to develop the concept of an elevator to space — an idea spurred by science fiction novels. The team's robotic machine raced up more than 2,950 feet of cable dangling from a helicopter. Powered by a ground-based laser pointed up at the robot's photo voltaic cells that converted the light into electricity, the LaserMotive machine completed one of its climbs in about three minutes and 48 seconds, good for second-place money.

Scientists halt brain disease with new gene therapy

(Kate Kelland, Reuters) Scientists have managed to halt a rare and fatal brain disease with an experimental gene therapy technique using a deactivated version of the AIDS virus, a study published on Thursday showed. The international team used a disabled form of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) to deliver working genes to two boys with the brain disease X-linked adrenoleukodystrophy (ALD). Their success may help shape future treatment. Patrick Aubourg of Inserm-University Paris Descartes, who led the study, said it was the first time scientists had successfully used an HIV-derived delivery technique for gene therapy in humans, and the first time gene therapy had been used effectively in a severe brain disease.

NASA Probe Sees Changing Seasons on Mercury

(Andrea Thompson, Space.com) A NASA spacecraft has spotted what appears to be changing seasons on Mercury and found much more iron on the surface of the small, rocky planet than previously thought. The MESSENGER probe made the observations during its third flyby of Mercury on Sept. 29, when it took a host of measurements and images of the innermost planet's surface and atmosphere. Only about half of the planned measurements were made because of a data glitch that affected the spacecraft during the flyby. The $446 million probe's third flyby brought it within 142 miles (228 km) of Mercury's surface to cover more uncharted terrain, leaving 98 percent of the planet now mapped.

3,000 images combine for Milky Way portrait

(Space.com) A new panoramic image of the full night sky — with the Milky Way as its centerpiece — has been made by piecing together 3,000 individual photographs. The panorama's creator, Axel Mellinger of Central Michigan University, spent 22 months and traveled over 26,000 miles to take digital photographs at dark sky locations in South Africa, Texas and Michigan. "This panorama image shows stars 1,000 times fainter than the human eye can see, as well as hundreds of galaxies, star clusters and nebulae," Mellinger said.

Astronomers Detect Most Distant Object Ever Seen

(Richard Harris, NPR) Astronomers say they've detected the most distant object anyone has yet seen from Earth. Two teams of scientists actually made the discovery, which they report in the current issue of Nature. Nial Tanvir from the University of Leicester in England was one of the teams: "The thing that we discovered is a gamma ray burst," he says. "It's a kind of exploding star. These things are brighter than anything else we know of in the universe. In principle we can see them very far away but they're incredibly rare."

The genius brothers behind Google Wave

(John D. Sutter, CNN) Lars and Jens Rasmussen were broke and jobless -- with only $16 between them -- when they made it big in the Web world by selling their idea for Google Maps. Years later, after finding cushy employment at Google Inc., the Rasmussen brothers flew in May from Sydney, Australia, to California where they would debut their sophomore product, a Web application called Google Wave, which they say, quite audaciously, will kill e-mail and forever change online communication. But their lives didn't depend on its success -- not like before. Strange as it may seem, that worried them.

He makes an app, and medical world listens

(Keith Darcé, San Diego Union-Tribune) Students studying to become doctors find all sorts of ways to subdue the stress of school. They hike mountains, dance to hip-hop music, surf and take long trips on bicycles. But Michael Fujinaka is different. The second-year UCSD School of Medicine student spends his free time developing applications for iPhones. His first effort — an app called iMurmur that helps medical staffers learn how to detect troubling heartbeats — has become a big success.

We'll soon be building new hearts to order in just 24 hours say stem cell scientists

(Nikki Murfitt, Daily Mail) Dean Third used to look forward to weekends spent refereeing local football matches, and outings with his young family. But now even walking to the end of the road can leave him breathless and exhausted. For the past four years, the father of four has suffered from dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM), a disease of the heart muscle which causes it to enlarge, affecting its ability to pump blood to the arteries. The condition afflicts 12,000 people in the UK, and for most sufferers the cause is unknown. If uncontrolled it can be fatal, and patients must adhere strictly to a regime of medication.

Meet the REAL Young Indiana Jones

(Kristine Austria, Fox News) Young Indiana Jones was a good story. But the real thing is even better. Meet Andrew Du. Buried deep in the sand of a remote spit called Koobi Fora hides a treasure trove of artifacts tracing back to the beginnings of humankind. Found on the eastern side of Kenya's Lake Turkana, the site is a prime spot for paleontological research — and there we uncovered a new nonfictional adventurer, in the flesh. Step aside, Harrison Ford: Andrew Du is the real young Indiana Jones.

Clean environments encourage generosity and fairness

(Richard Alleyne, The Telegraph) Simply freshening-up the smell of a room is enough to provoke a subconscious impulse towards fairness, researchers claimed. They believe that it suggests that there is a link between cleanliness and morality and that by improving our environments we can improve our behaviour. The research found a dramatic improvement in ethical behaviour with just a few sprays of a citrus-scented cleaner.

Prairie Pioneer Seeks To Reinvent The Way We Farm

(Richard Harris, NPR) We tend to think Earth can provide us with an endless bounty of food. But farming practices in most parts of the world can't work forever. Soil is constantly washing away, and what's left is gradually losing the nutrients it needs to sustain our crops. In the prairies of Kansas lives Wes Jackson, a man who has spent his long and rich career trying to invent a new kind of agriculture — one that will last indefinitely.

Tiny dinosaur species discovered

(BBC News) A new species of dinosaur has been identified 30 years after its fossilised remains were discovered. Fruitadens haagarorum, researchers say, is one of the smallest dinosaurs known to science. In the Royal Society journal Proceedings B, the researchers say that the dinosaur weighed less that 1kg. The fossils have been housed at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County since being discovered in Colorado in 1979. According to the researchers, the tiny dinosaur was agile and a fast runner. It lived in the Upper Jurassic period, about 150 million years ago.

Scientists announce planet bounty

(Jonathan Amos, BBC News) Astronomers have announced a haul of planets found beyond our Solar System. The 32 "exoplanets" ranged in size from five times the mass of Earth to 5-10 times the mass of Jupiter, the researchers said. They were found using a very sensitive instrument on a 3.6m telescope at the European Southern Observatory's La Silla facility in Chile. The discovery is exciting because it suggests that low-mass planets could be numerous in our galaxy.

New Robot Delivers Snacks

(Bill Christensen, Technovelgy.com) Rrobotics researchers at Carnegie Mellon University get hungry at work just like you do. Unlike you, however, they can create robot minions to bring them food. Their latest creation is Snackbot, an autonomous mobile robot whose mission is to bring tasty treats. "Snackbot is a mobile robot, about the size of a very small human, that rolls around on wheels, and will be delivering snacks to students, faculty, and office workers at Carnegie Mellon University," according to its inventors.

Will e-bikes be the new 'commuter cool'?

(Steve Almasy, CNN) Keith Felch is admittedly a big guy, but more than a few super-fit cyclists in Southern California have been left wondering how that dude just went flying by. And then his wife, Mary, comes motoring past. "They stare, like how can a girl go past me," she says, laughing. It takes the other riders a few seconds but then they figure it out. They have electric motors. The Felches, who live in Aliso Viejo, California, used to drive everywhere, except when they used their bikes for recreation. That changed when they got their new e-bikes, made by a company called Optibike.

Study finds potential key to growing heart cells

(Maggie Fox, Reuters) Researchers looking for ways to turn stem cells into the types of heart cells they want said on Thursday they had found the key to making one important type in mice. They found the cells that give rise to the muscles of the ventricles -- the chambers that pump blood out of the heart -- in mice and said they will try to use this information to turn ordinary skin or blood cells into this important heart tissue.

Archeologists unearth 'lost' mini Roman Coliseum

(Paula Newton, CNN) Under a canopy of elegant Italian pines, the foundations of a mini Roman Coliseum are at once unmistakable and exhilarating. The structure at "Portus," the Romans' ancient Mediterranean port, has remained undiscovered for eighteen centuries until now. University of Southhampton archaeologists have just this summer uncovered the remains of an amphitheater, a Roman warehouse and the ruins of an Imperial palace even though archaeologists have been digging at this site since the 19th Century.

'Imagineer' touts geothermal energy invention

(Azadeh Ansari, CNN) Hidden under a quaint resort 60 miles northeast of Fairbanks, Alaska, lies a treasure trove of potential energy that's free and available 24/7. Alaskan entrepreneur Bernie Karl has pioneered modern technology to tap into one of Earth's oldest energy resources: hot water. Karl, 56, likes to call himself an "imagineer." Using imagination to fuel his engineering ambitions, this tenacious thinker and self-starter has figured out a way to generate electricity using water that's the temperature of a cup of coffee -- about 165 degrees Fahrenheit. "There's more opportunity now than there has ever been in the history of man, but we have to reinvent ourselves," Karl said.

Breast cancer DNA sequence decoded

(SidewaysNews.com) Scientists have for the first time decoded the entire DNA sequence of a metastatic breast tumour, uncovering important information about how cancer spreads. The landmark study by researchers at the British Columbia (BC) Cancer Agency is being heralded as a "watershed event" in the understanding of breast cancer, opening doors to new treatment options. Over a nine-year period, the team headed by Dr Samuel Aparicio studied a single patient's lobular breast cancer tumour.

Replacement cells for liver look promising

(Mark Johnson, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel) Researchers at the Medical College of Wisconsin have turned the cells in human skin into those in the liver, work that opens avenues for treating diseases of the liver without relying on organ transplants. Professor and stem-cell researcher Stephen A. Duncan and other scientists in his lab reported this week in the journal Hepatology that they have created reprogrammed mouse liver cells that are identical to those grown in nature and were able to integrate and grow alongside those in an actual mouse liver.

Blind 7-Year-Old Boy Sees With His Ears

(Ki Mae Heussner, ABC News) Born without sight, 7-year-old Lucas Murray used to be so afraid of walking he wouldn't take a step without his parents by his side. "He would walk, but he would hold our hands. Always," said his mother, Sarah Murray of Dorset, England. "When he was younger, he wouldn't even walk on a bumpy surface." But now Lucas has become more mobile than his parents ever imagined, running with friends, playing basketball and jumping on a trampoline -- all on his own.

Astronauts Build Stephen Colbert's Space Treadmill

(Clara Moscowitz, Space.com) Staying fit in space is about to get easier now that astronauts on the International Space Station have finished building a new zero-gravity treadmill named after TV comedian Stephen Colbert. Dubbed COLBERT after the host of Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report," the new exercise treadmill is now awaiting a series of tests to make sure it's working correctly before astronauts can begin running on it.

Enormous New Ring Found Distantly Orbiting Saturn

(Andrea Thompson, Space.com) There's a new king of rings in the solar system: An enormous new ring has been discovered around Saturn, made up of debris from the gas giant's distant moon Phoebe. Before the discovery of this massive ring — about 12.5 times the average distance between the Earth and the moon in width and 6 times that distance in thickness — the largest known planetary rings were Jupiter's gossamer rings and Saturn's E ring.

Green roofs offset global warming, study finds

(Emily Sohn, Discovery News) Filling rooftops with plants and dirt can help pull a modest amount of heat-trapping carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, found a new study. While green roofs certainly won't solve the global warming problem, their ability to sop up greenhouse gases — even just a little bit — bolsters the case for planting them on city buildings, despite extra costs on the front end, said lead researcher Kristin Getter, of Michigan State University in East Lansing.

Bluehenge unearthed: Prehistoric site that could be famous stone circle's little sister

(David Derbyshire, Daily Mail) Archaeologists have discovered Stonehenge's little sister - just a mile from the famous monument. The prehistoric circle, unearthed in secret over the summer, is one of the most important prehistoric finds in decades. Researchers have called it 'Bluehenge' after the colour of the 27 giant Welsh stones it once incorporated - but are now missing.

Disney parade, NASA patch design contest welcomes Buzz Lightyear back from space

(CollectSpace.com) A well-traveled, twelve-inch Buzz Lightyear action figure received a homecoming on Friday worthy of any full-size astronaut who returned after more than a year spent onboard the International Space Station (ISS). Disney Parks and NASA came together at Disney World in Florida to celebrate Buzz Lightyear's landing with the launch of a contest for kids to design the "Toy Story" astronaut's mission patch and debut a new online game as part of the "Space Ranger Education Series" on the space agency's website.

Dinosaur eggs are found in India

(Jyotsna Singh, BBC News) Geologists in southern India say they have found hundreds of dinosaur egg clusters which could be about 65 million years old. It was a chance find discovered when a team of scientists were locating a place to excavate an ancient riverbed in the state of Tamil Nadu. As they dug deeper they saw layers of what looked like fossilised eggs.

Cirque du Soleil owner Guy Laliberte becomes first clown in space

(Nico Hines, Times Online) The world’s richest clown was fired into space yesterday, promising to take slapstick into orbit. Guy Laliberté, the former street performer who founded Cirque du Soleil and went on to become a billionaire, was heading for the International Space Station last night on board a Soyuz rocket — carrying a collection of red noses for the crew. He becomes Russia’s seventh "space tourist", with the 12-day trip costing him $35 million (£22 million).

Mars probe watches water-ice fade

(Jonathan Amos, BBC News) Large deposits of nearly pure water-ice may lurk just below the Martian surface, much nearer the equator than previously thought, suggest new images. The pictures acquired by a Nasa orbiter show white material exposed by fresh meteorite impacts fades over time - behaviour expected of ice on Mars. An onboard instrument also detected the tell-tale chemical signature of water. Researchers tell Science magazine that the observations suggest vast sheets of ice may reside in near-surface layers.

It's Official: Water Found on the Moon

(Andrea Thompson, Space.com) Since man first touched the moon and brought pieces of it back to Earth, scientists have thought that the lunar surface was bone dry. But new observations from three different spacecraft have put this notion to rest with what has been called "unambiguous evidence" of water across the surface of the moon. The new findings, detailed in the Sept. 25 issue of the journal Science, come in the wake of further evidence of lunar polar water ice by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and just weeks before the planned lunar impact of NASA's LCROSS satellite.

Tiny technologies could produce big energy solutions

(Elizabeth Landau, CNN) Forgot to charge your cell phone last night? Imagine that you could power it by walking. Weirder still, you might be able to just spray a new battery on. These concepts are being developed by two leading nanotechnology researchers who are developing cleaner, more efficient ways of delivering electrical power. In working toward making these ideas realities, they are making use of structures that are 100 nanometers or smaller, where one nanometer is a billionth of a meter.

Students launch camera to edge of space, snap pics of Earth

(John D. Sutter, CNN) Oliver Yeh is the kind of guy who cooks up ideas so kooky, so out-of-this-world, that even his fellow MIT students tend to roll their eyes when they hear them. But that never stops him. His latest concept -- to launch a camera into near-space using a weather balloon, a cell phone, hand warmers and a drink cooler -- fell flat when he sent out an e-mail message to dozens of his classmates, asking for help. Unfazed, Yeh managed to find one friend willing to chip in.

'Extraordinary Results' Expected from Revamped Hubble

(Andrea Thompson, Space.com) Now that the newly refurbished Hubble Space Telescope is back up and running, with its first images unveiled last week, the astronomical community — and the public at large — has a bevy of new images and observations to look forward to. In fact some observations have already produced extraordinary results, not yet announced, from the earliest epoch of the universe, according to a Hubble project scientist.

Innovative math program boosts scores at O.C. schools

(Seema Mehta, Los Angeles Times) In the airy computer lab at Romero-Cruz Elementary School in Santa Ana, 11-year-old Davis Nguyen quickly completed math problems. Each correct answer let an animated penguin named JiJi take steps across a bridge. The computer game looked simple, but backers say it is part of an innovative and powerful new way to teach math, and standardized test results released Tuesday appear to back up their claims.

Astronomers confirm first planet made of rock discovered outside our solar system

(David Derbyshire, Daily Mail) Astronomers have found an Earth-like planet orbiting a distant star in a discovery that raises the chances of finding alien life. The planet - named Corot 7b - is similar in size to the Earth and appears to be made out of rock. Although scientists have found more than 330 planets outside our own solar system before - including 12 thought to be solid - this is the smallest, and the first one confirmed to be made of rock.

Electricity Harvested From Trees

(LiveScience.com) Researchers have figured out a way to plug into the power generated by trees. Scientists have known for some time that plants can conduct electricity. In fact, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that plants can pack up to 200 millivolts of electrical power. A millivolt is one-thousandth of a volt. And although the popular potato or lemon battery experiments have shown that an electrical current can be generated by creating a reaction between the food and two different metals, power is harvested from trees through a different mechanism.

Bright Ideas: Surgical robotics

(Karyn Scherer, New Zealand Herald) It was probably inevitable that Catherine Mohr would end up doing something interesting with her life. Her father, who was born in China to British missionary parents, came to NZ during World War II. He met her mother, who is a biostatistician, at Otago University. Although the family left New Zealand when Mohr was a preschooler, she has kept her Kiwi passport. And she happily accepted an invitation to return home last month as a guest of the Ministry for Research, Science and Technology, and as a speaker at Morgo, Jenny Morel's annual get-together for entrepreneurs.

Twittering cottage becomes Britain's most public house

(Dick Ahlstrom, Irish Times) A 16th-century cottage on the Isle of Wight has been reinvented for the 21st century by sending its own messages on the Twitter social networking system. Despite its thatched roof, it sports many things to please gadget enthusiasts such as sensors to control temperature, lights and even the heated bathroom towel rail. The whole idea of this “smart” house arose because of efforts to cut electricity consumption, explained owner Dr Andy Stanford-Clark, who described the cottage’s hidden special features, including the ability to receive a text message to switch on the reindeer Christmas lights in the front garden.

Buzz Lightyear and astronauts' mementos returning from space to inspire kids, public

(Robert Z. Pearlman, CollectSpace.com) Space shuttle Discovery undocked from the International Space Station (ISS) Tuesday with six NASA astronauts, one European Space Agency (ESA) mission specialist and a Star Command Space Ranger for the trip back to Earth. Yes, that's right, Buzz Lightyear is on his way home. The animated astronaut has been on a real space mission in the form of a 12-inch tall action figure since launching last year aboard Discovery's STS-124 mission, as part of an educational partnership between NASA and the Walt Disney Company.

Monopoly City Streets Launches on Google

(Ki Mae Heussner, ABC News) It promises to be the biggest game of Monopoly the world has ever seen. In a 21st century twist on the popular board game, toymaker Hasbro and tech giant Google have made the game available online, allowing players to compete in a worldwide, real-time version of the game.

Study: Human fat yields multipurpose stem cells

(Elizabeth Landau, CNN) You know that fat in your body you wish you didn't have? It turns out those cells could be used to create stem cells that one day may be able to cure disease. Scientists at Stanford University School of Medicine have discovered that the millions of fat cells removed during liposuction can be easily and quickly turned into induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells, more easily than the skin cells that researchers used when the first iPS cells were created in 2007.

Teenager invents £23 solar panel that could be solution to developing world's energy needs ... made from human hair

(Daily Mail) A new type of solar panel using human hair could provide the world with cheap, green electricity, believes its teenage inventor. Milan Karki, 18, who comes from a village in rural Nepal, believes he has found the solution to the developing world's energy needs. The young inventor says hair is easy to use as a conductor in solar panels and could revolutionise renewable energy.

Got a dream but no cash? The Internet can help

(Claudia Parsons, Reuters) Chris Waddell wants to climb Kilimanjaro in a wheelchair; George Del Barrio wants to make a film in Cambodia; Jeff Edwards wants to write a book about a science fiction writer: they want you to fund their dreams. A website called Kickstarter.com is making it possible for people like this to raise sums ranging from a few hundred to tens of thousands of dollars to fund anything that captures the imagination of Internet users with a little money to spare.

'Telepathic' microchip could help paraplegics control computers

(The Telegraph) A 'telepathic' microchip that enables paraplegics to control computers has been developed by Dr Jon Spratley, a British scientist. The chip is implanted onto the surface of the brain, where it monitors electronic 'thought' pulses. While paraplegics may be unable to move their limbs, their brains still produce an electronic signal when they try. The new chip captures this 'thought' and transmits it wirelessly, via Bluetooth-style technology, to control a range of simple devices.

400 Years After Galileo: Celebrating the International Year of Astronomy

(Edna DeVore, SETI Institute) In early 2009, astronomers inaugurated the celebration of the International Year of Astronomy (IYA). The IYA vision is to "help the citizens of the world rediscover their place in the Universe through the day and night time sky, and thereby engage a personal sense of wonder and discovery." The United Nations, several astronomical organizations and many countries declared 2009 as the year for this scientific and cultural celebration. Why 2009? People have been stargazers since times before written history, but 2009 is a watershed year. It's the 400th anniversary of the first use of an astronomical telescope by Galileo.

A cordless future for electricity?

(John D. Sutter, CNN) Electronics such as phones and laptops may start shedding their power cords within a year. That's the prediction of Eric Giler, CEO of WiTricity, a company that's able to power light bulbs using wireless electricity that travels several feet from a power socket. WiTricity's version of wireless electricity -- which converts power into a magnetic field and sends it sailing through the air at a particular frequency -- still needs to be refined a bit, he said, but should be commercially available soon.

Playing Tetris helps get brain into shape

(Dick Ahlstrom, Irish Times) Researchers have discovered that playing the computer game Tetris makes your brain grow. The only problem is they do not know if it makes you any smarter. The study by the Mind Research Network in New Mexico, US, proved that playing Tetris for 30 minutes a day, for three months, will definitely make your brain grow in specific areas. Playing the popular computer game also made the brain more efficient, but unfortunately not in the areas where the grey matter grew.

Coupons You Don’t Clip, Sent to Your Cellphone

(Jenna Wortham, New York Times) Hunter Gilmore was never big on clipping coupons. "You stick them on the fridge, meaning to use them, and it never happens," said Mr. Gilmore, a 29-year-old actor and advertising agency recruiter in Manhattan. But thanks to his cellphone, Mr. Gilmore has lately been awash in discounts, regularly scoring reduced prices and special offers that he would never cut out of a newspaper circular.

Shuttle Discovery docks with space station

(AP) Space shuttle Discovery pulled up at the space station Sunday night, ending a round-the-world chase of nearly two days. The final approach and docking ended up being slightly more challenging for Discovery's commander, Rick Sturckow. He had to use the shuttle's big primary thrusters for all the maneuvering instead of the small fine-tuning thrusters because of a breakdown in one of the little jets.

Swanky Space Hotel Concept Revealed

(Jeremy Hsu, Space.com) Space tourism may face some challenges with the uncertainty over the next-generation rides into space. But that hasn't stopped Earth designers from envisioning future space hotels for paying thrill seekers. A robot concierge, a redesigned showerhead and a full-sensory exercise wall are just part of the Space Hotel Project created by master's degree students in a program hosted by Imperial College London and the Royal College of Art in the UK. The concept could theoretically attach to the International Space Station, so long as the growing space outpost remains in orbit.

Stopwatch found for Solar System

(Sudeep Chand, BBC News) Scientists have found a new way to time events in the early Solar System. Writing in the journal Science, they describe how aluminium radioisotopes can now offer precise timing of events 4.5 billion years ago. The study shows that the rate of decay of isotopes can now be relied upon to give accurate measures of time for that period.

Golf course groundskeeper unearths 10-pound mammoth's tooth

(Jim Harger, Grand Rapids Press) Patrick Walker, a groundskeeper at Morrison Lake Country Club, says he's glad he paid attention in high school science classes. That's how he knew he was probably looking at the tooth of a 10,000-year-old mammoth while grooming the course last week. "Mr. (Douglas) Schmuck always told us to keep your eyes open, you never know what you'll find," said Walker, a 2009 graduate of Lakewood High School. "He's into archaeology and taught us about that kind of good stuff."

An Easy Way to Donate Unwanted Gift Cards to Schools

(Jenna Wortham, New York Times) Ever wonder what to do with that lingering $11.86 left on a gift card for Lowe’s or Bloomingdale’s? What about donating it to charity? On average, each household in the United States has around $400 worth of gift cards lying around, according to Plastic Jungle, a start-up that sells, purchases and exchanges unused gift cards. Owners of idle gift cards typically use Plastic Jungle to exchange cards for cash or a credit with Amazon.com. (Customers lose some of the face value in the transaction.) But the Mountain View, Calif., company recently added the option of donating the full face value of the cards to needy schools through DonorsChoose.org.

Ink found in Jurassic-era squid

(BBC News) Palaeontologists have drawn with ink extracted from a preserved fossilised squid uncovered during a dig in Trowbridge, Wiltshire. The fossil, thought to be 150 million years old, was found when a rock was cracked open, revealing the one-inch-long black ink sac. A picture of the creature and its Latin name was drawn using its ink.

'Harry Potter-style' video ads to be run inside U.S. paper magazine

(Daily Mail) The animated newspapers of the Harry Potter books will come a step closer next month with the appearance of the world's first video magazine advert. America's Entertainment Weekly will contain a wafer-thin screen and mini-speaker that will allow readers to watch a video when the publication is opened. CBS, the US TV station paying for the advert, said the device would be tough enough to cope with the rough and tumble of printing, binding and delivery.

Twitter site offers followers line to God

(Reuters) Want to tweet God? An Israeli university student has opened a Twitter site, twitter.com/thekotel, where prayers can be sent for placement in the crevices of Jerusalem's Western Wall, a Jewish holy site that faithful believe provides a direct line to the Almighty. "I take their prayers, print them out and drive to Jerusalem to put them in the Western Wall," said Alon Nir, a resident of Tel Aviv.

Telescopes to show universe soon after Big Bang

(A. Pawlowski, CNN) It may not be possible to travel back in time, but seeing stars and galaxies as they looked millions or even billions of years ago is no problem thanks to telescopes, the closest thing we have to time machines. Now, astronomers are holding their breath to see what they'll observe and discover with a new generation of huge telescopes set to be built around the world.

Young High-Tech Entrepreneurs Get Noticed

(Tom Banse, NPR) Companies large and small are discovering that they can't ignore Internet product reviews and social networking sites — and some of the new voices that must be heeded are very young. The headquarters of OmniTechNews.net is the cramped bedroom of 12-year-old Robert Clarke in Redmond, Wash. He and his two elementary school pals, Carson Fujisaki and Lucas Reif, are taping their latest video podcast product review.

Cave complex may lie beneath Giza Pyramids

(Rossella Lorenzi, Discovery News) An enormous system of caves, chambers and tunnels lies hidden beneath the Pyramids of Giza, according to a British explorer who claims to have found the lost underworld of the pharaohs. Populated by bats and venomous spiders, the underground complex was found in the limestone bedrock beneath the pyramid field at Giza.

Life's Evolution May Depend on Galaxy

(Clara Moscowitz, Space.com) Intelligent life beyond Earth might not be as dim a hope as many scientists think, according to a new study challenging a widely held anti-ET argument. Many skeptics tout an idea called the anthropic argument that claims extraterrestrial intelligence must be very rare because the time it takes for intelligent life to evolve is, on the average, much longer than the portion of a star's existence that is conducive to such life. But now astrobiologist Milan M. Cirkovic and colleagues say they've found a flaw in that reasoning.

New device lets deaf-blind people converse with anyone

(Christine Clarridge, Seattle Times) Not long ago, Robert J. Steppler walked from his home in Wedgwood to a little coffee shop nearby, ordered a green tea and chatted with the baristas. While that may sound hardly worthy of note, for Steppler and others like him, it most certainly is. Steppler, a deaf-blind individual, is one of the first people in the world to use a new device called the DeafBlind Communicator, which allows him to communicate freely despite his disabilities.

Britain's Royal Opera wants you to make tweet music

(Robert Leadbetter, Reuters) Britain's Royal Opera House (ROH) wants Twitter users to help create the "world's first online opera." The Covent Garden institution, which stages performances of ballet, opera and other classical music productions wants Internet-savvy tweeters to write the words to an opera using 140 characters or less at a time. "It's the people's opera and the perfect way for everyone to become involved with the inventiveness of opera as the ultimate form of storytelling," Alison Duthie, Head of ROH2, the arm of the ROH in charge of developing original projects said in a statement.

Math whiz hopes method will multiply

(Josh Shaffer, News & Observer) On a yellow scratch pad, Albert Clay works out a math problem that can stump a calculator -- and all of the ciphering occurs inside his white-haired head. In seconds, Clay multiplies a pair of five-digit numbers and writes down the answer in a single line. There's none of the sloppy rows of zig-zagging numbers that would normally clutter a page. Such is the beauty of his homemade formula -- titled "How to Multiply Any Number by Any Number in Your Head" -- which is registered as TXu001325432 in the U.S. Copyright Office.

With Cable, Laying a Basis for Growth in Africa

(Cat Contiguglia, New York Times) The opening of a fiber optic cable providing broadband Internet service to millions of people in Southern and Eastern Africa is part of an ambitious plan to expand Web access and help spur the continent’s economy and technology industry. The cable, built by Seacom, a consortium 75 percent controlled by African investors, is the first of about 10 new undersea connections expected to serve Africa before the middle of next year.

Kepler passes first test - ready to hunt for other Earths

(Peter N. Spotts, Christian Science Monitor) NASA's planet-hunting Kepler spacecraft has passed its first "spot that planet" test, detecting a giant Jupiter-like orb hurtling around a star roughly 1,000 light-years away. The test run clearly demonstrates that Kepler will have little trouble performing its primary mission: detecting Earth-like planets in the habitable zones of sun-like stars. In the process, Kepler has given astronomers a detailed look at the planet – its temperature and how its atmosphere operates.

New Image Reveals Nebula's Double Star Heart

(Space.com) A new look at a distant nebula has revealed not one, but two stars locked in a cosmic dance that has shaped their dusty surroundings. Astronomers with the European Southern Observatory used several telescopes to build the clearest image yet of a region of space around the odd star HD 87643, whose light reflects off surrounding material to illuminate it in a so-called reflection nebula of wispy tendrils of gas and dust.

Your Mom’s Facebook Status: I’m Crunching Climate Data!

(Erica Gies, Wired) Solving the climate change problem or curing cancer can seem like Everest-scale problems that anyone who isn’t a millionaire philanthropist or brilliant scientist can do nothing about. But now you, and all your Facebook friends, can pitch in. Intel has created an application for the popular social networking site that allows people to donate their computers’ spare processing power to scientific research. "The more computers we have, the better calculations we can do," said biochemist David Baker of the University of Washington, who uses volunteer computing for his research via Rosetta@home, which is working on cures for cancer and myriad other diseases.

Smart-phone app lets you do good deeds in your spare time

(Amy Farnsworth, Christian Science Monitor) For most people, volunteering means spending a few hours at a soup kitchen or tutoring a student over the weekend. But modern smart phones such as the Apple iPhone now allow for meaningful volunteering during the in-between times. Call it on-demand volunteerism. That’s the idea behind The Extraordinaries, a San Francisco-based group, whose mission is to get people to volunteer whenever it’s convenient. It could be standing in line at the post office, waiting for a lunch date to arrive, or half time at a child’s sports event. All the volunteer needs is The Extraordinaries’ free iPhone app and decent cellphone reception.

Scientists analyze Twitter, blogs, to learn how happy people are

(Alexandra Hazlett, New York Daily News) Two scientists from Vermont have created a device that measures happiness by analyzing blog and Twitter posts, MSNBC reported. The "hedonometer," created by Peter Dodds and Chris Danforth, combs blogs and Tweets looking for sentences that begin with "I feel" or "I am feeling." The next words in the sentences were rated on a happiness scale of 1 to 9. In total, 1,034 words were ranked. "Triumphant" registered an 8.87 on the high end of the scale; "hostage" came in with a score of 2.20 near the bottom.

Grow your own teeth: Breakthrough in the lab may spell the end of dentures

(Fiona MacRae, Daily Mail) Scientists have made teeth from stem cells in a world first that could make dentures a thing of the past. They looked like normal teeth, were sensitive to pain and chewed food easily. While the experiments were on mice, they pave the way for people to 'grow their own teeth' as required. The technique could also be adapted to other organs, allowing hearts, lungs and kidneys to be grown inside the body to replace parts worn by age or damaged by disease.

2,000-year-old ritual cup found in Old City of Jerusalem

( Thomas H. Maugh II, Los Angeles Times) U.S. archaeologists have found an extremely rare 2,000-year-old limestone cup inscribed with 10 lines of Aramaic or Hebrew script near the Zion Gate of the Old City of Jerusalem. Such ritual cups are common, especially in areas that were inhabited by priests, but usually they are unmarked or bear only a single line of text, such as a name, said archaeologist Shimon Gibson of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, who led the dig along with James Tabor of the same school. "To have 10 lines of text is unprecedented," he said in announcing the find Wednesday.

Boffins Try To Spread A Little 'Wappiness'

(Sky News) Scientists are hoping to bring happiness to Britain next week with an online psychological experiment. From Monday, for five days, people will be invited to visit a website and take part in four mood-boosting techniques. It is hoped that once the participants are cheered up by the site, their happiness will spread to others across the UK.

Chimps born to appreciate music

(Matt Walker, BBC News) Chimpanzees are biologically programmed to appreciate pleasant music. The discovery comes from experiments showing that an infant chimpanzee prefers to listen to consonant music over dissonant music. That suggests the apes are born with an innate appreciation of pleasant sounds, say scientists in the journal Primates. Until now, this was thought to be a universal human trait, but the new finding suggests it evolved in the ancestors of humans and modern apes.

If You’re Happy and You Know It, Tell Your Phone

(Jenna Wortham, New York Times) Can the Apple iPhone, which supplies hours of entertainment, actually measure your happiness? Matt Killingsworth, a doctoral candidate in psychology at Harvard University, thinks the phone might at least help researchers gather some data about it. Mr. Killingsworth, a former software developer, has helped create an application called "Track Your Happiness" for the iPhone to collect information to determine which factors are associated with happiness.

Wisconsin Crowd Watches Spaceship Launcher Take Off

(AP) Hundreds of earthlings turned their faces to the sky Monday to see an airplane built to launch a ship into space, watching the gleaming white craft soar overhead. The twin-fuselage craft named WhiteKnightTwo, looking like two planes connected at the wing tips, circled the runway several times before touching down at the Experimental Aircraft Association's Air Venture annual gathering.

Pedal power for Kenya's mobiles

(BBC News) Two Kenyan students are hoping to market a device that allows bicycle riders to charge their mobile phones. Jeremiah Murimi, 24, and Pascal Katana, 22, said they wanted their dynamo-powered "smart charger" to help people without electricity in rural areas. "We both come from villages and we know the problems," Mr Murimi told the BBC. People have to travel great distances to shops where they are charged $2 a time to power their phone, usually from a car battery or solar panel.

Well-Preserved Ancient Roman Shipwrecks Found in Mediterranean

(AP) Archaeologists have found five well-preserved Roman shipwrecks deep under the sea off a small Mediterranean island, with their cargo of vases, pots and other objects largely intact, officials said Friday. The ships are submerged about 330 to 490 feet off Ventotene, a tiny island that is part of an archipelago off Italy's west coast between Rome and Naples.

NASA Celebrates Chandra X-ray Observatory's 10th Anniversary

In the ten years since NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory was deployed into orbit, it has supplied an unprecedented glimpse into the inner workings of the universe, providing astounding images of beauty and enabling astronomers to conduct more detailed studies of black holes, supernovas, comets, and dark matter. The Chandra mirrors, the largest, most precisely shaped and aligned, and smoothest mirrors ever constructed, enable it to detect and image X-ray sources that are billions of light years away.

How an amateur beat the pros in spotting Jupiter collision

(Peter N. Spotts, Christian Science Monitor) When an object plunged into Jupiter's cloud tops over the weekend, it left a darkened splotch the size of the Pacific Ocean for all to see. But no one did at first, except Australian amateur astronomer Anthony Wesley. So, where were all those hot-shot professional astronomers and their multimillion-dollar telescopes? Therein lies a tale of the synergy between professional astronomers and their unpaid counterparts, from engineers and book authors to Caroline Moore, who last November, at the astronomically early age of 14, became possibly the youngest person to discover a supernova.

Embryonic-like cells repair damaged mouse hearts

(Julie Steenhuysen, Reuters) Ordinary cells reprogrammed to act like embryonic stem cells can help repair damaged heart tissue in mice, researchers reported on Monday in a study that shows a potential practical use for the experimental cells. When injected into mice whose hearts had been damaged by a heart attack, the new cells helped improve both the structure and function of the heart. Eventually the hope would be to patch up seriously ill heart patients using their own cells.

Freecycle's like eBay only free

(Rachel Richardson, Cincinnati Enquirer) Diane McWethy needed 20 Barbie dolls fast and on a zero budget. The Goshen librarian planned to use the dolls in an educational program on Egyptian mummies for kids. She posted a request on her local Freecycle group, expecting to travel the county collecting them one-by-one. "But, of course, there was someone out there with a big, big collection of naked Barbies, and she no longer needed them," said McWethy. "Never have I been more grateful for someone else's castoffs."

Blind can take wheel with new vehicle

(PhysOrg.com) A retrofitted four-wheel dirt buggy developed by the Blind Driver Challenge team from Virginia Tech's Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory uses laser range finders, an instant voice command interface and a host of other innovative, cutting-edge technology to guide blind drivers as they steer, brake, and accelerate. Although in the early testing stage, the National Federation of the Blind -- which spurred the project -- considers the vehicle a major breakthrough for independent living of the visually impaired. "It was great!" said Wes Majerus, of Baltimore, the first blind person to drive the buggy on a closed course at the Virginia Tech campus this summer.

Space shuttle Endeavour blasts off after several postponements

(CNN) The space shuttle Endeavour lifted off en route to the international space station Wednesday evening after several days of weather delays. The shuttle took off at 6:03 p.m. Wednesday night after being scrubbed five times before. "The weather is cooperating, and it's now time to fly," Launch Director Pete Nickolenko announced.

Monkey Moves Robot Using Mind Control

(Thomas Moore, Sky News) A monkey fitted with a hi-tech brain chip has learned to move a complex robotic arm using mind control. The animal can operate the robot with such dexterity that it can reach out to grab, and turn a handle. The mechanical arm has an arm, elbow, wrist and simple hand, which the monkey controls with the power of thought.

Swearing 'helps to reduce pain'

(BBC News) Uttering expletives when you hurt yourself is a sensible policy, according to scientists who have shown swearing can help reduce pain. A study by Keele University researchers found volunteers who cursed at will could endure pain nearly 50% longer than civil-tongued peers.

Israel's Bright Sparks Invent 'Electric' Road

(Dominic Waghorn, Sky News) The bright sparks at the country's Technion Institute of Technology in Haifa have developed a road that generates power when vehicles pass over it. And they hope the technology will reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. In a university car park, Haim Abramovich and his team run a heavy truck repeatedly over a special stretch of tarmac. "The name of the game is harvesting," he told Sky News. "Harvesting means energy which is available but is going to waste."

Plug In and Tune In: New Hearing Aid App for the iPhone

(Ned Potter, Ki Mae Heussner and Liam Berkowitz, ABC News) People don't normally equate the iPhone with medical innovation, but with the June release of an application that doubles as a hearing aid, they may have to reconsider. The application, which is called soundAMP, is made by Ginger Labs, a California-based software applications developer, and is available in the iTunes store for $9.99.

The astonishing Omega Nebula - the star-making machine of the Milky Way

(Daily Mail) A stunning image of the Omega Nebula has been captured by the European Southern Observatory. In the vast stellar nursery, infant stars both illuminate and sculpt a pastel fantasy of dust and gas. The nebula is located about 5,500 light-years away towards the constellation of Sagittarius, also known as the Archer. The ethereal cloud is about 15 light-years across and has recently spawned a cluster of massive, hot stars. The intense light and strong winds from these hulking infants have carved remarkable structures in the gas and dust.

Coldest Known Object in Space Is Very Unnatural

(Space.com) The coldest known object out in space has now been announced by scientists. It's not a frozen comet or even some distant, chilly gas cloud. Rather, it's a spacecraft. On July 3, the European Space Agency's Planck spacecraft reached this frigid extreme as part of a key step in the satellite's mission to observe the remnant radiation of the Big Bang.

Oldest Christian bible made whole again online

(Stefano Ambrogi, Reuters) The surviving parts of the world's oldest Christian bible will be reunited online on Monday, generating excitement among biblical scholars still striving to unlock its mysteries. The Codex Sinaiticus was hand written by four scribes in Greek on animal hide, known as vellum, in the mid-fourth century around the time of the Roman emperor Constantine the Great who embraced Christianity.

To the moon

(Helen Altonn, Honolulu Star-Bulletin) Three University of Hawaii scientists are participating in NASA's new missions to the moon to learn more about the environment for eventual human settlements. Jeffrey Gillis-Davis, Paul Lucey and B. Ray Hawke, all with the Institute of Geophysics and Planetology, have different roles with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS. Gillis-Davis, in an interview, said he is using data from the orbiter's radio frequency instrument to look for deposits on the moon from volcanic eruptions that occurred with fire fountains shooting lava into space.

A cellphone plan to bridge digital divide

(Amy Farnsworth, Christian Science Monitor) A year ago, Christina Beck had no access to a telephone. The single mother of a 2-year-old son, she could no longer afford her monthly phone bills and was forced to use her roommate’s work cellphone to make doctor’s appointments or call her family. Then, sitting in front of the television in her Boston apartment one evening, Ms. Beck saw an advertisement for SafeLink Wireless, a program launched by prepaid cellphone provider TracFone Wireless that provides free mobile service for low-income individuals. Beck applied online at her local library.

Salamander Discovery Could Lead to Human Limb Regeneration

(Brandon Keim, Wired) By tracking individual cells in genetically modified salamanders, researchers have found an unexpected explanation for their seemingly magical ability to regrow lost limbs. Rather than having their cellular clocks fully reset and reverting to an embryonic state, cells in the salamanders’ stumps became slightly less mature versions of the cells they’d been before. The findings could inspire research into human tissue regeneration.

App of the Week: A Tonic for an Existential Crisis

(Roy Furchgott, New York Times) There are an astonishing number of things that apps can do. They can help you to level a picture, build a custom radio station and do your banking. Now there’s is an app that can make you feel a little better about yourself and the world around you. Called DoGood, the iPhone app is the creation of a group of University of Michigan students who hope to spread random acts of kindness.

Big brother untangles baby babble

(Jonathan Fildes, BBC News) "Can you think of a more complicated question to ask?" says Deb Roy, as he explains the genesis of his work. In 2005, the artificial intelligence researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab set out to understand how children learn to talk. "We wanted to understand how minds work and how they develop and how the interplay of innate and environmental influence makes us who we are and how we learn to communicate." It was a big task and one that years of research by scientists around the world had only begun to scratch the surface of.

Kiwi farmer spots supernova with amateur telescope

(David Kraitzick, New Zealand Herald) The discovery of a supernova by a North Canterbury farmer has been confirmed by the Royal Astronomical Society of New Zealand. Dairy farmer Stuart Parker captured an image of the exploding star with a computer-controlled camera mounted to an amateur 14" telescope. Marilyn Head from the Society said the capture of "such a fleeting event in one faint galaxy amongst the many hundreds within the reach of amateur telescopes takes perseverance, skill and luck."

Grameen Foundation and Google create mobile apps for Africa

(Kristi Heim, Seattle Times) Real time information about farming, health and trading will be available to mobile phone users in Uganda with new technology services developed by the Grameen Foundation, Google and telecom operator MTN Uganda. The Grameen Foundation saw the proliferation of mobile phones in Africa as a way to get information and services to poor communities in Uganda without Internet access. About 18 months ago it started a project called the Application Laboratory (AppLab), with much of the early work being done in Seattle through the Grameen Foundation's Technology Center. The first suite of those applications is being launched today.

Toyota Develops Wheelchair Steered by Brain Waves

(AP) Toyota Motor Corp. says it has developed a way of steering a wheelchair by just detecting brain waves, without the person having to move a muscle or shout a command. Toyota's system, developed in a collaboration with researchers in Japan, is among the fastest in the world in analyzing brain waves, it said in a release Monday.

Oldest known portrait of St Paul revealed by Vatican archaeologists

(Richard Owens, Times Online) Vatican archaeologists have uncovered what they say is the oldest known portrait of St Paul. The portrait, which was found two weeks ago but has been made public only after restoration, shows St Paul with a high domed forehead, deep-set eyes and a long pointed beard, confirming the image familiar from later depictions.

Oldest known granaries found near Dead Sea

(Thomas H. Maugh II, Los Angeles Times) More than 1,000 years before humans began domesticating grains for food, they were building sophisticated storage buildings to hold the wild grains they were cultivating, researchers reported Monday. Collecting large quantities of grains and other foods is a prerequisite to establishing sizable communities, but such collection requires a system to store the perishables so they can be kept for months at least. The new find reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences represents the oldest known storage system or granary to date -- about 11,300 years old.

Solar plane to make public debut

Jonathan Amos, BBC News) Swiss adventurer Bertrand Picard is set to unveil a prototype of the solar-powered plane he hopes eventually to fly around the world. The initial version, spanning 61m but weighing just 1,500kg, will undergo trials to prove it can fly at night. Mr Picard, who made history by circling the globe non-stop in a balloon in 1999, says he wants to demonstrate the potential of renewable energies. He expects to make a crossing of the Atlantic in 2012.

Ancient flutes more than 35,000 years old

(The Telegraph) The world's oldest instrument has been found in a German cave, suggesting humans were piping tunes from bone and ivory flutes more than 35,000 years ago, new research has shown. Scientists discovered remains of the instruments in a German cave once populated by some of the first modern humans to settle in Europe after leaving Africa. The finds suggest that our oldest ancestors in Europe had a well-established musical tradition.

'Misty caverns' on Enceladus moon

(Jonathan Amos, BBC News) Nasa's Cassini spacecraft has obtained strong evidence that Saturn's tiny moon Enceladus retains liquid water. The probe has detected sodium salts in the vicinity of the satellite, which appear to spew from its south pole. Liquid water that is in prolonged contact with rock will leach out sodium - in exactly the same way as Earth's oceans have become salty over time. Scientists tell Nature magazine that the liquid water may reside in caverns just below the surface of the moon. If confirmed, it is a stunning result.

Women's voices 'make plants grow faster' finds Royal Horticultural Society

(Richard Alleyne, The Telegraph) Women gardeners' voices speed up growth of tomato plants much more than men's, it found. In an experiment run over a month, they found that tomato plants grew up to two inches taller if they were serenaded by the dulcet tones of a female rather than a male. The findings vindicate comments made by Prince Charles that he talks to his plants although they suggest that for maximum results he would be better off recruiting the Duchess of Cornwall.

Iran Online: Secretive Group Gets Past Web Censors

(Ned Potter, ABC News) For many of Iran's dissidents trying to defy the government of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, contact with the outside world depends on a little flash drive in Shiyu Zhou's pocket. Zhou is a Chinese-born computer scientist. He is deputy director of the Global Internet Freedom Consortium, though the group's name makes it sound somewhat more official than it really is. It is a loose network of about 50 engineers like him, working in their free time to break down the electronic walls put up by repressive governments.

Archaeological find at Snohomish County site

(Noah Haglund, Everett Daily Herald) Stone tools used by some of the first people in the Pacific Northwest had lain, for thousands of years, undisturbed beneath the forest floor. A developer in 2007 uncovered thousands of artifacts -- including spear points, stone knives and scraping tools -- while performing a survey on land where he planned to build more than a dozen homes. State archaeologists believe they've found one of the best preserved sites of human activity from what's known as the Olcott period, 4,500 to 9,000 years ago. The Herald was asked not to report the location to prevent looting.

Ancient Holy Land quarry uncovered, team says

(Ari Rabinovitch, Reuters) Israeli archaeologists said on Sunday they had discovered the largest underground quarry in the Holy Land, dating back to the time of Jesus and containing Christian symbols etched into the walls.

Brainwaves put patients in touch

(David Reid, BBC) Patients who are conscious but almost entirely paralysed could be aided by French research that reads their mind to help them communicate. The condition known as locked-in syndrome has many causes but in most cases it leaves its victims fully conscious but unable to move or speak. French journalist Jean-Dominique Bauby suffered "locked-in syndrome" when he woke up from a coma caused by a massive stroke to find his mental faculties intact, but body inert. Despite this he managed to write a memoir entitled The Diving Bell and the Butterfly to give the world a rare glimpse into the internal lives of the locked-in.

Work starts on New Mexico spaceport

(Simon Hancock and Alan Moloney, BBC News) Ground has been broken on the construction site of Spaceport America, the world's first purpose-built commercial spaceport. Those behind the project say that it will help provide a new chapter in space exploration. When finished in 18 months' time, the facility will house Virgin Galactic's space tourism business and other firms working in the commercial space arena.

NASA revisits the moon with launch of first unmanned probe in years

(AP) NASA launched its first moon shot in a decade Thursday, sending up a pair of unmanned science probes that will help determine where astronauts could land and set up camp in years to come. The liftoff occurred just one month and two days shy of the 40th anniversary of the first lunar footprints. The mission is a first step in NASA’s effort to return humans to the moon by 2020.

S.F. techie helps stir Iranian protests

(Matthew B. Stannard, San Francisco Chronicle) Little about Austin Heap's first online venture, a site hosting free episodes of the cartoon "South Park," suggested he would one day use his computer skills to challenge a government. But for the past few days, Heap, an IT director in San Francisco, has been on the virtual front lines of the crisis in Iran, helping people there protest the presidential election, which opponents of the incumbent regime maintain was fraudulent.

Stanford scientists discover a possible successor to silicon

(Lisa M. Krieger, San Jose Mercury News) Physicists at Stanford University have identified an important new trait of a chemical compound that could become an heir to silicon, perhaps transforming the computing industry. The researchers found that electrons in a chemical compound called bismuth telluride have a unique property: They can travel without resistance, losing no energy. This suggests that there might be a new way to carry more information than silicon-based chips can handle.

On Web and iPhone, a Tool to Aid Careful Shopping

(Claire Cain Miller, New York Times) These days, every skin lotion and dish detergent on store shelves gloats about how green it is. How do shoppers know which are good for them and good for the earth? It was a similar question that hit Dara O’Rourke, a professor of environmental and labor policy at the University of California, Berkeley, one morning when he was applying sunscreen to his young daughter’s face. He realized he did not know what was in the lotion. He went to his office and quickly discovered that it contained a carcinogen activated by sunlight.

Planet six times the mass of Jupiter 'spotted' by astronomers

(Ben Leach, Telegraph) Researchers from the National Institute of Nuclear Physics (INFN) claim it is the first planet to be seen outside of our galaxy. The scientists used a new method of viewing space called microlensing. The method uses a nearer object to bend the light of a distant star when the two align with an observer.

Entrepreneur Wants Kids to Have Tea on the Moon

(Jeremy Hsu, Space.com) Team Chandah began with a Pakistani community leader from 100 years ago predicting that descendants would have tea on the moon. Adil Jafry never forgot those words as he made his way through the business world, and so the immigrant entrepreneur immediately became entranced when the Google Lunar X Prize was announced. Not to mention that his children, ages 5 and 9, had been attending space camp in Houston.

Recycled homes, one box at a time

(Ayesha Tejpar, CNN) Magoline Hazelton is used to people driving by her home just to take a look. She's also known as the "house lady" by her fellow residents in North Charleston, South Carolina. From the outside, Hazelton's home doesn't seem much different from the rest of the neighborhood. But there's one big difference. Her house is made from cargo shipping containers.

Aztec temple promises to yield one of antiquity’s great treasures

(Nancy Durrant and Ben Hoyle, Times Online) Archaeologists working amid the smog and din of Mexico City may be on the verge of unlocking an extraordinary time capsule. The leaders of a team exploring a site opened up by earthquake damage believe that they have found the first tomb of an Aztec ruler. If they are right the site may yield one of the great treasures of antiquity, the sort of haul that fires the imagination of people far beyond academic circles.

Lab creations assist in natural-selection experiments

(Michael Hill, AP) Robots wag their tail fins and bob along like bathtub toys in a pool at a college lab in New York state. Their actions are dictated by microprocessors housed in round plastic containers, the sort you'd store soup in. It hardly looks like it, but the two swimming robots were set loose in the little pool to study evolution, acting out predator-prey encounters from roughly 540 million years ago.

Sacred plants of the Maya forest

(Matt Walker, BBC News) Some of the Central American rainforest's hidden treasures are being revealed by the Maya, more than a millennium after their passing. A study of the giant trees and beautiful flowers depicted in Maya art has identified which they held sacred. Created during the Maya Classic Period, the depictions are so accurate they could help researchers spot plants with hitherto unknown medicinal uses.

Is this the end of the pothole? Machine which sprays holes with liquid tar in seconds could be answer for Britain's roads

(Daily Mail) A new hi-tech machine which pumps out tar could be the answer to the millions of potholes plaguing Britain's roads. The Jetpatcher features a long tube which pumps tar to fill up potholes in just minutes and is then compressed into the ground in layers. And repairs made by the £140,000 machine can last for up to three or four years, compared to the days that manually shovelling tar into holes generally lasts.

One Giant Bounce for Mankind

(Lisa T.E. Sonne, Wired) Almost 40 years after the historic Apollo 11 mission, we’ll hear voices from the moon again. This time, celebrities, ham radio enthusiasts — and perhaps even you — will join the astronauts’ voices. A massive project to bounce voices from Earth to the moon and back to another spot on Earth will be launched June 26. Several former astronauts and other famous people have signed on, and so can one lucky Wired Science reader.

Public asked to help monitor life on earth

(Alister Doyle, Reuters) Scientists asked people around the world on Monday to help compile an Internet-based observatory of life on earth as a guide to everything from the impact of climate change on wildlife to pests that can damage crops. "I would hope that ... we might even have millions of people providing data" in the long term, James Edwards, head of the Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) based at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, told Reuters of the 10-year project.

Spacecraft turns to Earth to see what habitability looks like from afar

(John Matson, Scientific American) To find out what water might look like on alien worlds, a group of researchers decided to see how Earth's oceans would appear from afar, as if from another planet. Using the Deep Impact/EPOXI spacecraft, currently headed for a rendezvous next year with comet Hartley 2, they peered back at Earth from more than 30 million miles (50 million kilometers) away, tracking the way reflected light changes as oceans rotate in and out of view.

'Oldest pottery' found in China

(BBC News) Examples of pottery found in a cave at Yuchanyan in China's Hunan province may be the oldest known to science. By determining the fraction of a type, or isotope, of carbon in bone fragments and charcoal, the specimens were found to be 17,500 to 18,300 years old. The authors say that the ages are more precise than previous efforts because a series of more than 40 radiocarbon-dated samples support the estimate. The work is reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Chandra Telescope Spies X-ray 'Ghost' of Black Hole

(Space.com) In the first detection of its kind, astronomers have found a cosmic "ghost" lurking around a distant supermassive black hole. Scientists think that the discovery, made with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, is evidence of a huge eruption produced by the black hole and could give astronomers a valuable opportunity to observe phenomena that occurred when the universe was very young.

Iraq-born teen cracks math puzzle

(AFP) A 16-year-old Iraqi immigrant living in Sweden has cracked a math puzzle that has stumped experts for more than 300 years, Swedish media reported on Thursday. In just four months, Mohamed Altoumaimi has found a formula to explain and simplify the so-called Bernoulli numbers, a sequence of calculations named after the 17th century Swiss mathematician Jacob Bernoulli, the Dagens Nyheter daily said.

U.S. company finds "safer" way to make stem-like cells

(Maggie Fox, Reuters) U.S. researchers said on Thursday they had come up with the safest way yet to make stem-like cells using a patient's ordinary skin cells, this time by using pure human proteins. The team at Harvard University and Massachusetts-based Advanced Cell Technology Inc said their technique involves soaking cells in human proteins that turn back the clock biologically, making the cells behave like powerful embryonic stem cells.

'Stand Up To Cancer' Proceeds to Go to Groundbreaking Research

(Emily Friedman, ABC News) Stand Up To Cancer, the charitable initiative launched last year and aimed at getting new cancer treatments to patients as quickly as possible, will announce today the first round of three-year grants totaling $73.6 million to five research "dream teams." These teams will conduct research that could prove revolutionary in the fight against cancer, including those of the pancreatic breast, ovaries, cervical, uterine, brain, lung, prostate and rectal and colon, which represent two-thirds of all U.S. cancer-related deaths.

Flagship Mars Rover Gets Name: Curiosity

(Space.com) NASA's next rover, the Mars Science Laboratory, finally has its new name: Curiosity. The name comes courtesy of Clara Ma, a 12-year-old sixth-grade student at Sunflower Elementary school in Lenexa, Kan. "We have been eager to call the rover by name," said Pete Theisinger, who manages the JPL team building and testing Curiosity. "Giving it a name worthy of this mission's quest means a lot to the people working on it." The rover is expected to launch in 2011.

The Game of Life

(Clive Thompson, Wired) Everyone complains about "e-mail overload" — getting so much stupid corporate e-mail that you miss out on important messages. But Byron Reeves has figured out a way to solve the problem. How? By turning corporate e-mail into a game. Reeves, a communications professor at Stanford, had studied the spectacularly popular online game World of Warcraft, and he knew that people inside the game place enormous value on the game's artificial currency of gold pieces. They'll go on quests and spend hours doing boring tasks just to earn it. That gave him an idea: Why not create a system where users earn virtual currency by intelligently using e-mail?

'Oldest' human settlement found

(BBC News) Archaeologists working for the National Trust think they have found West Dorset's oldest human settlement. Excavations over the last two weeks began when a number of artefacts were found by a man walking his dog. Experts now believe people lived on Doghouse Hill on the Golden Cap estate up to 10,000 years ago. Finds included a stone hearth, fire pit and pot shards from Bronze Age periods (2,500 to 1,000BC) and others from the Mesolithic Age (10,000 to 4,000BC). Martin Papworth, from the National Trust, said: "Although it's a stunning coastal site now, 6,000 to 8,000 years ago this area would have been over a mile inland."

Robotics program piques students' interest in science

(Teresa Watanabe, Los Angeles Times) It was down to the wire for Team Smash Brothers and Lightning Kill. Their robots had survived shoves and claws to emerge as finalists over 22 others in a Pomona competition last week. Now, the championship was at stake. The teams of fifth- and sixth-graders shook hands. Then, action! The bots, assembled with Lego parts and propelled by a computer chip the students had programmed, wheeled forward on a tabletop ring. They whirred and spun.

The Whole World Is Optimistic, Survey Finds

(LiveScience.com) Despite current economic woes, a new study based on global survey data finds optimism to be universal. Sunny outlooks are most prevalent in Ireland, Brazil, Denmark, and New Zealand. The United States ranks No. 10. Nearly 90 percent of people around the globe expect the next five years to be as good or better than life today, the study found. And 95 percent expect their life in five years to be as good or better than it was five years ago.

Interactive map tool creates online memorial to U.S., coalition troops

(Peter Lanier, CNN) Each year on Memorial Day, tens of thousands of Americans visit Arlington National Cemetery just outside Washington to pay tribute to the men and women who died serving the United States. For people who are unable to make the trip, a new online memorial provides a unique way to honor those service members who have fallen in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Astronaut Searches for Life ... on Mount Everest

(Clara Moscowitz, Space.com) Searching for signs of life on Mount Everest could provide a window into the extreme environments that organisms might inhabit elsewhere in the universe. So, former astronaut Scott Parazynski will set up instruments to hunt down elusive evidence of life at the top of the world when he attempts to summit Everest Wednesday. Parazynski, a veteran of five space shuttle flights, has also been a life-long climber. Parazynski left NASA in March, just before departing to Everest. "I've been dreaming of an ascent of Mount Everest ever since I began dreaming about space as well," Parazynski told SPACE.com. In fact, the two dreams hold a similar appeal. "When you stand in a place that very few others can go, it's really a neat accomplishment," he said.

Tiny seahorse, world's longest insect among top new species

(CNN) A pea-sized seahorse, the world's longest insect, a "ghost slug" and the world's smallest snake were among the top 10 species discovered in 2008, a committee of scientists said Friday. These unusual critters were among thousands of species found last year, many in remote or tropical regions of the planet, that hint at the breadth of the Earth's undiscovered biodiversity.

Bounty of Space Telescopes Fuels Golden Age of Astronomy

(Andrea Thompson, LiveScience.com) With Hubble's new facelift almost complete, and the successful launch of the Herschel and Planck observatories last week, a golden age of astronomy is truly under way, scientists say. "I don't think there's any question about that. We have the largest set of assets in space for astronomers ever," said Jon Morse, NASA's Astrophysics Division Director. "It really is a golden era to be a practicing astronomer. It entices me to leave my desk job and go back to the field."

Warner Robins teen scientist’s experiment may help fight cancer

(D. Aileen Dodd, Atlanta Journal-Constitution) A pushy teacher and an endangered Georgia plant led a once-reluctant teen science fair contestant to help discover a possible new treatment for brain cancer. It all started with high expectations. At Johnny Fells’ Warner Robins middle school, it was mandatory for gifted kids to participate in the science fair. But Fells, a spirited straight-A student, didn’t see the point. He was a mathematician, not a science geek. "It didn’t seem like my cup of tea," sighed Fells, now an 18-year-old with an international profile in cancer research. "Science wasn’t my thing." Yet Fells wasn’t a quitter. Though some of his classmates ditched the science fair, he threw together a project at the last minute — and won second place. The experience changed his life.

Prayer May Reshape Your Brain ... And Your Reality

(Barbara Bradley Hagerty, NPR) Scientists are making the first attempts to understand spiritual experience — and what happens in the brains and bodies of people who believe they connect with the divine. The field is called "neurotheology," and although it is new, it's drawing prominent researchers in the U.S. and Canada. Scientists have found that the brains of people who spend untold hours in prayer and meditation are different.

Study: Mockingbirds Can Tell People Apart, React

(Randolph E. Schmid, AP) Mockingbirds may look pretty much alike to people, but they can tell us apart and are quick to react to folks they don't like. Birds rapidly learn to identify people who have previously threatened their nests and sounded alarms and even attacked those folks, while ignoring others nearby, researchers report in Tuesday's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Shuttle leaves Hubble behind forever

(Marcia Dunn, AP) Atlantis’ astronauts tenderly dropped the Hubble Space Telescope overboard Tuesday, sending the restored observatory off on a new voyage of discovery and bidding it farewell on behalf of the planet. Hubble — considered better than new following five days of repairs and upgrades — will never be seen up close by humans again. This was NASA’s last service call.

Archaeologists Hunt for Secrets to Ancient Navajos' Smoke Signals

(AP) Archaeologists and volunteers armed with special flares will fan out over part of the Four Corners region on Saturday to study how early Navajos could have used smoke signals to warn against invaders. There are more than 200 pueblitos — usually high on rock outcroppings overlooking the San Juan Basin — that archaeologists believe were built by Navajos three centuries ago to protect against Spanish explorers and neighboring tribes. "If you hear an enemy approaching, you climb into these things and pull up the ladder, and you can seal yourself in for a while," said Ron Maldonado, program manager of the Navajo Nation Historic Preservation Department.

Balky bolt gives fits to astronauts fixing Hubble; spacewalkers put off 1 planned repair job

(Seth Borenstein, AP) Spacewalkers' specially designed tools couldn't dislodge a balky bolt interfering with repairs Sunday at the Hubble Space Telescope. So they took an approach more familiar to people puttering around down on Earth: brute force. And it worked. But it set spacewalkers so far behind that they couldn't get all their tasks done. Atlantis astronaut Michael Massimino couldn't remove an inch-and-a-quarter long bolt attaching a hand rail to the outside of a scientific instrument he needed to fix. The rail had to be removed or at least bent out of the way. That was only the beginning of a hard-luck day. The balky bolt and other tiny problems put spacewalkers so far behind schedule that they had to abandon the second part of their spacewalk: replacing some worn insulation on the telescope.

Astronauts try to revive Hubble imaging device

(Irene Klotz, Reuters) Spacewalking astronauts from the shuttle Atlantis tried on Sunday to revive a defective instrument on the Hubble Space Telescope used to discover black holes and other galactic phenomena. Like Hubble's advanced camera, which was rewired during a spacewalk on Saturday, the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph was not designed to be overhauled in space. The device, known by the acronym STIS, splits light into its component wavelengths. It was shut down in 2004 after electronics problems cut off its power. Buoyed by Saturday's successful spacewalk, astronauts Michael Massimino and Michael Good floated out of Atlantis' airlock just before 10 a.m. EDT/1400 GMT with high hopes of repairing STIS too.

Hubble team makes tough job look easy

(AP) Spacewalking astronauts gave the Hubble Space Telescope a more commanding view of the cosmos by installing a new high-tech instrument Saturday, then pulled off their toughest job yet: fixing a broken camera. It was the third spacewalk in three days for the shuttle Atlantis crew and the most intricate ever performed because of the unprecedented camera repairs. Astronauts had never before tried to take apart a science instrument at the 19-year-old observatory.

Snoopy Celebrates 40th Anniversary of His Moon Flight

(Jeremy Hsu, Space.com) Snoopy, the irreverent dog from the "Peanuts" comic strip, took time from his World War I dogfights as world-famous flying ace to become a world-famous astronaut for NASA's Apollo 10 mission. The beagle now has a 5-foot-tall statue at Florida's Kennedy Space Center to commemorate the flight, which launched 40 years ago this month and arrived at the moon on May 21, 1969. That's when the Snoopy lunar module and the Charlie Brown command module entered lunar orbit. Apollo 10 paved the way for Apollo 11 to land men on the moon. "It went down in his life as one of the all-time highlights of his career," said Craig Schulz, son of Charles Schulz, the famed American comic strip writer who died in 2000.

Rivers Might Have Flowed Recently on Mars

(Rob Roy Britt, Space.com) Mars is bone dry today. But long, long ago it was wetter and likely had rivers, most scientists agree. A new study finds some serious valleys carved by rivers within the last billion years -- much sooner than most similar findings. That's good news for biologists, as water is a key to life as we know it, and the more recently there was liquid water on Mars, the greater the chances for life to have arisen and endured.

Surprise! Daydreaming Really Works the Brain

(LiveScience.com) Got a tough problem to solve? Try daydreaming. Contrary to the notion that daydreaming is a sign of laziness, letting the mind wander can actually let the parts of the brain associated with problem-solving become active, a new study finds. Kalina Christoff of the University of British Columbia in Canada and her colleagues placed study participants inside an fMRI scanner, where they performed the simple routine task of pushing a button when numbers appear on a screen. The researchers tracked subjects' attentiveness moment-to-moment through brain scans, subjective reports from subjects and by tracking their performance on the task.

Shuttle astronauts begin work on Hubble telescope

(CNN) The space shuttle Atlantis crew began a six-and-a-half-hour spacewalk Thursday to fix the Hubble Space Telescope, in one of the most ambitious space repair missions ever attempted. After a two-day chase, the shuttle captured the telescope Wednesday with its robotic arm some 350 miles above Earth and pulled it into Atlantis' cargo bay for service. The astronauts began leaving the shuttle Thursday around 9 a.m. ET for the first of five spacewalks during the 11-day mission. John Grunsfeld and Andrew Feustel are the first two-man team to spacewalk for nearly seven hours in the shuttle's cargo bay to upgrade and repair Hubble. In a swimming pool in Houston, they and astronauts Mike Massimino and Michael Good spent two years practicing for the spacewalks.

Europe launches Herschel and Planck space telescopes

(James Kingsland, The Guardian) Two of the most sophisticated spacecraft ever built – Herschel and Planck – have been launched from Europe's spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, on top of an Ariane 5 rocket. The European Space Agency's two telescopes are destined for a point beyond the moon's orbit. From there, they will begin observations that will improve our understanding of the history of the universe. Herschel will study some of the coldest objects in space in the far infrared, a part of the electromagnetic spectrum still mostly unexplored. Planck will map the "fossil light" of the Universe - microwave radiation left over from the big bang – with unprecedented sensitivity and accuracy. The two missions are among the most ambitious ever carried out by Europe.

Software allows disabled to work on computers

(Mike Cassidy, San Jose Mercury News) For Christine Bakanoff-Adams and Gloria Kaswen too much of life has been about loss. Losing vision. Losing the use of their legs, then not being able to use their arms and ultimately not being able to work their hands. Bakanoff-Adams, 35 of Capitola, says she showed the first symptoms of multiple sclerosis at age 9. Kaswen, 55 of Watsonville, was in her early 20s when she was first told she had MS. Symptoms would come and go until they just kept coming one after another without remission. "Each time it makes me sad," Kaswen says of the setbacks. "I went through a mourning, grieving period for about 10 years before I got to where I am emotionally." But the two women have something in common besides MS — something that is helping them get something back, something that is about gaining something new.

Space shuttle collects, cradles Hubble

(CNN) The space shuttle Atlantis captured the Hubble Space Telescope with its robotic arm Wednesday, paving the way for astronauts to begin repairing the orbiting observatory. Using views from a remote camera, Mission Specialist K. Megan McArthur lowered Hubble into a cradle in Atlantis' cargo bay, according to NASA. The telescope will then be latched to the rotating, lazy Susan-type device for five days of servicing work. An umbilical line will be remotely connected to provide electrical power from Atlantis to the telescope, NASA said. Mission commander Scott Altman also will position the shuttle to allow Hubble's solar arrays to gather energy from the sun and recharge the telescope's batteries.

Pretty as a Picture

(NASA) The Hubble community bids farewell to the soon-to-be decommissioned Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) onboard the Hubble Space Telescope. In tribute to Hubble's longest-running optical camera, a planetary nebula has been imaged as WFPC2's final "pretty picture." This planetary nebula is known as Kohoutek 4-55 (or K 4-55). It is one of a series of planetary nebulae that were named after their discoverer, Czech astronomer Lubos Kohoutek. A planetary nebula contains the outer layers of a red giant star that were expelled into interstellar space when the star was in the late stages of its life. Ultraviolet radiation emitted from the remaining hot core of the star ionizes the ejected gas shells, causing them to glow.

Hubble’s history: From trouble to triumph

(Jay Barbree, NBC News) Just shy of two decades ago, Earthlight gleamed softly along the lower flanks of the bulky winged cylinder orbiting its home planet. As massive as a city bus, the Hubble Space Telescope raced around the night side of Earth. The brilliantly lit cities issued lights from below, while in the atmosphere itself, lightning bolts and streaks from meteors burned fiercely. Despite being shrouded by the planet's shadow, Hubble reflected the bright pinpoints of stars gleaming everywhere in the velvet black sky. Hubble was a dream started decades earlier. In 1946, Princeton astronomer Lyman Spitzer urged America to build a space platform with revolutionary instruments to probe the universe.

Saturn's Rings: Take One Last Look

(Joe Rao, Space.com) If you yet haven't done so, now is the time to get a look at Saturn and its rings through a telescope. In August, the rings will disappear for a while. You can find Saturn now high in the south at dusk, about 15-degrees to the east of the star Regulus, the brightest star of Leo, the Lion. (Your clenched fist held at arm's length measures roughly 10-degrees.) Fading slightly from magnitude 0.7 to 0.9, Saturn still outshines Regulus. (On this scale, larger numbers represent dimmer objects.) Compare Saturn's steady yellow light to the twinkling blue-white light of Regulus. Even now, the rings of Saturn appear no more than as a "bright bar" which bisects the planet's disk, a far cry from the big loops they presented back in April 7, 2003 when the rings were tilted 27 degrees. However, Saturn remains the telescopic showpiece of our evening sky.

Tweenbots - Depending on the Kindness of Strangers

(Aaron Saenz, SingularityHub.com) Would you help a lost robot? Just picture a tiny, cardboard skinned automaton making its way down the streets of New York City, asking for help. No chance it would survive, right? If someone didn’t steal the thing, cruel strangers would probably guide it into traffic. Right? The recent Tweenbots experiment (see the video at the end of this post) by Kacie Kinzer at Tisch’s ITP program shows that humanity is a lot more helpful and loving than we give it credit for.

Hubble Telescope Poised for Grand Cosmic Finale

(Andrea Thompson, Space.com) Its exquisite images have graced the pages of astronomy books and calendars all over the world and provided astronomers with invaluable information on the mysteries of the universe. Now, after 19 years orbiting hundreds of miles above Earth's surface, the Hubble Space Telescope is getting its fifth and final makeover, with a slate of new instruments and repairs scheduled that will restore and expand some of the iconic telescope's capabilities. The astronaut crew that will give Hubble its tune-up will launch aboard the space shuttle Atlantis on May 11 for an 11-day mission.

How Kevin Bacon sparked a new branch of science

(BBC News) The thought that all 6.9 billion people on the planet could be closely connected to one another through their network of friends has a long-held fascination. For decades, scientists have tried to prove that the world is made up of social networks that are ultimately interconnected. The theory that there were "six degrees of separation" between everyone - with each degree being a person they knew - entered the mainstream when John Guare wrote a play of that name, followed by a 1993 film starring Will Smith.

Blazing Rocket Launch Could Surprise East Coast

(Joe Rao, Space.com) Should a rocket blast off on schedule early Tuesday evening from NASA's Wallops Island Flight Facility in Virginia, a potentially spectacular sight might be visible across a wide swath of the U.S. Eastern Seaboard, weather permitting. It would be only the third attempt at launching an orbital rocket from this coastal Virginia range — located just south of Assateague Island — in the last 13 and a half years.

Students get in gear for robotics competition at Dallas Convention Center

(Jeffrey Weiss, Dallas Morning News) Imagine several hundred Erector sets, assembled in wild configurations, all frantically stuffing small foam cubes into clear plastic baskets. Add more than a thousand students from all over the world who are even more frantically twiddling joysticks to control the machines. That's the scene at the VEX Robotics World Championship taking place at the Dallas Convention Center. It kicked off Thursday.

Huge Impact Crater Discovered on Planet Mercury

(Clara Moscowitz, Space.com) New observations from NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft reveal about 30 percent of the planet Mercury that has never been seen up close before. A giant crater and evidence of ancient volcanoes are among the findings. The photos show a giant impact crater that spans a length equivalent to the distance between Washington, D.C., and Boston. MESSENGER (MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging spacecraft) made its second close-approach flyby of Mercury in October 2008, after being launched in 2004. The spacecraft is the first to visit the diminutive planet since the Mariner 10 spacecraft's sojourn in the 1970s.

Elderly shoppers to get 'sat nav' gadget to find their way around supermarkets

(Alastair Jamieson, Telegraph) Scientists are working on a device which works like a car navigation system to help elderly shoppers baffled by changing layouts in aisles. It is part of government-funded research at three centres - Newcastle, Aberdeen and Nottingham universities - into new ways of using digital technology to help the elderly and disabled. Other ideas include a kitchen packed with an array of hidden sensors, projectors and electronics that can help Alzheimer’s patients live independently.

British space mission to discover 'secrets of universe'

(The Telegraph) Two deep space telescopes, dubbed Herschel and Planck, will probe the ancient history of the cosmos going right back to the dawn of time at the Big Bang - and possibly before. Boffins are running final checks on the European Space Agency probes - the most sensitive ever - before they are fired into space on an Arianne 5 rocket on May 14.

Web tool 'as important as Google'

(BBC News) A web tool that "could be as important as Google", according to some experts, has been shown off to the public. Wolfram Alpha is the brainchild of British-born physicist Stephen Wolfram. The free program aims to answer questions directly, rather than display web pages in response to a query like a search engine.

Some Dinosaurs Survived the Asteroid Impact

(Clara Moscowitz, LiveScience.com) The great splat of an asteroid that might have wiped out the dinosaurs apparently didn't get all of them. New fossil evidence suggests some dinosaurs survived for up to half a million years after the impact in remote parts of New Mexico and Colorado. The whole idea that a space rock destroyed the dinosaurs has become controversial in recent years. Many scientists now suspect other factors were involved, from increased volcanic activity to a changing climate. Either way, some 70 percent of life on Earth perished, and an asteroid impact almost surely played a role. Scientists recently analyzed dinosaur bones found in the Ojo Alamo Sandstone in the San Juan Basin. Based on detailed chemical investigations of the bones, and evidence for the age of the rocks in which they are found, the researchers think some dinosaurs outlived the crash that occurred 65 million years ago and stuck around for a while.

Questions, Not Answers, Make Science the Ultimate Adventure

(Brian Greene, Wired) Were some superadvanced alien civilization to swoop down to Earth with the definitive explanation of everything in the cosmos, there'd be excitement at first—it would be thrilling to have answers to questions we've tussled with through the ages. But in short order, scientists worldwide would be utterly depressed. With no remaining mysteries, the scientific journey would halt. Whenever I speak about this to middle and high school students, I am struck by how surprising they find it.

Laptops help sick kids stay connected to school, friends

(Val Willingham, CNN) Ahmed Hamdi wants to be a superhero when he grows up. A lot of people at his school will tell you he already is one. A third-grader at Samuel W. Tucker Elementary School in Alexandria, Virginia, Ahmed hasn't seen much of his class in the past few months. That's because he was diagnosed with leukemia 1½ years ago. Although he's in remission, he's still susceptible to complications. "Ahmed has shown us, over and over again, he gets a fever at the drop of a hat, and has been in the intensive care unit several times. He tends to get infections a lot," says his doctor, Dr. Aziza Shad, an oncologist in the children's ward of the Lombardi Cancer Center in Washington. Shad notes he is otherwise doing very well and has "an excellent prognosis."

Great Lakes sinkholes a window to ancient life

(James Janega, Chicago Tribune) Scientists studying submerged sinkholes in the Great Lakes off the coast of northern Michigan have stumbled onto something they never expected to find: life-forms akin to those found in some of Earth's most extreme environments. As groundwater leaks upward into Lake Huron, it redissolves an ancient seabed and creates a salty underwater environment that is supporting mats of primitive purple microbes -- cousins to bacteria that live in deep-sea hydrothermal vents and ice-locked Antarctic lakes. The discovery in Huron's Thunder Bay underscores how little is known about the forms that life takes on Earth, or even where they might be found. In this case, scientists wonder if the microbes may be truly primordial.

Hubble Images Capture Universe's Beauty, Awe

(Betsy Mason, Wired) Entering its 20th year of service, the Hubble Space Telescope has made more than 880,000 observations, taken 570,000 images of 29,000 different celestial objects, and piled up a load of impressive scientific accomplishments.

World premiere of brain orchestra

(Jason Palmer, BBC News) The Multimodal Brain Orchestra performed its world premiere on Thursday. Led by an "emotional conductor" and a traditional one, music and video change in time with the performers' brain waves and heart rate. According to the work's producer, the orchestra aims to "see what the brain can do without the body".

Blood vessels created from patients’ own cells

(AP) Scientists have grown blood vessels for kidney patients from their own cells, making it easier and safer for them to use dialysis machines, a new study says. Some experts said the results suggested that doctors might one day be able to custom-produce blood vessels for patients with circulatory problems in their hearts or legs.

Brain-Twitter project offers hope to paralyzed patients

(Richard Allen Greene, CNN) Adam Wilson posted two messages on Twitter on April 15. The first one, "GO BADGERS," might have been sent by any University of Wisconsin-Madison student cheering for the school team. His second post, 20 minutes later, was a little more unusual: "SPELLING WITH MY BRAIN." Wilson, a doctoral student in biomedical engineering, was confirming an announcement he had made two weeks earlier -- his lab had developed a way to post messages on Twitter using electrical impulses generated by thought.

Baby mammoth Lyuba, pristinely preserved, offers scientists rare look into mysteries of Ice Age

(Olivia Smith, New York Daily News) She may be 40,000 years old, but an amazingly well-preserved baby mammoth is in great shape for her age, bringing scientists closer to solving some of the mysteries of the Ice Age. Lyuba, who was discovered in 2007 in the Russian Artic, was about one-month old when she fell victim to a mudslide or drowned according to National Geographic.

Four Pagan Temples Discovered in Egyptian Sinai

(AP) Archaeologists exploring an old military road in the Sinai have unearthed four new temples amidst the 3,000-year-old remains of an ancient fortified city that could have been used to impress foreign delegations visiting Egypt, antiquities authorities announced Tuesday.

World's Largest Model Rocket to Lift Off Saturday

(Fox News) On Saturday, April 25, the Saturn V, the rocket that sent men to the moon 40 years ago, will once again lift off from U.S. soil and soar over the Atlantic. Only this time, it won't be quite real. Rather, what's going up will be the largest model rocket ever built — a one-tenth scale, 36-foot-tall, fully working replica of the Saturn V.

Unesco Puts World's Major Works Online

(Eric Pfanner, New York Times) One of the world’s oldest novels has just become one of the newest. “The Tale of Genji,” an 11th century Japanese romp that is sometimes called the first true novel, is among about 1,250 books, maps, artworks and other cultural items that went on display online Tuesday in an international library supported by Unesco and the U.S. Library of Congress. The project, called the World Digital Library, aims to "promote international and intercultural understanding," said James H. Billington, the U.S. librarian of Congress, speaking as the Web site (www.wdl.org) was introduced at Unesco headquarters in Paris.

Spotting Distant Worlds from the Backyard

(Katherine J. Mack, Time) It was arguably the biggest news in science this month: A graduate student in Australia discovered the continent of Africa. What makes Sally Langford's discovery so remarkable — and worthy of reporting in the journal Astrobiology on April 6 — is not what she saw, but how she saw it. Once a month over the course of three years, Langford stood huddled against the evening chill in lonely Australian farmland and watched as the east coast of Africa shone in the midday sun. Using little more than a backyard telescope and a clever idea, she became the first person in history to see the continents and oceans of Earth by watching their reflections in the Moon.

Coins, Mummies and Statues Point to Cleopatra Tomb

(AP) Egypt's top archaeologist made his version of a sales pitch Sunday, presenting 22 coins, 10 mummies, an alabaster head and a fragment of a mask with a cleft chin as evidence that the discovery of the lost tomb of Mark Antony and Cleopatra is at hand.

Nobel Prize-Winning Scientist, About to Turn 100, Still Working

(AP) Rita Levi Montalcini, a Nobel Prize-winning scientist, said Saturday that even though she is about to turn 100, her mind is sharper than it was when she was 20. Levi Montalcini, who also serves as a senator for life in Italy, celebrates her 100th birthday on Wednesday, and she spoke at a ceremony held in her honor by the European Brain Research Institute.

First Light: Kepler Opens Her Eyes

(Betsy Mason, Wired) The Kepler Space telescope took its first images of the region of the galaxy where it will hunt for planets. The full-field view contains approximately 4.5 million stars, and astronomers have selected more than 100,000 of them as good candidates for orbiting rocky planets. "We expect to find hundreds of planets circling those stars" William Borucki, head of the Kepler mission at NASA. "And for the first time, we can look for Earth-size planets in the habitable zones around other stars like the sun."

Plano high school class finds rare-dinosaur bones

(Matthew Haag, Dallas Morning News) Liz Arroyos and her classmates scoured the blue-gray creek bottom behind her school. The Plano West Senior High School students were outside to learn a little something about digging for clues to the past. When class ended, she hoped she had something good in the rocks she clasped in her hands. "I'm not really a paleontologist," said Liz, a junior at the school. "I was just messing around and picked up something I thought the teacher would like."

1.5-million-year-old Antarctic Microbe Community Discovered

(Andrea Thompson, LiveScience.com) A living time capsule of sorts has been found buried under hundreds of feet of Antarctic ice — a colony of microbes that have been sealed off from the rest of the world for more than 1.5 million years. The finding, detailed in the April 17 issue of the journal Science, could serve as a model for how life might survive on icy planets elsewhere in the galaxy. The microbes, which live without light or oxygen, were detected in meltwater flowing out from Taylor Glacier, one of the outlet glaciers of the vast East Antarctic Ice Sheet in the otherwise ice-free McMurdo Dry Valleys.

US scientists to grow brussels sprouts on Moon

(The Telegraph) Paragon Space Development Corporation in Arizona unveiled plans to land mini-greenhouses on the Moon which would be capable to growing flowers and hardy vegetables from the brassica family, such as sprouts and cabbages. These could ultimately be used to feed livestock. Paragon, which has worked with Nasa, describes its 1.5 ft tall space greenhouse as a "Lunar Oasis". It is designed to safely land a laboratory plant on the lunar surface, and protect it while it grows.

Honda's Robolegs Help People Walk

(Brandon Keim, Wired) Honda's walking assist devices, which make people move a bit like the ASIMO robot, made their American debut Tuesday in New York City. The devices combine sensor-driven motors and weight-bearing chassis to guide strides and support body weight. Though derived from technologies pioneered during the ASIMO's quarter-century of development, their use could be deeply human, boosting manual laborers or assisting people unable to walk without help.

California Utility to Capture Solar Power in Space

(LiveScience.com) Solar power beamed down from space will generate electricity for California homes as soon as 2016, under a new plan by a utility company to ramp up renewable energy technology far beyond solar panels on roofs. PG&E would buy 200 megawatts of space solar power from Solaren Corp. over 15 years under a power purchase agreement, enough to power tens of thousands of homes. The utility company has begun seeking approval for the deal from California state regulators.

Egyptians hope to find Cleopatra's tomb

(Philippe Naughton, Times Online) Egyptian archaeologists hope to find the the tombs of Cleopatra and her lover Mark Anthony in excavations due to start next week. The couple are thought to have committed suicide in 30 BC after military defeat at the hands of Emperor Octavian of Rome, but their burial place has always been a mystery.

Science unlocks secrets of our deepest love

(Jonathan Leake, Times Online) The secrets of unconditional love, one of the most mysterious emotions, are being uncovered by scientists tracing the unique brain activity it creates. They have found that the emotion, experienced as a desire to care for another person without any thought of reward, emerges from a complex interplay between seven separate areas of the brain.

 

All in the Facebook family: older generations join social networks

(John D. Sutter, CNN) Penny Ireland's family is so scattered around the world that Facebook, the popular social networking site, has become the family's No. 1 way to communicate. "We call it our living room," the 56-year-old mother said by phone from her home in Houston, Texas. "Everybody can tell what everybody else is doing." Everybody" includes Ireland's five kids and her 83-year-old mother, who has a Facebook profile she accesses daily, Ireland said.

 

New hope for Dyslexics

(Petter Aass, Norway Post) A brand new computer program has recently been developed in Norway designed to survey pupils' reading difficulties. It is the result of several years research carried out by Professor Torleiv Hoien at the Dyslexia Research Foundation.

 

Evidence That Mice Produce Egg Cells After Birth

(Nicholas Wade, New York Times) Scientists in Shanghai have challenged the orthodox medical view that a woman is born with egg cells to last a lifetime and will never generate any new ones. Overthrow of this view could hold major implications for treatment of infertility.

 

Charities battle world’s woes with technology

(Glenn Chapman, AFP) Technology matters when it comes to doing good. Nonprofit groups are learning from the corporate playbook, uniting under a NetHope banner to use collective clout to provide technology that helps save lives, protect nature and stretch precious donor cash.

 

Nasa's got humour?

(AFP) NASA'S sense of humour is being put to the test. The US space agency is facing a serious dilemma after a popular television comedian, Stephen Colbert, hijacked an online contest sponsored by Nasa to pick a name for a new module on the International Space Station. Colbert's suggestion for a name? His own. The agency plans to make the announcement on April 14th with the help of Expedition 14 and 15 astronaut Sunita "Suni" Williams on Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report."

 

Birds do it, and now we know how

(CBC News) Three U.S. scientists have figured out how flying animals make a turn, and then continue straight on a new course. It's remarkably easy, said lead researcher Tyson L. Hedrick of the biology department of the University of North Carolina. It's even easier than a person swivelling in a desk chair, he said.

 

'Iron Man'-Like Robot Suit Helps Disabled Move

(Fox News) In the movies, Cyberdyne is a corporation whose superintelligent computers lead to the fall of mankind in the "Terminator" series, and HAL is a superintelligent computer who takes over a spaceship in "2001: A Space Odyssey." In real life, Cyberdyne is a Japanese robotics company, and HAL is Hybrid Assistive Limb, its full-body, "Iron Man"-like exoskeleton designed to help people with weak muscles or disabilities.

 

Edge of Space Found

(Andrea Thompson, Space.com) Hold on to your hats, or in this case, your helmets: Scientists have finally pinpointed the so-called edge of space — the boundary between Earth's atmosphere and outer space. With data from a new instrument developed by scientists at the University of Calgary, scientists confirmed that space begins 73 miles (118 kilometers) above Earth's surface.

 

‘Robot scientist’ makes a discovery on its own

(Chris Gaylord, Christian Science Monitor) Researchers at Aberystwyth University in Wales say they have created the first machine that can independently hypothesize, test, and recognize new scientific discoveries. ADAM, the “scientist,” looks more like a cluttered laboratory than a cyborg – it doesn’t have any shoulders to support a lab coat. But the prototype pairs precise robotic hardware with high-powered artificial intelligence.

 

Love at First Sight Might Be Genetic

(Clara Moscowitz, LiveScience Staff Writer) Love at first sight could be real, at least when it comes to genetics, a new study suggests. In research done with fruit flies (but which may have implications for humans) scientists found that females are biologically primed to sense which males are more genetically compatible with them, and to make more eggs after mating with good matches than they do with less compatible matches. The findings suggest that females can somehow judge a potential mate upon first meeting and biologically react to boost the chances of producing successful offspring.

 

Cal team uses puppets to demystify nanotech

(David Perlman, San Francisco Chronicle) The arcane world of nanotechnology has a chance to become transparently clear to the uninitiated, thanks to a troupe of UC Berkeley science and engineering researchers who in song and puppetology explain it all in a video that has won a national award from the American Chemical Society.

 

The new TV remote: Your bare hand?

(Erica Ogg, CNET) The TV remote control of the future isn't an expensive device with an LCD screen and blinking lights. It's your hand. The classic TV remote control most of us have grown up with has been around in essentially the same incarnation for half a century. It's been tweaked over the years, but now one company is looking at ditching the remote altogether and using a camera mounted below a TV screen that senses hand motions instead of button pushes. The result is something that seems right out of Minority Report.

 

Scientists to chase tornadoes to learn secrets

(AP) For most people, tornadoes are something to flee. But next month a small army of scientists will be doing just the opposite, crisscrossing the nation's middle in search of twisters. Organized by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Science Foundation, Operation Vortex2 will last from May 10 to June 13.

 

Robot Gardener Plants, Tends and Harvests

(Eric Bland, Discovery News) Fruit and veggies without the fuss are the promise of a new robot being developed by scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

 

Astronauts Would Welcome Space Module 'Colbert'

(Tariq Malik, Space.com) Astronauts aboard the International Space Station say they would welcome the arrival of the outpost's new orbital room, even if it is named after comedian Stephen Colbert. NASA astronaut Michael Barratt currently living aboard the space station said he is confident the right name will be chosen for the outpost's new Node 3, which is slated to be delivered early next year.

 

San Jose State University Students Build 'An Answering Machine in Space'

(Fox News) ReadySat Go, which will be about the size of a small Kleenex box, is a communications satellite. "The quickest way to say it is, it's an answering machine in space," said Eric Stackpole, a senior mechanical engineering major and the club president. "You send a message up and it records that message. Then when it flies over a different part of the Earth, it can send that message back down."

 

Seals aid arctic research

(AP) Into the Antarctic enigma, the puzzle of a place with too few researchers chasing too many climate mysteries, slowly waddles the elephant seal. The fat-snouted pinniped, two ugly tons of blubber and roar, is plunging to its usual frigid depths these days in the service of climate science, and of scientists' budgets.

 

Taiwan's quake sensing tool

(Reuters) A research team at Taiwan's top university has rolled out a tiny low-budget device that can sense earthquakes within 30 seconds, enough time to issue crucial disaster warnings, the lead inventor said on Monday. The metal tool the size of a tape deck can detect an oncoming quake's speed and acceleration in time to estimate its eventual magnitude and warn trains to slow down or natural gas companies to shut off supplies, said Wu Yih Min, a researcher at the National Taiwan University Department of Geosciences.

 

Japan robot learns like baby

(AFP) A bald, child-like creature dangles its legs from a chair as its shoulders rise and fall with rhythmic breathing and its black eyes follow movements across the room. It's not human - but it is paying attention.

 

Mind control goes mainstream

(Andy Greenberg, Forbes.com) The Force, it seems, is not so strong with this one. In the virtual world of a game called Neuroboy, I'm staring out over a lagoon at an exact digital replica of a Star Wars X-wing spaceship submerged in blue water. My task: to lift that virtual object out of its murky depths using not my mouse or keyboard, but instead — à la Luke Skywalker — my thoughts. Back in the real world, I'm wearing a bluetooth headset that touches my forehead with a single metal sensor.

 

World Digital Library to open

(AFP) THE World Digital Library, a website offering free access to rare books, maps, manuscripts, films and photographs from across the globe, will launch April 21 at Unesco headquarters in Paris.

 

Hubble Celebrates the International Year of Astronomy With the Galaxy Triplet ARP 274

(NASA) On April 1-2, the Hubble Space Telescope photographed the winning target in the Space Telescope Science Institute's "You Decide" competition in celebration of the International Year of Astronomy (IYA). The winner is a group of galaxies called Arp 274. The striking object received 67,021 votes out of the nearly 140,000 votes cast for the six candidate targets. Arp 274 is a system of three galaxies that appear to be partially overlapping in the image, although they may be at somewhat different distances.

 

Computer Program Self-Discovers Laws of Physics

(Brandon Keim, Wired) In just over a day, a powerful computer program accomplished a feat that took physicists centuries to complete: extrapolating the laws of motion from a pendulum's swings. Developed by Cornell researchers, the program deduced the natural laws without a shred of knowledge about physics or geometry.

 

A Young Pulsar Shows Its Hand

(NASA) A small, dense object only twelve miles in diameter is responsible for this beautiful X-ray nebula that spans 150 light years. At the center of this image made by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory is a very young and powerful pulsar, known as PSR B1509-58, or B1509 for short. The pulsar is a rapidly spinning neutron star which is spewing energy out into the space around it to create complex and intriguing structures, including one that resembles a large cosmic hand.

 

Hidden Planets Found In Decades-Old Observations

(Ray Villard, Discovery) Once you know what you’re looking at, then you know what you’re looking at. No, I didn’t borrow the Twitter-sized bit of wisdom from baseball legend Yogi Berra. But it does summarize two exoplanet “retro-discoveries,” one even announced today.

 

Sugar-coated Nanoparticles Find Hidden Tumors

(Eric Bland, Discovery News) Nanoparticles that could first illuminate and then destroy hidden tumors have been created by scientists at the University of California, San Diego. If approved for clinical use, the new technique could improve the odds of survival for cancer patients by letting doctors diagnose and treat cancer earlier.

 

Virus battery could 'power cars'

(BBC) Viruses have been used to help build batteries that may one day power cars and all types of electronic devices. The speed and relatively cheap cost of manufacturing virus batteries could prove attractive to industry. Professor Angela Belcher, who led the research team, said: "Our material is powerful enough to be able to be used in a car battery."

 

Galileo's telescope in Philadelphia

(Faye Flam, Philadelphia Inquirer) When NASA launched a new space telescope called Kepler this year, mankind took another step in a quest that started 400 years ago with two eyeglass lenses and a piece of lead pipe. It was in 1609 that mathematics professor Galileo Galilei pointed his homemade telescope skyward and saw what looked like mountains on the moon and other wonders no one had imagined.

 

'Eureka machine' puts scientists in the shade by working out laws of nature

(Ian Sample, Science Correspondent, The Guardian) Scientists have created a "Eureka machine" that can work out the laws of nature by observing the world around it – a development that could dramatically speed up the discovery of new scientific truths. The machine took only hours to come up with the basic laws of motion, a task that occupied Sir Isaac Newton for years after he was inspired by an apple falling from a tree.

 

Talking in color: imaging helps social skills

(David Lawsky, Reuters) Karrie Karahalios can show a child with Asperger's Syndrome when he's lost in a conversational riff or a taciturn spouse when he doesn't speak very much. Their voice appears on a computer terminal as vibrant colors -- red, yellow, blue, green -- the image growing in size if the voice gets louder, overlapping another color as it interrupts or abruptly narrowing with silence.

 

Utahns invited to celebrate 100 Hours of Astronomy

(Sheena Mcfarland, Salt Lake Tribune) Utahns can take part in an international star party this weekend as telescopes across the globe tilt up to look at the stars and sun as part of the 100 Hours of Astronomy events. The event, which runs from today through Sunday, is the cornerstone of the International Year of Astronomy, which marks the 400th anniversary of Galileo Galilei turning his telescope to the sky and documenting what he saw.

 

Baby chicks do basic arithmetic

(Victoria Gill, Science Reporter, BBC News) Scientists from the universities of Padova and Trento demonstrated chicks' ability to add and subtract objects as they were moved behind two screens. Lucia Regolin, an author of the study said the animals "performed basic arithmetic" to work out which screen concealed the larger group of objects.

 

The rock that fell to Earth

(Roberta Kwok, Nature) When an asteroid was spotted heading towards our planet last October, researchers rushed to document a cosmic impact from start to finish for the first time. Roberta Kwok tells the tale.

 

The Kenny Rogers Effect: Music Helps Stroke Victims

(Brandon Keim, Wired) Music was the best medicine for four stroke victims whose cognitive impairments lessened while listening to songs they loved. The music stimulated neurological pleasure centers adjacent to damaged brain regions, apparently producing a therapeutic crossover effect. "There seems to be a strong coupling in the brain between emotional and attentional areas," said study co-author David Soto, an Imperial College London neuroscientist. "When emotional areas light up and are activated, the attentional system seems to be more effective as well."

 

Hal Moses has spent lifetime fighting cancer

(Jessica Bliss, The Tennessean) The Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center stands proud on the corner of Pierce Street, its dark windows reflecting the late afternoon sun on an unseasonably warm spring day. It is a Friday, just days before the center's director emeritus, Hal Moses, is to be honored with the T.J. Martell Foundation's Medical Lifetime Achievement Award, but right now all he can talk about is the weather. He can't wait for the weekend, when he has plans to wander around the woods on his West Nashville property, picking up sticks and clearing out brush.

 

The Science of the Spring Equinox

(Robert Roy Britt, Fox News) The first day of spring is no guarantee of spring-like weather, but officially the season's start comes around at the same time each year nonetheless. Well, sort of. The first day of spring arrives on varying dates (from March 19-21) in different years for two reasons: Our year is not exactly an even number of days; and Earth's slightly noncircular orbit, plus the gravitational tug of the other planets, constantly changes our planet's orientation to the sun from year to year.

 

Drive to the airport, get clearance, and take off in your flying . . . car?

(Adam Hadhazy, Scientific American) At least that’s the plan for the half-car, half-plane hybrid craft called the Transition that’s in development by Woburn, Mass.-based company Terrafugia. On March 5, the Transition took off on its maiden flight from Plattsburgh International Airport in upstate New York. Though the test craft only reached about 100 feet (30 meters) and stayed aloft less than 40 seconds, the successful flight lets Terrafugia move forward with making a full prototype to test next summer.

 

Spanish students beat NASA with balloon and £56 camera

(Graham Keeley, Times Online) Like something out of Heath Robinson, four Spanish teenagers equipped with nothing more than a £56 digital camera and a latex balloon captured stunning pictures of the Earth from the stratosphere. As part of a school project, the budding scientists floated the camera-operated weather balloon 20 miles above the ground to capture the images.

 

Who Protects The Internet?

(James Geary, Popular Science) For the past five years, John Rennie has braved the towering waves of the North Atlantic Ocean to keep your e-mail coming to you. As chief submersible engineer aboard the Wave Sentinel, part of the fleet operated by U.K.-based undersea installation and maintenance firm Global Marine Systems, Rennie--a congenial, 6'4", 57-year-old Scotsman--patrols the seas, dispatching a remotely operated submarine deep below the surface to repair undersea cables. The cables, thick as fire hoses and packed with fiber optics, run everywhere along the seafloor, ferrying phone and Web traffic from continent to continent at the speed of light.

 

'Armed' chimps go wild for honey

(Rebecca Morelle, Science reporter, BBC News) Scientists in the Republic of Congo found that the wild primates crafted large clubs from branches to pound the nests until they broke open. The team said some chimps would also use a "toolkit" of different wooden implements in a bid to access the honey and satisfy their sweet tooth. The study is published in the International Journal of Primatology.

 

Self-repairing car paint 'makes scrapes vanish'

(Mark Henderson, Science Editor, Times Online) Scratches in car paintwork could become a thing of the past thanks to research that has made self-repairing paint a realistic possibility. Scientists in the United States have developed a type of polyurethane coating that mends itself in less than an hour when exposed to sunlight. They plan to develop it as a paint for cars and other surfaces that are subjected to heavy wear and tear, as well as in new forms of packaging, clothing and biomedical products such as bandages.

 

Try a slice of the irrational on Pi Day

(Mike Harvey, Technology Correspondant, Times Online) It's time to get irrational. Tomorrow is Pi Day, when mathematicians will gather to celebrate the mystery of science's most famous strange number — Pi. Pi, or the Greek letter π, starts with 3.1415926535 . . . ad infinitum without repeating. It is the figure obtained when the circumference of a circle is divided by its diameter, and it cannot be expressed as a fraction, making it an irrational number. Computers have calculated it to more than one trillion digits past the decimal point.

 

A step closer to reading the mind

(BBC) Scientists say for the first time they have understood someone's thoughts by looking at what their brain is doing. The hippocampus is widely known to be integral to memory, but researchers say they now see just how images are stored and recalled in this part of the brain.

 

Going back in time

(Tanya Gold, The Guardian) Last week, the Guardian asked me to turn my mobile telephone and my computer off for a week. It wasn't until I hung up that I realized that I had happily agreed to decapitate myself. How would I live? How would I work? I am a freelance journalist and I need a mobile.

 

Sail Like An Egyptian

(Jeremy Hsu, Popular Science) An archaeologist who examined remnants of the oldest-known seafaring ships has now put ancient Egyptian technology to the test. She teamed up with a naval architect, modern shipwrights and an on-site Egyptian archaeologist to build a replica 3,800-year-old ship for a Red Sea trial run this past December.

 

Boat made of plastic bottles to make ocean voyage

(Brandon Griggs and Jeff King, CNN) Imagine collecting thousands of empty plastic bottles, lashing them together to make a boat and sailing the thing from California to Australia, a journey of 11,000 miles through treacherous seas. You'd have to be crazy, or trying to make a point. David de Rothschild is trying to make a point.

 

Shakespeare's first theatre found

(BBC) Archaeologists believe they have unearthed the remains of Shakespeare's first theatre, the BBC has learned. A team from the Museum of London found the remains of the theatre in Shoreditch last summer. Built in 1576, it is thought the Bard acted there and that it also hosted the premiere of Romeo and Juliet.

 

Thought-propelled wheelchair

(AFP) Italian researchers have developed a wheelchair that obeys mental signals sent to a computer. The researchers at Milan's Polytechnical Institute artificial intelligence and robotics laboratory took three years to develop the system, Professor Matteo Matteucci told AFP.

 

I'm not looking, honest!

(The Economist) The good news is reality exists. The bad is it’s even stranger than people thought. “How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress.” So said Niels Bohr, one of the founders of quantum mechanics. Since its birth in the 1920s, physicists and philosophers have grappled with the bizarre consequences that his theory has for reality, including the fundamental truth that it is impossible to know everything about the world and, in fact, whether it really exists at all when it is not being observed. Now two groups of physicists, working independently, have demonstrated that nature is indeed real when unobserved. When no one is peeking, however, it acts in a really odd way.

 

The science of being happy

(CBC) Finding happiness may be as simple as switching off the TV, surrounding yourself with a circle of cheerful friends and lowering your expectations, according to a series of recent studies. Maintaining a sense of good cheer these days can be tough with the slumping economy and gloomy forecasts, but researchers note that making small changes can shift our attitudes significantly and help us find hope and happiness. Here is a roundup of recent studies on happiness and hope.

 

Laptops bring lessons, maybe even peace

(Jessica Ravitz, CNN) -- Earlier this year, Matt Keller sat down with officials in Afghanistan -- not to discuss troop deployments, suicide bombings or opium traffickers. He was there to talk about getting laptop computers into the hands of little girls.

 

 

Are We Alone in This Universe?

(Gina Sunseri, ABC) NASA is getting ready to launch the Kepler telescope on an ambitious, first-of-its-kind mission: to search for Earth-size planets in our galaxy, orbiting stars at the right distances to have water on their surface.

 

The internet's librarian

(Economist) Brewster Kahle wants to create a free, online collection of human knowledge. It sounds impossibly idealistic—but he is making progress.

 

A nightclub for nerds makes science cool in New York

(Elaine F. Weiss, Christian Science Monitor) A long queue has formed inside Union Hall, a popular club in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn, as it does on the first Wednesday of every month. The line snakes through the main room, past the indoor bocce court, and down the narrow stairs to a basement space with a low, stamped-tin ceiling.

 

Chimps craft ultimate fishing rod

(Rebecca Morelle, Science reporter, BBC News) Scientists believe they have solved the mystery of why some chimpanzees are so good at catching termites. A team working in the Republic of Congo discovered that the chimps are crafting brush-tipped "fishing rods" to scoop the insects out of their nests. They filmed the wild primates using their teeth to fashion the tools.

 

New Saturn Moon: Tiny Gem Found in Outer Ring

(Victoria Jaggard, National Geographic) A faint pinprick of light embedded in one of Saturn's outermost rings is now the 61st moon known to be circling the giant planet, astronomers announced today. Images taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft over a 600-day stretch revealed the tiny moonlet moving in a partial ring known as a ring arc that extends about a sixth of the way around Saturn's faint G ring.

 

Do these mysterious stones mark the site of the Garden of Eden?

(Tom Cox, Daily Mail) For the old Kurdish shepherd, it was just another burning hot day in the rolling plains of eastern Turkey. Following his flock over the arid hillsides, he passed the single mulberry tree, which the locals regarded as 'sacred'. The bells on his sheep tinkled in the stillness. Then he spotted something. Crouching down, he brushed away the dust, and exposed a strange, large, oblong stone. The man looked left and right: there were similar stone rectangles, peeping from the sands. Calling his dog to heel, the shepherd resolved to inform someone of his finds when he got back to the village. Maybe the stones were important.

 

Ancient footprints show we've walked this way for 1.5 million years

(CBC) Fossil footprints left 1.5 million years ago in Africa by the ancestors of modern humans show their feet and gait weren't much different from ours. The three footprint trails uncovered in northern Kenya over the last three years are the oldest evidence discovered so far of human-like feet without ape-like features such as a splayed big toe for grasping branches, said a paper published in Friday's issue of Science.

 

Forget Survival of the Fittest: It Is Kindness that Counts

(David DiSalvo, Scientific American) A psychologist probes how altruism, Darwinism and neurobiology mean that we can succeed by not being cutthroat. Why do people do good things? Is kindness hard-wired into the brain, or does this tendency arise via experience? Or is goodness some combination of nature and nurture? Dacher Keltner, director of the Berkeley Social Interaction Laboratory, investigates these questions from multiple angles, and often generates results that are both surprising and challenging.

 

Colorado Backyard Yields Cache of Stone Age Tools

(Kirk Johnson, NY Times) Researchers into the ancient human past are used to wandering the world in search of artifacts. But scientists at the University of Colorado said Wednesday that a major cache of Stone Age tools, believed to be 13,000 years old, had been found in a suburban backyard just six blocks from the campus in Boulder.

 

A Sketchy Brain Booster: Doodling

(Brandon Keim, Wired) Good news, doodlers: What your colleagues consider a distracting, time-wasting habit may actually give you a leg up on them by helping you pay attention. Asked to remember names they'd heard on a recording, people who doodled while listening had better recall than those who didn't. This suggests that a slightly distracting secondary task may actually improve concentration during the performance of dull tasks that would otherwise cause a mind to wander.

 

How to Save New Brain Cells

(Tracey J. Shors, Scientific American) If you watch TV, read magazines or surf the Web, you have probably encountered advertisements urging you to exercise your mind. Various brain fitness programs encourage people to stay mentally limber by giving their brain a daily workout—doing everything from memorizing lists and solving puzzles to estimating the number of trees in Central Park.

 

News flash: You can buy happiness

(Judith Timson, Globe and Mail) Whether we like it or not, most of us (well, I guess all of us) are now in the middle of a massive reappraisal of what we should be spending our money on, both as a society and as individuals. So this newsflash may be of interest: Spending money on things will not make us nearly as happy as spending it on experiences.

 

Diving for Ancient History, Scientists Discover New Species

(Paul Gleason, PopSci.com) Until last December, no one had ever seen the bottom of the Tasman Fracture, a trench that drops more than four kilometers below the surface of the ocean. A group of Australian and American researchers recently spent a month hundreds of kilometers southwest of the Tasmanian coast, exploring the fracture's depths. Jess Adkins, a professor at Caltech and one of the project's lead scientists, remembers sitting in his control room and watching the underwater life on his monitors with a sense of awe. Once, he says, none of the scientists or pilots said a word for ten minutes straight as their submersible glided over an undiscovered coral reef full of urchins and sponges and sea stars.

 

Scientists Agree: It's in His Kiss

(Betsy Mason, Wired) You may call it love, but scientists call it philematology. And according to experts in this field (yes, there are at least three of them), the 60's pop song got it right: It really is in his kiss. "Kissing is a mechanism for mate choice and mate assessment," Helen Fisher, a Biological Anthropologist from Rutgers University here at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, said to a press conference crowded with science journalists hoping for a story or, perhaps, some advice.

 

Scientists flabbergasted by speedy birds

(Randolph E. Schmid, AP Science Writer) Little songbirds cover more than 300 miles a day on their annual migrations, flabbergasting researchers who expected a much slower flight. For the first time, scientists were able to outfit tiny birds with geolocators and track their travel between North America and the tropics, something only done previously with large birds such as geese.

 

The Science of Saving Art: Can Microbes Protect Masterpieces?

(Katherine Harmon, Scientific American) Art conservationists, curators and scientists from around the world are gathering this week in Caracas, Venezuela, to address some of the burgeoning concerns about the state of art and artifact collections around the world—particularly those in tropical climes, which are under assault from mold, fungus and insects. At the Forum on Cultural Heritage Conservation, researchers are highlighting the many macro-abilities of microorganisms in the art world, which range from detecting whether a gallery's air quality might be harmful to delicate objets d'art to actually cleaning a dirty piece with helpful bacteria.

 

Study: Want more milk from cow? Get to know her

(CNN) -- Here's a tip for dairy farmers: If you want your cows to produce more milk, get to know them better. So says a study out of Newcastle University in northeast England, published online Wednesday in the academic journal Anthrozoos. The researchers found that farmers who named their cows Betsy or Gertrude or Daisy improved their overall milk yield by almost 500 pints (284 liters) annually.

 

Happiness is contagious: study

(Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor, Reuters) Happiness is contagious, researchers reported on Thursday. The same team that demonstrated obesity and smoking spread in networks has shown that the more happy people you know, the more likely you are yourself to be happy. And getting connected to happy people improves a person's own happiness, they reported in the British Medical Journal.