Fossil reveals how the turtle got its shell - life - 08 October 2008 - New Scientist
Bone fragments from a 210-million year-old, land-dwelling reptile from New Mexico suggest that the earliest turtles didn't have much of a shell at all.
Video game for flies may unlock secrets of insect flight - tech - 08 October 2008 - New Scientist
HOW does a fly fly? Exactly how the insects control their flight, using only a few hundred neurons, is a bit of a mystery. But now roboticists are hoping to work out how they do it - using a system that lets fruit flies "drive" a remote-controlled car.
Blood Test for Mom Picks Up Down Syndrome in Fetus -- Kaiser 2008 (1006): 3 -- ScienceNOW
A technology guru may have solved a problem that has long vexed obstetricians: how to test for Down syndrome without poking a needle into the womb. By sequencing the fetal DNA floating in a mother's blood, bioengineer Stephen Quake's team at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, detected nine cases of the disease with 100% accuracy. If this small study holds up in larger trials, the test could become routine for expectant mothers.
The Price of Words Unspoken -- Zelkowitz 2008 (1007): 2 -- ScienceNOW
Humans are hard-wired to notice race. The average person registers the race of another human face in less than 100 milliseconds, according to past studies. This instantaneous perception clashes sharply with the American cultural taboo against using race to identify someone. Watch people at a party trying to describe another person, says Michael Norton, a marketing researcher at Harvard Business School. "They'll launch into these long explanations until someone in the group might eventually say, 'Oh, you mean the Asian guy?'"
Scientists Discover Fish in Act of Evolution in Africa’s Greatest Lake : EcoWorldly
In what could be a first in the world, a fish species in the cichlid family has been observed by scientists in the act of splitting into two distinct species in Lake Victoria, Africa’s largest lake and one of the world’s biggest fresh water bodies.
Researchers Say Ancient Tibetan Practice May Improve Health & Happiness
The thousand-year-old Tibetan Buddhist mind-training practice "lojong" utilizes a cognitive, analytic approach to challenge an individual's unexamined thoughts and emotions toward other people, with the long-term goal of developing altruistic emotions and behavior towards all people. Each meditation class session combined teaching, discussion and meditation practice.
BBC NEWS : Science & Environment : 'Deepest ever' living fish filmed
The fish, known as Pseudoliparis amblystomopsis, can be seen darting about in the darkness of the depths, scooping up shrimps.
Ultra-sweet plant has soft drink companies licking their lips - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting
The approval of a natural alternative to sugar could have the potential to provide thousands of sweet-toothed Australians with an alternative to artificial sweeteners.
Asteroid near-miss prompts calls for astronomy funding - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting
Astronomers have calling for more funding to watch southern skies, after an asteroid took sky-gazers by surprise and entered the earth's atmosphere over Africa yesterday.
CSIRO discovers biological treasure trove in Southern Ocean - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting
Scientists are preparing to rewrite the textbooks after hundreds of massive deep sea mountains and new marine species were discovered in the Southern Ocean near Tasmania.
Forest Fire Warning System Derives Power from Trees : CleanTechnica
Scientists only recently discovered that trees produce energy generated from an imbalance in pH between a tree and its surrounding soil. The forest fire warning sensor is the first real-world application of this knowledge.
Gandhi-Inspired Spinning Wheel Generates Electricity : CleanTechnica
The e-charkha, which was designed by a follower of Gandhi’s Ekambar Nath philosophy, can generate enough electricity in its attached battery for 6-7 hours of power in rural homes. Two hours of operation can light up the e-charkha’s specially designed LED light for eight hours— so the spinning wheel provides enough light for its continued use as an instrument of clothing production.
The Solar Cube: A Solar and Wind Powered Water Source for Remote Areas : CleanTechnica
The Cube (AKA the Spectra Solar Brackish Water System) is a portable solar and wind powered desalination unit that can produce 950 to 1500 gallons of fresh water each day. Attached photovoltaic cells generate up to 1240 watts, while the wind generator can produce up to 1000 watts. The Cube generates more power than is necessary for water production, so excess energy can be used for other things—such as the operation of emergency equipment.
Ancient reef find 'may push back evolution' - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
The discovery of an ancient reef north of Adelaide by Australian scientists may push back the evolution of the earliest animals by 80 million years. ...The researchers say they have uncovered complex organisms that in some ways resemble multicellular life in a large reef located in the Northern Flinders Ranges, 700 kilometres north of Adelaide in South Australia.
Grain stubble could power a greener future - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
Australian researchers say biofuels made from the stubble left over from harvesting grains could replace around one fifth of the volume of petrol used in Australia.
Aussie finds new iguana species in Fiji - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
BBC NEWS : Science/Nature : Dig pinpoints Stonehenge origins
Archaeologists have pinpointed the construction of Stonehenge to 2300BC - a key step to discovering how and why the mysterious edifice was built. The radiocarbon date is said to be the most accurate yet and means the ring's original bluestones were put up 300 years later than previously thought.
BBC NEWS : Science/Nature : Observatory detects record burst
Because light moves at finite speed, looking farther into the Universe means looking back in time. The distance this flash has had to travel means Swift is seeing the event less than 825 million years after the Universe came into being; and some 70 million years further back in time than the previous record holder, a burst detected in 2005.
Pinning down the Milky Way's spin
Artist's impression of the local neighbourhood of the Sun and its setting within our galaxy, the Milky Way (see insert above). The figure shows the positions of some bright stars (in white) in the sky as well as the eight Cepheids used in the investigation (in blue). After the rotation of the Milky Way had been accounted for (red arrow), it seemed that the Cepheids were all "falling" towards the Sun (blue arrows; these are not to scale: in reality the blue velocities are typically a factor one hundred smaller than the velocity around the Milky Way). New, very precise measurements with the HARPS instrument have shown that this apparent "fall" is due to effects within the Cepheids themselves and is not related to the way the Milky Way rotates. The motion indicated by the blue arrows is thus an illusion. The scale of the image is given in light-years (ly).
Like a Rolling Sun? -- Berardelli 2008 (917): 2 -- ScienceNOW
The idea sounds perfectly logical: Life evolved on Earth partly because our entire solar system happened to coalesce within a relatively quiet corner of the Milky Way. This "habitable zone" is far from the lethal radiation, fast-flying supernova debris, and black holes that afflict other parts of the galaxy. The problem is that the theory may not be true, according to new research. The sun and all its planets may have been born in a far more dangerous corner of the galaxy and only later migrated to the suburbs.
Invention: Infrared lie detector - tech - 22 September 2008 - New Scientist Tech
The amount of reflected light is dependent on the levels of oxygen in the blood, which in turn depends on how active the brain is at that point.This, he says, gives a detailed picture of real-time activity within the brain that can be used to determine whether the subject is lying. The technique is both cheaper and easier to apply than fMRI and gives a higher resolution than an EEG.
Self-steering Vehicle Designed To Mimic Movements Of Ants
... the “Verdino”, a self-steering vehicle that can sense the road surface using a technique called Ant Colony Optimisation (ACO). This method is based on the behaviour used by ants to find the shortest way between their ant hill and sources of food.
Craig Venter on Creating Artificial Life
Can Sunshine Power the U.S.?
With few clouds, the American Southwest sun pours more than eight kilowatt-hours* per square meter of its energy onto the landscape. Vast parabolic mirrors in the heart of California's Mojave Desert concentrate this solar energy to heat a specialized oil to around 750 degrees Fahrenheit (400 degrees Celsius). This hot oil then transfers its heat to water, vaporizing it. The resulting steam turns a turbine to produce electricity. In all, nine such mirror fields, known as concentrating solar power plants, can supply more than 350 megawatts of electricity yearly.
Planet's strange orbit points to planetary billiards - space - 22 September 2008 - New Scientist
Guillame Hebrard of the Institute of Astrophysics in Paris and colleagues detected an unusual colour shift as XO-3b passed in front of its star. The pattern suggests that its 3.2-day orbit is tilted by 70 degrees (see diagram). "If confirmed, this might be the first planet of this type," says Hebrard.
Great Barrier Reef Expeditions Yields 100's New Species & Clues to Biodiversity Threats
Hundreds of new animal species have been discovered by a team of international researchers affiliated with the global Census of Marine Life exploring waters off Lizard and Heron Islands on the Great Barrier Reef and Ningaloo Reef off northwestern Australia. The marine expedition was the first scientific inventory of spectacular soft corals, named octocorals for the eight tentacles that fringe each polyp.
Raiders of the Lost Codex: Scholars Piece Together Ancient Bible - International - SPIEGEL ONLINE -
Parts of the 1,600-year-old Codex Sinaiticus -- which includes the world's earliest complete New Testament -- are scattered between Leipzig, London and St. Petersburg. Now researchers want to digitize the fragments and publish the whole volume on the Internet. But controversy still rages over the proper ownership of the relic.
Dark Matter Disk In Our Galaxy, Supercomputer Simulation Shows
An international team of scientists predict that our Galaxy, the Milky Way, contains a disk of ‘dark matter’. Astronomers Dr Justin Read, Professor George Lake and Oscar Agertz of the University of Zurich, and Dr Victor Debattista of the University of Central Lancashire use the results of a supercomputer simulation to deduce the presence of this disk.
Moo North: Cattle and Deer May Sense Earth's Magnetic Field: Scientific American
Researchers have found that when grazing or resting, cattle and deer tend to point their bodies toward Earth's magnetic poles, which suggests they are able to sense magnetic fields in the same way as many smaller animals.
Hurricane Ike's Sprawl a Meteorological Mystery : Discovery News
Considering the vastly different dangers posed by these storms, it's natural to wonder just why some storms get so big while others stay small, despite having the same hurricane-force winds. Why, in other words, is Ike such a titan?
Did evolution come before life? - life - 15 September 2008 - New Scientist
A rudimentary form of natural selection likely existed in the primordial soup even before life arose on Earth. If so, the complex "ecosystem" of prebiotic molecules may have made the eventual arrival of life much more probable.
Space 'firefly' resembles no known object - space - 16 September 2008 - New Scientist Space
An object that brightened intensely and then faded back into obscurity over a period of about seven months is unlike anything astronomers have seen before, a new study reports.
BBC NEWS : Science/Nature : Exoplanet circles 'normal star'
The new planet is huge, with a mass about eight times that of Jupiter.
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