The Living WeaponDecades before President Bush began railing against Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, the United States had its own top-secret program to develop biological weapons of mass destruction.
From 1943 to 1969, U.S. researchers worked with pathogens such as anthrax and tularemia, seeking to develop deadly bioweapons that experts say were meant for the mass slaughter of enemy civilians as well as enemy combatants.
The time is now ripe for a........Go to the Entertainment-blog (Added on 2/5/2007 7:32:41 PM)
Sophisticated ESA space weather toolIf a satellite encounters high-energy particles or other 'space weather' phenomena before ground controllers can take action, on-board electronics could be disrupted, scientific instruments damaged and, in very rare and extreme cases, spacecraft may even be lost. A sophisticated tool in development at ESOC promises to provide effective monitoring and forecasting for any type of mission.
But since early 2005, SEISOP (Space Environment........Go to the Geography-blog (Added on 2/4/2007 8:23:47 PM)
What makes a good leaderOrganizational leaders who come across as low or high in assertiveness tend to be seen as less effective, as per a research studycoming out in the recent issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, published by the American Psychological Association (APA). Leaders in the middle may have an "optimal" level of assertiveness, but there is plenty of company on the extremes. The research suggests that being seen as under- or........Go to the Media-blog (Added on 2/4/2007 8:10:28 PM)
Improved NanodotsThe massive global challenge of storing digital data-storage needs reportedly double every year-may be met with a tiny yet powerful solution: magnetic particles just a few billionths of a meter across. This idea is looking better than ever now that scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and collaborators have made nanodot arrays that respond to magnetic fields with record levels of uniformity. The work enhances........Go to the Technology-blog (Added on 2/2/2007 4:51:23 AM)
Apex USB battery chargerThink of all those consumer electronics we power with disposable batteries. Now think about how all those batteries find themselves in the dumpster, headed for land fills. Rechargeable is definitely the way to go. With the Apex USB charger, four batteries can charge in four hours by plugging into your computer's USB port.
The unit is small, just four inches square and one inch high, perfect for traveling. However, unlike the USB cell........Go to the Technology-blog (Added on 2/1/2007 8:11:47 PM)
Continuing Tomato Sequence ProjectAn international project led by Cornell and the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research (BTI) at Cornell has received $1.8 million from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to continue sequencing the tomato genome and to create a database of genomic sequences and information on the tomato and related plants.
The grant for the International Tomato Sequencing Project, a collaboration of scientists from nine other countries, will enable........Go to the Botany-blog (Added on 1/31/2007 9:04:59 PM)
Stretches The Limits Of Composite MaterialsIn an advance that could lead to composite materials with virtually limitless performance capabilities, a University of Wisconsin-Madison scientist has dispelled a 50-year-old theoretical notion that composite materials must be made only of "stable" individual materials to be stable overall.
Writing in the Feb. 2 issue of the journal Physical Review Letters, Engineering Physics Professor Walter Drugan proves that a composite material can be........Go to the Technology-blog (Added on 1/31/2007 8:35:48 PM)
Romantic Films Not Just For Women"Chick flicks" aren't just for women. As per research by Richard Harris, professor of psychology at Kansas State University, guys like romantic movies, too.
Harris said his survey results are surprising and go against common stereotypes.
"Everyone thinks that women like romantic movies and that they drag guys along to them," he said. "What was significant was that the guys also liked the movies, and that the choice to view a romantic........Go to the Entertainment-blog (Added on 1/30/2007 6:49:33 PM)
Blood-cell-sized Memory DeviceScientists have created an ultra-dense memory device the size of a white blood cell that has enough capacity to store the Declaration of Independence and still have space left over. The accomplishment represents an important step toward the creation of molecular computers that are much smaller and could be more powerful than today's silicon-based computers.
"Using molecular components for memory or computation or to replace other electronic........Go to the Technology-blog (Added on 1/30/2007 6:38:24 PM)
Major Breakthrough In Laser Diode DevelopmentA team of scientists at the University of California, Santa Barbara led by Shuji Nakamura, winner of the 2006 Millennium Technology Prize, has reported a major breakthrough in laser diode development.
The researchers, from the Solid State Lighting and Display Center in UCSB's College of Engineering, have achieved lasing operation in nonpolar gallium nitride (GaN) semiconductors and demonstrated the world's first nonpolar blue-violet laser........Go to the Technology-blog (Added on 1/29/2007 9:00:14 PM)
deep-sea fauna under Antarctic ice shelfUnder the former Larsen ice shelf east of the Antarctic Peninsula, deep-sea sea cucumbers and stalked feather stars were ubiquitously found in shallow waters. These animals usually inhabit far greater water depths.
The main aim of the current Polarstern expedition to Antarctica is the investigation of marine ecosystems under the former Larsen ice shelf. This "white spot" with regard to biodiversity research gave rise to the following........Go to the Biology-blog (Added on 1/24/2007 7:40:52 PM)
First Human MetabalomeResearchers at the University of Alberta, in Edmonton, Canada, have announced the completion of the first draft of the human metabolome, the chemical equivalent of the human genome.
The metabolome is the complete complement of all small molecule chemicals (metabolites) found in or produced by an organism. By analogy, if the genome represents the blueprint of life, the metabolome represents the ingredients of life.
The scientists have........Go to the Health-blog (Added on 1/24/2007 6:11:15 PM)
Step Toward Building Molecular ComputersA team of UCLA and California Institute of Technology chemists reports in the Jan. 25 issue of the journal Nature the successful demonstration of a large-scale, "ultra-dense" memory device that stores information using reconfigurable molecular switches. This research represents an important step toward the creation of molecular computers that are much smaller and could be more powerful than today's silicon-based computers.
The 160-kilobit........Go to the Technology-blog (Added on 1/24/2007 5:29:50 PM)
Training Your Breathing Muscles To Improves SwimmingSwimmers and scuba divers can improve their swimming endurance and breathing capacity through targeted training of the respiratory muscles, scientists at the University at Buffalo have shown.
In this pioneering work, subjects who followed a resistance-breathing training protocol (breathing load) improved their respiratory muscle strength and their snorkel swimming time by 33 percent and underwater scuba swimming time by 66 percent, in........Go to the Sports-blog (Added on 1/17/2007 8:11:07 PM)
Rubus thibetanus 'Silver Fern'This bramble is the source of much recent photographic frustration for me. It beckons outside my second-floor office window with its tangled icy-blue mass of canes, asking to be photographed in pretty much the exact frame that I see through the window from my office chair - a window that only opens thirty degrees outwards, thereby requiring me to either 1) move furniture and lean out the window while undergoing unnatural contortions (which I........Go to the Botany-blog (Added on 1/15/2007 7:32:53 PM)
Hofmeyr-Skull supports the "Out of Africa"-TheoryReliably dated fossils are critical to understanding the course of human evolution. A human skull discovered over fifty years ago near the town of Hofmeyr, in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa, is one such fossil. A study by an international team of researchers led by Frederick Grine of the Departments of Anthropology and Anatomical Sciences at Stony Brook University in New York published recently in Science magazine has dated the skull........Go to the Archeology-blog (Added on 1/15/2007 5:19:50 AM)
One In Four Specialist Trainee Doctors 'Very Worried'One in four specialist trainee doctors in England views their future job prospects as "poor" or "very worrying," as a result of changes in training and healthcare delivery, reveals a survey* published ahead of print in a special edition of Postgraduate Medical Journal.
While the government plans to shift the focus of care, particularly for long term conditions, away from hospitals into the community, almost a third of those surveyed regarded........Go to the Health-blog (Added on 1/15/2007 5:11:58 AM)
Bilingualism Has Protective Effect On DementiaCanadian scientists have found astonishing evidence that the lifelong use of two languages can help delay the onset of dementia symptoms by four years compared to people who are monolingual.
There has been much interest and growing scientific literature examining how lifestyle factors such as physical activity, education and social engagement may help build "cognitive reserve" in later years of life. Cognitive reserve refers to enhanced........Go to the Health-blog (Added on 1/12/2007 4:59:00 AM)
Stock Options May Cost Shareholders Much LessControversial stock options for company executives may be much less costly to shareholders than current mathematical models suggest, as per research presented Jan. 5 by Tim Leung of Princeton's Department of Operations Research and Financial Engineering.
At the annual meeting of the American Mathematical Society, Leung demonstrated that, in one scenario, stock options were worth about half of what they would be valued if one were to........Go to the Media-blog (Added on 1/12/2007 4:41:40 AM)
Fixing The Nitrogen BalanceScientists in the US have observed that, reassuringly, the global nitrogen cycles can be more easily balanced out than previously thought, as sources and sinks of usable nitrogen are geographically close and respond to each other in rapid feedback.
Conventional wisdom in biogeochemistry suggested that most of the nitrogen fixation in the oceans was going on in the Atlantic, where the supply of iron, mandatory by the nitrogenase enzyme, is........Go to the Archeology-blog (Added on 1/11/2007 7:51:37 PM)
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Volcanism with Under-Ocean SensorsEarthquakes and volcanic activity occur when the tectonic plates that make up Earth's surface move apart or converge. While this activity is relatively easy to observe on land, it's more difficult to observe under the ocean, where most of it occurs. A University of Missouri-Columbia researcher will soon undertake a study to learn more about this process by placing sensors on a mid-ocean ridge called the East Pacific Rise.
"Right now, we can........Go to the Geography-blog (Added on 2/5/2007 6:31:15 PM)
Different Protein Building BlocksChemists at Yale have done what Mother Nature chose not to make a protein-like molecule out of non-natural building blocks, as per a report featured early online in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
Nature uses alpha-amino acid building blocks to assemble the proteins that make life as we know it possible. Chemists at Yale now report evidence that nature could have used a different building block beta-amino acids and show........Go to the Chemistry-blog (Added on 2/5/2007 6:08:32 PM)
Climate Change only one Symptom of a Stressed Planet EarthIn releasing its latest comprehensive report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) focuses an important spotlight on the current state of the Earth's climate.
Climate change is just one of the a number of symptoms exhibited by a planet under pressure from human activities. "Global environmental change, which includes climate change, threatens to irreversibly alter our planet," says Kevin Noone, Executive Director of the........Go to the Geography-blog (Added on 2/4/2007 8:15:28 PM)
Good Times Using GPS and the InternetInternational time coordination is improving throughout the Americas thanks to a low-cost system relying on Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites and the Internet, which enables much faster time comparisons and gives small countries the opportunity to evaluate easily their measurements in relation to others and to world standards.
The time and frequency network of the Sistema Interamericano de Metrologia (SIM), or Inter-American........Go to the Geography-blog (Added on 2/2/2007 4:56:27 AM)
Human Link To Global WarmingEvidence presented in the first phase of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's 4th Assessment Report, released recently in Paris, paints the clearest picture yet that human-derived greenhouse gases are playing a significant role in observed global warming, says a Duke University scientist who co-authored one of the report's main chapters.
"We are now seeing, not merely predicting, effects of greenhouse warming on a scale and in........Go to the Geography-blog (Added on 2/2/2007 4:19:55 AM)
Vocal Smoke AlarmsThis is not your playing ball but it is much more beyond that. The ball is a KidSmart Vocal Smoke Alarm, which are particularly designed to save your kids life from fire around in house.
New studies say that sleeping children respond more quickly to your smoke alarms personalized with parent's voice than the conventional ringing alarms. This KidSmart smoke detector lets you record your message specific to your child.
The Vocal Smoke Alarm........Go to the Technology-blog (Added on 2/1/2007 7:53:49 PM)
Liquid Crystals StabilisedDutch-sponsored researcher Ioan Paraschiv has stabilised new columnar discotic liquid crystals by making use of hydrogen bonds. This stabilisation approach yielded well-ordered, column-shaped aggregates that can transport charges. Liquid crystals are materials that combine the properties of a liquid with those of crystalline solids. They show a middle phase, known as mesophase or liquid crystalline phase, in which the material has unique........Go to the Technology-blog (Added on 1/30/2007 9:42:44 PM)
Sources of the World's Tiny PollutantsPinpointing pollutant sources is an important part of the ongoing battle to improve air quality and to understand its impact on climate. Researchers using NASA data recently tracked the path and distribution of aerosols -- tiny particles suspended in the air -- to link their region of origin and source type with their tendencies to warm or cool the atmosphere.
By altering the amount of solar energy that reaches the Earth's surface, aerosols........Go to the Geography-blog (Added on 1/30/2007 7:39:10 PM)
Hot Stuff On SaturnUCL scientists have reported findings in the journal 'Nature' that rule out a long-held theory about why the Gas Giants like Saturn have such hot outer atmospheres.
Along with colleagues from Boston University, the team from UCL Physics & Astronomy observed that the upper atmospheres of the giant planets in our solar system do not heat up in the same way as here on Earth.
A simple calculation to give the expected temperature of a........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 1/30/2007 4:43:43 AM)
Improving Energy Efficiency Of Ethanol ProductionCarnegie Mellon University Chemical Engineers have devised a new process that can improve the efficiency of ethanol production, a major component in making biofuels a significant part of the U.S. energy supply.
Carnegie Mellon scientists have used advanced process design methods combined with mathematical optimization techniques to reduce the operating costs of corn-based bio-ethanol plants by more than 60 percent.
The key to the Carnegie........Go to the Technology-blog (Added on 1/28/2007 9:43:45 PM)
Assessing Diet And Exercise In AdolescentsDo adolescents get enough exercise and eat the right foods? Is there too much fat in their diets? According to a research findings published in the February 2007 issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, researchers analyzed the behavior of almost 900 11-to-15 year-olds and found that nearly 80% had multiple physical activity and dietary risk behaviors, almost half had at least three risk behaviors, and only 2% met all four of the........Go to the Health-blog (Added on 1/26/2007 4:31:57 AM)
Corot Sees First Light!In the night between 17 and 18 January 2007, the protective cover of the COROT telescope has been successfully opened, and COROT has seen for the first time light coming from stars.
Surveying vast stellar fields to learn about star interiors and to search for extra-solar planets is the goal of this unique mission, whose scientific observations will officially start at the beginning of February this year.
The first light detected by COROT........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 1/24/2007 6:43:09 PM)
Obstacle From Mass Production Of Tiny Circuits RemovedAs they eliminate tiny air bubbles that form when liquid droplets are molded into intricate circuits, a Princeton-led team is dissolving a sizable obstacle to the mass production of smaller, cheaper microchips.
Led by Stephen Chou, the Joseph C. Elgin Professor of Engineering at Princeton, the team worked to troubleshoot one form of nanoimprint lithography, a revolutionary method invented by Chou in the 1990s. Nanoimprint uses a........Go to the Technology-blog (Added on 1/17/2007 8:15:47 PM)
Molecular Differences Between Rice And Its MimicRed rice sounds like a New Orleans dish or a San Francisco treat. But it's a weed, the biggest nuisance to American rice growers, who are the fourth largest exporters of rice in the world. And rice farmers hate the pest, which, if harvested along with domesticated rice, reduces marketability and contaminates seed stocks.
Complicating matters is the fact that red rice and cultivated rice are exactly the same species, so an herbicide cannot be........Go to the Botany-blog (Added on 1/15/2007 9:27:38 PM)
Reserve Wine Preservation SystemLast month, Wine Innovations sent me a sample unit of their ReServe wine preservation system. For those who don't know, I spend my weekends as a bartender and spirit sommelier in an upscale Speakeasy in St Louis. I probably open a hundred bottles in a given weekend, and I can identify a bad one from a mile away.
Wine preservation is one of those Holy Grail items in the restaurant business, and everyone has their own voodoo methods. It seems........Go to the Media-blog (Added on 1/15/2007 8:56:37 PM)
A Year Of Extraterrestrial Fountains And FlowsThe past year was extraordinary for the discovery of extraterrestrial fountains and flows -- some offering new potential in the search for liquid water and the origin of life beyond planet Earth. Increased evidence was uncovered that fountains spurt not only from Saturn's moon Enceladus, but from the dunes of Mars as well. Lakes were found on Saturn's moon Titan, and the residual of a flowing liquid was discovered on the walls of Martian........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 1/15/2007 7:21:10 PM)
Soil Nutrients Shape Tropical ForestsTropical forests are among the most diverse plant communities on earth, and researchers have labored for decades to identify the ecological and evolutionary processes that created and maintain them. A key question is whether all tree species are equivalent in their use of resources - water, light and nutrients - or whether each species has its own niche.
A large-scale study by scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and........Go to the Botany-blog (Added on 1/12/2007 5:03:57 AM)
Travelers need to know more about diarrheaMost people heading off to a sunny winter vacation in a foreign country know something about how to avoid a nasty case of travellers' diarrhea, but they don't know everything they should, according to a University of Alberta study.
A survey of 104 vacationers boarding flights for Mexico revealed that their general level of knowledge about the prevention of this condition was generally adequate; however, there were still some things they........Go to the Health-blog (Added on 1/12/2007 4:52:28 AM)
Spread Of Modern Humans Occurred LaterThe spread of modern humans out of Africa occurred 40,000 to 50,000 years later than previously thought, as per scientists including one Texas A&M University anthropologist.
Ted Goebel, associate director of the Center for the Study of the First Americans at Texas A&M, is the author of the paper titled "The Missing Years for Modern Humans" that appears in the Jan. 12 (Friday) issue of Science.
Goebel's paper is one of three reported in........Go to the Archeology-blog (Added on 1/11/2007 9:22:32 PM)
Greetings From The Bottom Of The WorldIn May 2003, astronaut Don Pettit returned home from his five-month stay aboard the International Space Station. Living in isolated conditions in an extreme environment, he spent much of his time conducting scientific research.
Now, he's doing it again, but this time he's not leaving the planet.
Pettit is currently in Antarctica on a scientific expedition to look for meteorites. Even though he's still on Earth, the trip will have a lot in........Go to the Geography-blog (Added on 1/11/2007 6:33:16 PM)
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