|
Latest Articles: Science/Tech
Defining PseudoSkeptics vs. True Skeptics: Behaviors and Tactics
Post Date: 2012-02-26 00:01:10 by Original_Intent
2 Comments
Defining PseudoSkeptics vs. True Skeptics: Behaviors and Tactics According to Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, a skeptic is: "One who is yet undecided as to what is true; one who is looking or inquiring for what is true; an inquirer after facts or reasons." Pyrrho, the founder of "Skepticism", intended for it to be about open inquiry and suspension of judgment. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeptic “In classical philosophy, skepticism refers to the teachings and the traits of the 'Skeptikoi', a school of philosophers of whom it was said that they 'asserted nothing but only opined.' (Liddell and Scott) In ...
Lowering clouds may help fight against climate change: NZ study
Post Date: 2012-02-23 04:06:04 by Tatarewicz
0 Comments
WELLINGTON, Feb. 22 (Xinhua) -- The clouds might be fighting back against global climate change, said scientists in New Zealand Wednesday. The research from the University of Auckland on changes in cloud height in the decade to 2010 has provided the first hint of a cooling mechanism that could be in play in the Earth's climate. The analysis of data from the NASA Terra satellite showed an overall trend of decreasing cloud height of about 1 percent, or 30 to 40 meters, over the decade, said a statement from the university. Most of the reduction was due to fewer clouds occurring at very high altitudes. "This is the first time we have been able to accurately measure changes in ...
Light speed travel - Was Einstein wrong - or was the cable loose?
Post Date: 2012-02-23 00:18:18 by Tatarewicz
1 Comments
LONDON/GENEVA, Feb. 22, 2012 (Reuters) — The world of science was upended last year when an experiment appeared to show one of Einstein's fundamental theories was wrong - but now the lab behind it says the result could have been caused by a loose cable. Physicists at the CERN laboratory near Geneva appeared to contradict Albert Einstein last year when they reported that sub-atomic particles called neutrinos could travel fractions of a second faster than light. Einstein had said nothing could ever travel faster than light, and doing so would be like traveling back in time. But James Gillies, a spokesman for CERN, said Wednesday the lab's startling result was now in doubt. ...
Genetic Maker of Men Is Diminished but Holding Its Ground
Post Date: 2012-02-22 22:51:18 by Tatarewicz
1 Comments
Men, or at least male biologists, have long been alarmed that their tiny Y chromosome, once the same size as its buxom partner, the X, will continue to wither away until it simply vanishes. The male sex would then become extinct, they fear, leaving women to invent some virgin-birth method of reproduction and propagate a sexless species. The fear is not without serious basis: The Y and X chromosomes once shared some 800 genes in common, but now, after shedding genes furiously, the Y carries just 19 of its ancestral genes, as well as the male-determining gene that is its raison d’être. So much DNA has been lost that the chromosome is a fraction of its original size. But there ...
Is anyone familiar with the Firefox Google Analytics opt-out add-on?
Post Date: 2012-02-22 09:28:50 by F.A. Hayek Fan
1 Comments
This morning when attempting to access a web page I noticed a little box in the bottom left hand corner that said something to the effect of "reading Google Analytics or something to that effect. So after researching it I found that it is a free service that Google provides to web sites so those websites can track information about their users. OK, I have no problem with that per say. I can understand why that would be useful to an e-commerce site. However, Google also receives this information and stores it in their database. I DO have a problem with that. So, after investigating how to get my browser to quit giving this info to Google, I found that there is an add-on for Firefox ...
Scientists resurrect Ice Age plant after 30,000 years in deep freeze
Post Date: 2012-02-21 15:41:11 by Original_Intent
2 Comments
It was an Ice Age squirrel's treasure chamber, a burrow containing fruit and seeds that had been stuck in the Siberian permafrost for over 30,000 years. Svetlana Yashina of the Institute of Cell Biophysics of the Russian Academy Of Sciences, who led the regeneration effort, said the revived plant looked very similar to its modern version, which still grows in the same area in northeastern Siberia. "It's a very viable plant, and it adapts really well," she told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from the Russian town of Pushchino where her lab is located. She voiced hope the team could continue its work and regenerate more plant species. The Russians research ...
Controversy Brews Over Scientists' Creation of Killer Viruses
Post Date: 2012-02-21 03:40:01 by Tatarewicz
2 Comments
Should scientists be allowed to create extremely aggressive and highly infectious influenza viruses? Dutch virologists have done it and, in the process, triggered a fierce debate over the risks of bioterrorism and the potential release of deadly viruses. Info The 17th floor of the Erasmus Medical Center in the Dutch city of Rotterdam certainly doesn't look like the kind of place that could pose a threat to global security. A disco ball hangs from the ceiling in the hallway in front of the elevators, and a bar with a golden beer tap stands in the corner of the conference room. Everything in this 1960s high-rise building evokes the charm of student life, including the door to Room ...
Lab-grown meat is first step to artificial hamburger
Post Date: 2012-02-20 07:46:08 by Tatarewicz
2 Comments
Dutch scientists have used stem cells to create strips of muscle tissue with the aim of producing the first lab-grown hamburger later this year. The aim of the research is to develop a more efficient way of producing meat than rearing animals. At a major science meeting in Canada, Prof Mark Post said synthetic meat could reduce the environmental footprint of meat by up to 60%. "We would gain a tremendous amount in terms of resources," he said. Professor Post's group at Maastricht University in the Netherlands has grown small pieces of muscle about 2cm long, 1cm wide and about a mm thick. They are off-white and resemble strips of calamari in appearance. These strips will ...
Physicists create a Working Transistor From a Single Atom
Post Date: 2012-02-20 03:50:39 by Tatarewicz
0 Comments
Australian and American physicists have built a working transistor from a single phosphorus atom embedded in a silicon crystal. RSS Feed RSS Get Science News From The New York Times » The group of physicists, based at the University of New South Wales and Purdue University, said they had laid the groundwork for a futuristic quantum computer that might one day function in a nanoscale world and would be orders of magnitude smaller and quicker than today’s silicon-based machines. In contrast to conventional computers that are based on transistors with distinct “on” and “off” or “1” and “0” states, quantum computers are built from devices ...
The inside story on climate scientists under siege
Post Date: 2012-02-18 21:58:23 by Original_Intent
7 Comments
The inside story on climate scientists under siege Michael Mann reveals his account of attacks by entrenched interests seeking to undermine his 'hockey stick' graph• Interactive: Everything you need to know about climate change• How US attack machine undermines climate science It is almost possible to dismiss Michael Mann's account of a vast conspiracy by the fossil fuel industry to harrass scientists and befuddle the public. His story of that campaign, and his own journey from naive computer geek to battle-hardened climate ninja, seems overwrought, maybe even paranoid.But now comes the unauthorised release of documents showing how a libertarian thinktank, the ...
Nuclear Truckers: Warheads on 18 Wheels
Post Date: 2012-02-17 12:40:37 by X-15
1 Comments
"Is that it?" My wife leans forward in the passenger seat of our sensible hatchback and points ahead to an 18-wheeler that's hauling ass toward us on a low-country stretch of South Carolina's Highway 125. We've been heading west from I-95 toward the Savannah River Site nuclear facility on the Georgia-South Carolina border, in search of nuke truckers. At first the mysterious big rig resembles a commercial gas tanker, but the cab is pristine-looking and there's a simple blue-on-white license plate: US GOVERNMENT. It blows by too quickly to determine whether it's part of the little-known US fleet tasked with transporting some of the most sensitive cargo in ...
Bird groups estimate cats kill one billion birds every year on this continent. North American song bird populations have declined by 40% and research shows that cats account for almost a quarter of this decline.
Post Date: 2012-02-16 23:04:54 by wudidiz
18 Comments
Cat populations are booming in North America, sparking a major conflict between cat lovers and people trying to protect birds. In this photo, a stray cat carries a pigeon in its mouth after catching it in the street. (Amr Abdallah Dalsh/Reuters) Click for Full Text!
Flies prefer blue
Post Date: 2012-02-16 03:43:42 by Tatarewicz
0 Comments
ORLANDO, Florida, Feb. 15, 2012 (Reuters) — The U.S. military needed a better way to kill flies on the battlefield and researchers think they found it: use blue. Pesky common houseflies prefer a deep blue with pinstripes over the bright yellow hue traditionally used in flytraps, according to University of Florida research released on Wednesday. The finding led researchers to create the Florida Fly-Baiter, a blue-striped trap that killed more than 40,000 flies in a one-month test with a 96 percent success rate, according to Phil Koehler, a professor of urban entomology. Funded by the U.S. Department of Defense's Deployed War-Fighter Protection program, the trap was designed to ...
New power source found
Post Date: 2012-02-15 03:42:44 by Tatarewicz
0 Comments
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and RMIT University have made a breakthrough in energy storage and power generation. The power generated relative to the energy source size is three to four times greater than what is currently possible with the best lithium-ion batteries. While on sabbatical from RMIT in 2009 and 2010, Associate Professor Dr Kourosh Kalantar-zadeh, from the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, joined MIT Associate Professor Michael Strano's nanotechnology research group. The team was working on measuring the acceleration of a chemical reaction along a nanotube when they discovered that the reaction generated power. Now the ...
Security slackers risk Internet blackout on March 8
Post Date: 2012-02-13 06:24:42 by Tatarewicz
0 Comments
If feds pull down temporary DNS fix as planned, machines infected with DNSChanger Trojan won't be able to access the Web Companies and home users whose computers or routers are infected by the DNSChanger Trojan risk being unable to access the Web come March 8, 2012, when the FBI unplugs the legitimate DNS servers it set up to replace the rogue DNS servers that were forwarding victims to malicious sites. The removal of the fed's band aid could impact a substantial number of users, too, as half of Fortune 500 companies and government agencies are infected with the malware, according to a new report. Back in November, the feds famously took down the DNSChanger botnet network, which ...
China's BGI opens research center in Denmark
Post Date: 2012-02-11 03:32:18 by Tatarewicz
0 Comments
COPENHAGEN, Feb. 11 (Xinhua) -- China's BGI genome research institute formally opened its first European genome sequencing center here Friday, with the aim of accelerating innovation and development of genomics research and applications. The European Genome Research Center is a collaboration between BGI, the world's largest genomics organization, and top Danish research institutes including Copenhagen University. Located at the Copenhagen Bio Science Park (COBIS), a technology cluster in the Danish capital, the center aims to develop genome research and applications relevant to healthcare, while mapping the DNA variations of Danes to help solve hereditary medical problems. ...
Drug quickly reverses Alzheimer's symptoms in mice: study
Post Date: 2012-02-10 01:19:16 by Tatarewicz
2 Comments
WASHINGTON, Feb. 9 (Xinhua) -- U.S. researchers have found that use of a drug in mice appears to quickly reverse the pathological, cognitive and memory deficits caused by the onset of Alzheimer's disease, according to a study published online in journal Science on Thursday. The results point to the significant potential that the medication, bexarotene, has to help the roughly 5.4 million Americans suffering from the progressive brain disease, the researchers said. Bexarotene has been approved for the treatment of cancer by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for more than a decade. These experiments explored whether the medication might also be used to help patients with ...
DNA Sequencing Helps Identify Cancer Cells for Immune System Attack
Post Date: 2012-02-10 00:04:42 by Tatarewicz
0 Comments
ScienceDaily (Feb. 8, 2012) — DNA sequences from tumor cells can be used to direct the immune system to attack cancer, according to scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The immune system relies on an intricate network of alarm bells, targets and safety brakes to determine when and what to attack. The new results suggest that scientists may now be able to combine DNA sequencing data with their knowledge of the triggers and targets that set off immune alarms to more precisely develop vaccines and other immunotherapies for cancer. "We already have ways to identify specific targets for immunotherapy, but they are technically challenging, extremely ...
What Kind of Chocolate Is Best? The Last You Taste, Says a New Study
Post Date: 2012-02-09 23:41:04 by Tatarewicz
1 Comments
ScienceDaily (Feb. 9, 2012) — Like to save the best for last? Here's good news: If it's the last, you'll like it the best. That is the finding of a new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. "Endings affect us in lots of ways, and one is this 'positivity effect,'" says University of Michigan psychologist Ed O'Brien, who conducted the study with colleague Phoebe C. Ellsworth. Graduation from college, the last kiss before going off to war: we experience these "lasts" with deep pleasure and affection -- in fact, more than we may have felt about those places or people the day before. ...
New Battery Could Lead to Cheaper, More Efficient Solar Energy
Post Date: 2012-02-09 23:28:22 by Tatarewicz
0 Comments
ScienceDaily (Feb. 9, 2012) — A joint research project between the University of Southampton and lithium battery technology company REAPsystems has found that a new type of battery has the potential to improve the efficiency and reduce the cost of solar power. The research project, sponsored by REAPsystems, was led by MSc Sustainable Energy Technologies student, Yue Wu and his supervisors Dr Carlos Ponce de Leon, Professor Tom Markvart and Dr John Low (currently working at the University's Research Institute for Industry, RIfI). The study looked specifically into the use of lithium batteries as an energy storage device in photovoltaic systems. Student Yue Wu says, "Lead ...
Memory Strengthened by Stimulating Key Site in Brain
Post Date: 2012-02-09 23:17:38 by Tatarewicz
0 Comments
ScienceDaily (Feb. 8, 2012) — Ever gone to the movies and forgotten where you parked the car? New UCLA research may one day help you improve your memory. UCLA neuroscientists have demonstrated that they can strengthen memory in human patients by stimulating a critical junction in the brain. Published in the Feb. 9 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine, the finding could lead to a new method for boosting memory in patients with early Alzheimer's disease. The UCLA team focused on a brain site called the entorhinal cortex. Considered the doorway to the hippocampus, which helps form and store memories, the entorhinal cortex plays a crucial role in transforming daily ...
Hydrogen from Acidic Water: Potential Low Cost Alternative to Platinum for Splitting Water
Post Date: 2012-02-09 23:08:14 by Tatarewicz
3 Comments
ScienceDaily (Feb. 9, 2012) — A technique for creating a new molecule that structurally and chemically replicates the active part of the widely used industrial catalyst molybdenite has been developed by researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). This technique holds promise for the creation of catalytic materials that can serve as effective low-cost alternatives to platinum for generating hydrogen gas from water that is acidic. Christopher Chang and Jeffrey Long, chemists who hold joint appointments with Berkeley Lab and the University of California (UC) Berkeley, led a research team that synthesized a molecule to mimic ...
Study on mice shows fasting weakens cancer
Post Date: 2012-02-09 03:40:36 by Tatarewicz
0 Comments
Early research on mice with cancer shows that fasting may weaken tumors and help chemotherapy work better, scientists said on Wednesday. While it remains unknown if the same approach could work in humans, or if it would even be safe, researchers said the findings suggest a promising new route of study for improving response to cancer treatment. In the mice experiments, "the combination of fasting cycles plus chemotherapy was either more or much more effective than chemo alone," said senior author Valter Longo, professor of gerontology and biological sciences at the University of Southern California (USC). Longo and colleagues previously published findings in 2008 that showed ...
Breakthrough! Russian scientists drill into Antarctic lake buried under the ice for 20 million years, amid extraordinary claims the Nazis may have got there first
Post Date: 2012-02-08 11:02:39 by Ada
1 Comments
Drilling successful as scientists break through into lake buried miles under Antarctic ice Lake could have 'unique life forms' say scientists News agency claims that hidden Nazi stronghold nearby could contain Hitler's archives Described as 'unassailable fortress for the Fuhrer' - and could contain Hitler and Eva Braun's remains, says agency Lake has had no contact with man-made pollutants or Earthly life forms for millions of years Vostok Station in Antarctica is among the coldest and most hostile places on Earth The scientists broke through into the underground lake at 3,768 metres - but a Russian News Agency claims that there may be further surprises from the ...
Why Do Cells Age? Discovery of Extremely Long-Lived Proteins May Provide Insight Into Cell Aging and Neurodegenerative Diseases
Post Date: 2012-02-08 01:22:28 by Tatarewicz
0 Comments
ScienceDaily (Feb. 3, 2012) — One of the big mysteries in biology is why cells age. Now scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies report that they have discovered a weakness in a component of brain cells that may explain how the aging process occurs in the brain. The scientists discovered that certain proteins, called extremely long-lived proteins (ELLPs), which are found on the surface of the nucleus of neurons, have a remarkably long lifespan. While the lifespan of most proteins totals two days or less, the Salk Institute researchers identified ELLPs in the rat brain that were as old as the organism, a finding they reported February 3 in Science. The Salk scientists ...
Latest [Newer] 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 [Older]
|