Science News

What's your opinion of NASA outsourcing spaceflight production to other companies? I personally think it's a good move - either that or lose out altogether and forget about it, plus it means it could get more competitive and more and more spaceflights taken (safety would have to be a supreme factor obviously)

Recently published oil company news from a German human rights group says that an oil company in southern Sudan is spoiling the drinking water by their oil drilling processes. The group warns that if this is not checked on time the activities of the company shall create serious ecological disasters in southern Sudan. The company has responded to this by starting their actions to curb the pollution caused by the oil production. Sign of hope, the German human right group, took samples of water from two major oil fields located at southern Sudan. The locals had complained that the water available had become salty. After conducting tests it was found that the sample…

Here on SFN we've all seen occasional debates about evolution. It's quite common for bacteria to be given as examples of evolution in action: how else could they evolve resistance to antibiotic drugs but through evolution? Of course, the anti-evolutionists respond that the resistant bacteria existed all along -- they just proliferate when the non-resistant bacteria are killed. No new attributes or powers are developed. It's just natural selection in action. Now there's finally good evidence to prove the anti-evolutionists wrong. An interesting article in Molecular Cell shows that antibiotic resistance is due to the action of the antibiotic: several kinds of antibi…

Such high-precision tests are needed to hopefully show some deviation from general relativity and point towards a quantum theory of gravity. See the IOP article here.

So I came across an interesting article about the HIV virus. I don't know if this has been mentioned already but, "Drug-resistant strains of HIV have already been documented in San Francisco and elsewhere in the US, and Europe. Now a model of their transmission, based on studies of gay San Francisco men, forecasts a rapid upsurge in the next five years." http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18394-drugresistant-hiv-set-for-rapid-upsurge.html From what I know, antiviral medication is really effective on extending the life of the patient and extending the onset of full blow AIDS. Here is one study supporting the above claim. Strains of HIV that are drug-resi…

They analyzed the DNA of King Tutankhamun, along with several other mummies. Turns out his parents were brother and sister, he had several maralial infections, and he had a genetic bone disorder that would have forced him to walk with a cane. Inbred, sickly royals: 'twas ever thus. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/02/100216-king-tut-malaria-bones-inbred-tutankhamun/

Spider-man Adhesive: I found this to be fascinating, just imagine the possibilities with such a device!

Maybe this article is already out there, I have not checked yet, but I don't think so. http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/01/quantum-computer-hydrogen-simulation/ Quantum Computer Simulates Hydrogen Molecule Just Right

Check this out... This isn't really news to those who keep up on their biology though. Cheers,

See the Institute of Physics' News report here. The arXiv Business Model White Paper can be found here.

As a fan I have created a new website for the LHC making it easy to monitor the cool experiments LIVE at CERN. It brings together all the coolest stuff and links into one spot. This includes a brand new forum as well.. http://www.LHCPortal.com/

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8467472.stm I've read this article about energy transmission from space to Earth. However, I still wonder whether the energy can be transmitted from space to Earth without a significant amount of loss.

There are some people who, for whatever reasons, argue that society has essentially eliminated selective forces for humans. There are a number of counterarguments, of course. In this recent publication evidence for ongoing evolution is shown based on data from a long-term study (the Framingham heart study) that started 1948. http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2009/10/23/0906199106.abstract

Maybe some of you are familiar with this, maybe not. On 9th December, early in the morning, before sunrise, many norwegians were witnesess to strange phenomenon, which lasted for about 10-12 minutes. earthfiles.com Article dailymail.co.uk Article with good quality video Short description of the event in Wikipedia When i first saw the pictures i immediately thought that they were fake, but seemingly later reports confirmed the spectacular nature of the event with more photos and videos. Not to mention that thousands of norwegian citizens eyewitnessed the phenomenon. The official explenation, which is propagated all over the internet news web…

Bermuda tringle, Fact or fiction? What happened to flight 19? Merged post follows: Consecutive posts mergedDoes anyone know what happened to Flight 19?

:confused:If there ever was a Big Bang Creating our universe,Then it had a beginning, If there was nothing before the Big Bang,Then what is (nothing made of?)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8435246.stm This article is telling the most important advances in science of the last decade. What's your opinion?

Just registered over here. This forum looks awesome.

It's worth watching the video on that article as well, the [acr=Royal Society For the Protection of Brids]RSPB[/acr] spokesperson clarifies that the feeding tables are secondary and it's a change in climate that caused the initial change in this behaviour and that bird tables may have caused further changes in the birds physiology. The really interesting thing is that because of the different distances between Germany and Britain versus Germany and Spain mean that the two groups of Blackcaps now have a different mating season which could allow for greater genetic drift and two different species could eventually emerge (the spokesperson says thousands of years but consider…

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/24/science/24collide.html?ref=global-home According to this article, LHC appears to produce its first collisions Monday.

http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2009/11/ibm-makes-supercomputer-significantly-smarter-than-cat.ars It appears IBM has constructed and programmed a supercomputer to simulate the neurons in the cerebral cortex the size of a cat's. It's not fully real-time yet, but it simulates 1.6 billion neurons, and has the ability to save its state at any time so you can rewind and see just what's happening inside. Freaking awesome. The article points out that with a supercomputer just two or three orders of magnitude bigger you could simulate a human's cerebral cortex -- and imagine what we could learn from that.

I just got my copy of Time today that has an article about the 50 greatest inventions of the year. The one that caught my eye was entitled "The Electric Microbe". According to the article, a microbe known as Geobacter uses pili to generate electricity from mud and waste water. Engineering has been done at the University of Amherst in Massachusetts by Professor Derek Lovley and his team to increase the productivity of Geobacter eightfold. Any more information on this subject will be appreciated as alternative energy is a side interest of mine. Thanks Merged post follows: Consecutive posts mergedBefore I forget, Creds for the info: Time, November 23 2009 issue.…

It looks like the moon rocket mission was a sauces. The NASA team was not only able to gather the necessary data, but also they say they found large quantities of water on the moon. The moon rocket supposedly displaced roughly 2 gallons of water. National Geographic Here are the news from Popular Mechanics and from NASA themselves.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20091111/wl_time/08599193737000

http://www.physorg.com/news175953892.html