Politics

In about a week the U.S. is going to expose "proof" they have against Saddam. What kind of proof do you think it will be? Satellite photos Spy Planes Speculation Spies inside the country Defective officials

Perceiving color is a feat generally taken for granted, but now scientists have begun to identify what part of our brain is responsible for this amazing feat. Publishing in the January 30th, 2003 issue of the British journal Nature, University of Texas-Houston Medical School researcher Youping Xiao and colleagues report on the organization of cells in the brain that respond to color. The experiment was carried out using macaque monkeys, whose blood flow to various areas of the brain was monitors while they were shown colors by using tracers injected into their system. The neurons were part of what are called cytochrome oxidase stripes. Multiple trials were conducted space…

According to this article, NASA will use nuclear propulsion to send astronauts to Mars by 2010. Project Prometheus will take 2 months to arrive at Mars rather the 6 month trip the current space flight technology at 18,000mph would take. President Bush may announce the project in his upcoming State of the Union Addresse.

Scientists in China claim to have found fossil remains of a dinosaur called a "Microraptor" that likely glided from place to place. "As far as I'm concerned, these are authentic fossils. They've presented extra information to go over that hurdle," said Richard Prum, a University of Kansas bird evolution expert and author of a companion piece in Nature." These fossils could help refine the theory of how dinosaurs transitioned to birds. You can find the story here.

It's textbook astronomy. Planets form little by little, as material slowly congeals within the disk of gas, dust, and ice known to swaddle young stars. First, gravity gathers together bits of dust, which merge to form boulder-size bodies, which themselves coalesce into bigger and bigger objects. In about a million years, these form rocky planets, like Earth and Mars. Over the next few million years, gas from the disk settles around some of these solid bodies, and they grow far bigger, becoming giants like gaseous Saturn and Jupiter. http://www.sciencenews.org/20030125/bob9.asp

Large portions of the Internet today were extremely slow or completely inaccessible as a virus similar to Code Red attacked. The virus exploited security holes in Microsoft SQL server. The slowdown of the Internet arose from the agressive victim scanning of the virus, sending out thousands of probes each second. It has overwhelmed alot of backbones. Update: It appears like Microsoft's own networks were hit hard by these attacks. Now they see first hand how insecure their products are. Source: http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/news/5030801.htm

Three-dimensional tubes of living tissue have been printed using modified desktop printers filled with suspensions of cells instead of ink. The work is a first step towards printing complex tissues or even entire organs. The printers are adapted by washing out the ink cartridges and refilling them with suspensions of, say, cells. The software that controls the viscosity, electrical resistances and temperature of the printing fluids is reprogrammed and the feed systems altered. Full story here.

According to NewScientist, NASA is developing a fusion drive that theoretically can provide 300 times the thrust of any chemical rocket engine, while only using a fraction of its fuel mass. If successful, the new engine could cut the travel time to Mars from 6 months to nearly 6 weeks. NASA engineers plan to use microwaves to heat the plasma to 600 million kelvin, which would generate charged alpha particles, helium nuclei. A magnetic nozzle would then channel these particles and use them for thrust. You can find the full article here.

As Nature.com recently reported, scientists, using Super High Powered X-Rays, have discovered how insects breathe. The system is comprised of tracheae that run throughout the insect's body, which become smaller as they branch off, and ultimately vent through what's known as spiracles. This is a huge breakthough in the study of insects, but unknown is what further discoveries will pursue. Full article here. Also See ScienceMag

As reported in Nature Science Update, the European Astrophysical Virtual Observatory is scheduled to open today. For those not familiar with the project, it combines that power of 6 astronomy centers and makes data from all of them, including visual, gamma-ray, X-ray and radio-wave images of stars, galaxies, supernovae, black holes and gamma-ray busts available over the internet for astronmers to examine and cross-reference. This will also give us a more detailed view of the skies that ever before possible. See also http://www.euro-vo.org/

Six Magellanic penguins from Sea World were brought in to San Francisco Zoo, and apparently these penguins convinced the other 46 to swim in circles with them all day long. All 52 penguins just swim in circles non-stop all day until they get out of the water at dusk. This is a interesting, albeit weird, illustration of the social and inquisitive nature of penguins. CNN story

In the latest atrocity, the RIAA busted a piracy ring that had "the equivalent of" 421 CD burners. In reality, there were actually only 156 burners, however the RIAA declared that fast burners, up to 40x here, counted as multiple burners. What's even worse, the raid was conducted by RIAA investigators and Secret Service agent. So, the RIAA now has police power and controls a agency in the government whose role is supposed to be to protect high ranking politicians. In other RIAA news, Hillary Rosen (CEO) lost a debate about P2P networks being evil in the Oxford Union, a debate club for high ranking politicians. Lost is an understatement, the vote was 256-72. Add …

The speed of gravitational effects has been successfully demonstrated for the first time as being the same as the speed at which light travels. Should lay down the path for some very interesting research http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2639043.stm Sayonara beat you to it, Edward :]

NewScientist is reporting is reporting that Clonaid, the company that claims to have cloned the first human, now say a second one is on the way this Sunday. "The parents told me they are giving themselves another 48 hours to decide whether or not they will do the tests," she told the France 2 television station. She added that tests might instead be performed on the second child: "Perhaps the second child will be more accessible because it is in Europe and the country in which he or she will be born may be less sensitive." [lets hope it isn't a clone of her, one is enough, thank you]

CNN has an article on a new study that claims the Antarctic ice sheet may be gone in 7,000 years. Interestingly, the study notes the sheet began melting about 10,000 years ago and is still shrinking. "Stone said the study cannot prove or disprove any affect on the melting by global warming, a gradual increase in temperatures that some believe is accelerated by the burning of fossil fuels. Instead, he said, the researchers have measured what is apparently a natural cycle of ice buildup and melting that may have been going on periodically for millions of years. " If the sheet does completely melt, global sea levels could rise 16 feet, drowning islands and coasts.

A Trojan body has been found sharing a stable orbit with Neptune. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2642065.stm Interesting stuff - I'd like to know how large it is and how similar its structure is to those of the local planetary bodies.

PhysicsWeb has a summary of the Top 10 Physics Highlights of 2002. Among the highlights are oscillating neutrinos, defying the second law of thermodynamics, CERN anti-atoms, and more.

looks like the ESA have blown up another rocket http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2570053.stm this is quite expensive. does anyone think it's about time the powers got to gether to come up with a slightly less explosive way of getting things into space?

Now, if someone doesn't aprreciate music, you may be able to correctly state that there is something wrong with their brain; specifically the rostromedial prefrontal cortex. New research published in Science, this area of the brain is responsible for remembering music and recognizing tones, and also noticing bad notes when we hear a familiar tune.To do this study, functional magnetic resonance imaging was used on subjects to identify areas of activity while listening to music, they were also asked to indentify timbral deviances in the songs. Increased activity in the middle temporal gyrus was also observed, and the right hemisphere was the most active.

I just found an area of Google I didn't know existed, and apparently isn't linked to from the main page: http://labs.google.com This page has some really cool search features; view results as scrolling web pages, see quotes about sites from other sites, Google glossary, a list generator (you input some terms, it guesses what else should be on the list), search by voice, and keyboard shortcuts for navigating results.

Left: Normal Sperm Right: Deformed Sperm [is it just me or does the "normal" sperm looked wacked out as well. on second thought, its probably not human] A male contraceptive that works by deforming sperm could available within just a few years, if tests on men go well. The drug is taken as a pill, not injected, and it could have fewer side effects than experimental hormonal male contraceptives, which include a cocktail of hormones designed to suppress sperm production while maintaining normal testosterone levels. The drug, N-butyldeoxynojirimycin (NB-DNJ), inhibits an enzyme that produces glucosylceramide. This sugar-fat compound is vital for sperm creatio…

According to this CNN article, Microsoft will release Web/server software for the Linux platform. Excuse me while I have a heart attack.

The airlines have decided to detain and search old ladies in wheel chairs when they set off the alarm, also little children. Now the latest group of people who are potentital terrorists in the eye of the law are people with cancer. New radiation detectors in NYC subways are triggered by people receiving chemotherapy, who are then detained and strip searched by police. The person in the article, for those without access, had received 20 milliCuries of iodine-131. Once again, good job. The story appears in this weeks Journal of the American Medical Association: http://jama.ama-assn.org/issues/v288n21/ffull/jlt1204-3.html

Since no one has bothered posting news in weeks, here's some highlights from current news: Pi was calculated to 1.2411 trillion digits This week's Nature has published the complete mouse genome IBM, Intel, and HP plan to build a nationwide wireless ISP Some researchers came up with the idea the valleys on Mars came from melting meteors, that all just happened to hit Mars and not Earth, the Earth's moon, Mars' moons, etc. Canada actually did something right and wouldn't let a commercial corporation take out a patent on the mouse that is genetically programmed to really prone to cancer. It's patented in the US and EU. NASA has put up Landsat images…

I know those theoretical physicists are an odd bunch, but here is an interesting one... mirror matter - a kind of matter that is pretty much the same as our own, but not. heh. see what you think: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2463143.stm