info moment: February 2009

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

The Greatest Inventions Nikola Tesla Never Created

Inventor Nikola Tesla invented the radio, experimented with wireless electricity, and designed a death ray. In science fiction, his work goes even further. We list Tesla's greatest fictional inventions and the facts behind the fiction.

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Will Robots With Advanced Group Intelligence Evolve?

Researchers at the University of York have investigated large swarms of up to 10,000 miniature robots which can work together to form a single, artificial life form. The multi-robot approach to artificial intelligence is a relatively new one, and has developed from studies of the swarm behavior of social insects such as ants.

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Croplands May Wither as Global Warming Worsens

Climate models predict that the hottest seasons on record will become the norm by the end of the century--an outcome that bodes ill for feeding the world

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U.N. Says 'No,' Climate Hackers Say, 'Yes We Can'

A major Indian-German geoengineering expedition set sail this week for the Scotia Sea, flouting a U.N. ban on ocean iron fertilization experiments in hopes of garnering data about whether the process actually does take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and sequester it in the deep ocean, an intriguing technique that may help reverse global warmi

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Smarter Men Have More Sperm

Women tend to like smart men because they're usually more successful and better providers. But here's another reason: Their sperm is better, a new study says. The smarter the men were, the more sperm they produced and the better their wee ones swam — and it didn't matter how old the men were or whether they smoked, drank or were obese.

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Ants Smell Cheaters and Assault Them, Study Finds

If a worker ant attempts to reproduce in the presence of the queen, the worker inadvertently produces a chemical that causes her sisters to attack.

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Differences between sexes 'may be determined after birth'

Some biological differences between male and female brains may be determined after birth, research suggests.

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Finger scanning to be lunch card of the future?

Fischer said NutriKids (aka Big Brother) would offer features parents had been requesting for years. One is the ability to see what students are ordering for meals, and another is a faster and easier payment method. Each students was asked to press his or her right index finger on the optical reader, which scanned the print. Each student scanned...

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Nature's Great Piece of Art/Geometry Lesson: The Snowflake

When physicist Kenneth Libbrecht looks out over a snowy landscape, he doesn't see a peaceful scene, he sees a laboratory. His microscopic photos show the intricate variety of snow crystals, and reveal the rigorous laws of nature that shape them.

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Self-Replicating Chemicals Evolve Into Life-Like Ecosystem

Chemists have created a group of synthetic enzymes that self-replicate, compete, and evolve like a natural ecosystem -- just minus the life (as we know it).

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Space Is Closer Than You Think

The border between Earth's atmosphere and outer space is closer to the ground than scientists once thought.

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Learning More About Levitation

The ability to levitate objects is not an entirely new thing in physics. Lower the temperature of certain metals and ceramics far enough (-459 degrees F is a good number to shoot for) and they carry electromagnetic charges far more efficiently and for a far longer time than they otherwise would.

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Garage Invention Could Turn Restaurants into Power Plants

A new garage-engineered generator burns the waste oil from restaurants' deep fryers to generate electricity and hot water. Put 80 gallons of grease into the Vegawatt and its creators promise that it will generate about five kilowatts of power.

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Translucent Concrete: 30% Lighter, Lets 80% of Light Through

And it's pink!

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Milky Way and Andromeda will collide sooner than expected

The Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxies are on a collision course and will hit one another earlier than scientists had previously predicted.

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Scientists Discover Why People Better With Faces Than Names

The reason why some people are better with faces than names has been identified by scientists and it appears to be due to their higher levels of a special "socialising" hormone called Oxytocin.

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Amazing solar-powered fridge invented by British student

It's the kind of brilliant yet simple invention that would have the tycoons of the Dragon's Den salivating with excitement.

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860 Types of Sand from Around the World: Interactive Graphic

Rob Holman collects sand. A coastal oceanographer from Oregon State University, Holman has collected almost a thousand samples. They come from his travels and from geologists and amateurs all over the world...

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Motorola Renew is World’s First Carbon Neutral Mobile Phone

Motorola has announced plans to launch the world’s first completely carbon neutral mobile phone, at CES 2009 in Las Vegas. The shell of the W233 Renew is made entirely of recycled water bottles, and will be available via T-Mobile within the next three months.

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Single Strike... [PIC]

Inside the mind of an autistic savant

Autistic savant Daniel Tammet shot to fame when he set a European record for the number of digits of pi he recited from memory (22,514). For afters, he learned Icelandic in a week. But unlike many savants, he's able to tell us how he does it. We could all unleash extraordinary mental abilities by getting inside the savant mind.

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Love spray being developed by scientists

Love really could be a drug, say scientists, who believe that one day the feelings may be induced by popping a pill or smelling perfume.

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Stem Cells Undo Birth Defects

By injecting stem cells directly into the brain, scientists have successfully reversed neural birth defects in mice whose mothers were given heroin during pregnancy.

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A device that mimics one of nature's key transport machines.

To help protect its genes, a cell is highly selective about what it allows to move in and out of its nucleus. Yet that choosiness is regulated by just a thin barrier, perforated with tiny transport machines called nuclear pore complexes: protein-coated holes surrounded by flimsy, unfolded protein strands.

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Strange,Weird And Mysterious Sounds That Come From The Earth

The earth is full of sounds ... Here is a list of weird “sonic mysteries” that come from our Earth.(includes some audio)

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Is It Possible For DNA To Have Telepathic Properties?

Scientists are reporting evidence that contrary to our current beliefs about what is possible, intact double-stranded DNA has the “amazing” ability to recognize similarities in other DNA strands from a distance. Somehow they are able to identify one another, and the tiny bits of genetic material tend to congregate with similar DNA.

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Faster than the Speed of Light? A New Theory Says, "Yes"

Magueijo, a 40-year old native of Portugal, puts forth the heretical idea that in the very early days of the universe light traveled faster—an idea that if proven could dethrone Einstein and forever change our understanding of the universe.

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Dead People Will Provide Heat to Crematorium Facilities

If you’re dead and worried about the carbon emissions created from your cremation, relax. The Swedish town of Halmstad has a solution. After an environmental review showed that Halmstad’s crematorium was pumping too much smoke into the air, the facility’s director decided to re-use heat from the cremations to warm up the crematorium’s buildings.

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Top 10 Scientific Breakthroughs of 2008

Scientists had plenty of reasons to celebrate in 2008. After decades of work, researchers made rat stem cells, built the first memristor, and watched a language evolve like an organism. But none of those accomplishments impressed us as much as the breakthroughs on this list. From stem cell therapy to finding ice on Mars.

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Habitable Exoplanets Could be Common in Our Galaxy

By observing the remains of smashed up asteroids around dead stars, astronomers were able to deduce their chemical composition. They found that the dust of many chewed-up asteroids resembles the materials inside Earth and the other small, rocky inner planets of our solar system.

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Inventor: Geo-Engineer a Worldwide Refrigerator Using Oceans

Bailing out the entire human race might turn out to be cheaper than bailing out Wall Street: Spray gigatons of seawater into the air, mainly in the Northern Hemisphere, and let Mother Nature do the rest, suggests inventor Ron Acer in a patent petition for “a colossal refrigeration system with a 100,000-fold performance multiplier.”

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Architectural Wind: A Cleaner Way to Keep the City Running

A new building with affordable rents in the Bronx will be powered partly by 10 wind turbines, which should cut its utility bills for common areas in half.

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Scientists Unlock Secrets Of Australia's Giant 30kg Koalas

Hundreds of thousands of years ago, giant versions of Australia's unique wildlife stalked the continent. There were kangaroos up to 3m tall and enormous wallabies, wombats and echidnas. There were also koalas: larger and weightier than the creatures sometimes seen today in eucalyptus trees.

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Monday, February 2, 2009

Quite Possibly the Best Panoramic Shot of the Milky Way

New backgrounds in 3...2..

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60 Minutes: Mind Reading No Longer Science Fiction

Neuroscience has learned much about the brain's activity and its link to certain thoughts. As Lesley Stahl reports, it may now be possible, on a basic level, to read a person's mind.

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Lead for car batteries poisons an African town

First, it took the animals. Goats fell silent and refused to stand up. Chickens died in handfuls, then en masse. Street dogs disappeared. Then it took the children.

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How Hunting is Driving Evolution in Reverse

When hunting is severe enough to outstrip other threats to survival, the unsought, middling individuals make out better than the stronger alpha animals, and the species changes. "Survival of the fittest" is still the rule, but the "fit" begin to look unlike what you might expect.

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The Carbon Footprint of Nuclear War

A recent US study that compares the environmental costs of developing various power sources found that almost 700m tonnes of CO2 would be released into the Earth's atmosphere by even the smallest nuclear conflict.

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Green Algae Bloom Process Could Stop Global Warming

A team of UK scientists have discovered a natural process that could delay, or even end, the threat of global warming.

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APOD:Breaking Distant Light

Where You Sit On A Bus Can Define Your Personality

Where you sit on a bus can define your personality, according to a psychologist. Forward-minded people tend to sit at the front of the top deck, according to Dr Tom Fawcett of Salford University, the independent-minded in the middle and those with a rebellious streak at the rear.

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Scientists Discover True Love

Brain scans have proved that a small number of couples can respond with as much passion after 20 years as most people exhibit only in the first flush of love...researchers nicknamed the couples “swans” because they have similar mental “love maps” to animals that mate for life such as swans, voles and grey foxes.

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Astronomers Say Time Travel Happens All The Time

Time travel seems like stuff of science fiction, but in a sense, astronomers do it all the time.

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Green Inc.: Offsets in the Air in San Francisco

This spring, travelers entering San Francisco International Airport will see a new type of kiosk at check-in -- one offering carbon offsets for those who wish to counter the greenhouse-gas emissions from their trip.

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Canada's forests now add to, not subtract from, climate woes

The country's 1.2 million square miles of trees -- dubbed the "lungs of the planet" by ecologists because they account for more than 7 percent of Earth's total forest lands -- could always be depended upon to suck in vast quantities of carbon dioxide, cleansing the world of much of the harmful heat-trapping gas. Not anymore.

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APOD: Double Cluster in Perseus

Genes give Africans a better sense of taste

New research suggests that Africans have more sensitive palettes than Europeans and Asians – at least for bitter tastes. A survey of numerous African populations in Kenya and Cameroon found a striking amount of diversity in a gene responsible for sensing bitter tastes.

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Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Monday, February 2, 2009

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