Coming Soon: Self-Healing Sticky Gel

(Credit: Tara Fadenrecht, Niels Holten-Andersen)

This gel is a synthetic substance derived from mussels. It has possible medical and marine applications.

ScienceDaily (Jan. 31, 2011) — Scientists can now manufacture a synthetic version of the self-healing sticky substance that mussels use to anchor themselves to rocks in pounding ocean surf and surging tidal basins. A patent is pending on the substance, whose potential applications include use as an adhesive or coating for underwater machinery or in biomedical settings as a surgical adhesive or bonding agent for implants.

Inspiring the invention were the hair-thin holdfast fibers that mussels secrete to stick against rocks in lakes, rivers and oceans. "Everything amazingly just self-assembles underwater in a matter of minutes, which is a process that's still not understood that well," said Niels Holten-Andersen, a postdoctoral scholar with chemistry professor Ka Yee Lee at the University of Chicago.

e-cigarettes debate heats up

Consumers rave about them, but are electronic cigarettes safe?

(ABC News)- Electronic cigarettes are handheld nicotine-delivery devices that, despite a devoted following, are currently swirling in controversy.

New York is pushing to become the first state to ban the devices, which so far remain unregulated and mostly unstudied. With cutesy colors, fruity flavors, clever designs and other options, e-cigarettes may hold too much appeal for young people, critics warn, offering an easy gateway to nicotine addiction.

But those criticisms clash with equally strong arguments for the value of e-cigarettes. The devices, which are tobacco-free, may be a safer alternative to cigarettes, say advocates, who point to testimonials from thousands of smokers who say they have used e-cigarettes to help them quit.

heartache: Gen Y Women Losing "Female" Skills

If you are a young man looking for a woman who cooks, irons and sews, you may be out of luck. Many under 30 women are unable to complete simple skills that their mothers would find a breeze. This traditional skill loss isn't just limited to females. many young men can't change a tire.

BASIC "female" skills are becoming endangered with fewer young women able to iron a shirt, cook a roast chicken or hem a skirt.

Just as more modern men are unable to complete traditional male tasks, new research shows Generation Y women can't do the chores their mothers and grandmothers did daily, reported The Courier-Mail.

Only 51 per cent of women aged under 30 can cook a roast compared with 82 per cent of baby boomers.

Cancer fear for women with breast implants

Implants Linked to Rare Cancer?

Ogling women makes them worse at math?

A New study finds women score lower on math tests after being ogled by a guy. Try to make eye contact from now on guys.

(CSM)- Getting the once-over from a man causes women to score lower on a math test, a new study finds.

Despite this drop in performance, women were more motivated to interact with men who ogled them, perhaps because they were trying to boost their sense of belonging, psychologists report in the February issue of the journal Psychology of Women Quarterly.

"It creates this vicious cycle for women in which they're underperforming in math or work domains, but they're continuing to want to interact with the person who is making them underperform in the first place," study researcher Sarah Gervais, a psychologist at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, told LiveScience.

Did You Know You Can Get Free eBooks?

From libraries...

Is There a 'Cure' for Type 1 Diabetes?

New finding suggest there may be a cure for Type 1 diabetes.

ScienceDaily (Jan. 26, 2011) — Type 1 diabetes could be converted to an asymptomatic, non-insulin-dependent disorder by eliminating the actions of a specific hormone, new findings by UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers suggest.

These findings in mice show that insulin becomes completely superfluous and its absence does not cause diabetes or any other abnormality when the actions of glucagon are suppressed. Glucagon, a hormone produced by the pancreas, prevents low blood sugar levels in healthy individuals. It causes high blood sugar in people with type 1 diabetes.

Is this the greatest robot movie of all time?

You decide. I say "WoW"!

Robot (TeztigoMix_Part 02)

Drug Smugglers Discover Catapults (video)

Drug catapult discovered on border

French architect claims Great Pyramid has two secret chambers

The French architect, Jean-Pierre Houdin, is campaigning for a new exploration of the 4,500-year-old Great Pyramid of Giza.

A French architect campaigning for a new exploration of the 4,500-year-old Great Pyramid of Giza said on Thursday that the edifice may contain two chambers housing funereal furniture.

Jean-Pierre Houdin -- who was rebuffed three years ago by Egypt in his appeal for a probe into how the Pyramid was built -- said 3-D simulation and data from a US egyptologist, Bob Brier, pointed to two secret chambers in the heart of the structure.

The rooms would have housed furniture for use in the afterlife by the pharaoh Khufu, also known as Cheops in Greek, he told a press conference.

"I am convinced there are antechambers in this pyramid. What I want is to find them," he said. Read more here.

Finally: Video Game Class Offered at University

Arizona State University now offers a video game class.

Large Lizard on the Run

In an apartment complex. Animal control officers were called for a 5 foot monitor lizard on the loose.

Debate Ended: T.rex was no scavenger

New research determines T.rex was a might hunter.

(PHYSORG)- T.rex hunted like a lion, rather than regularly scavenging like a hyena, reveals new research published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

The findings end a long-running debate about the hunting behaviour of this awesome predator.

Scientists from the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) used an ecological model based on predator relationships in the Serengeti to determine whether scavenging would have been an effective feeding strategy for T.rex.

Runaway Star has brilliant bow shock

(Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA)

A star, Zeta Ophiuchi, is flung from it's companion. You can see a brilliant bow shock in the above picture.

ScienceDaily (Jan. 24, 2011) — A massive star flung away from its former companion is plowing through space dust. The result is a brilliant bow shock, seen as a yellow arc in a new image from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE.

EPA puts out instructional guide to dispose of compact fluorescent lightbulbs

 You have to use duct tape and a mason jar with a metal lid. Also, it may take up to eight hours. You can read the procedure here.



We are going to poison ourselves and the environment with mercury in order to prevent relatively harmless CO2 gas?

Debris may Prevent Some Himalayan Glaciers From Melting

This study casts more doubt on erroneous reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change about Himalayan Glaciers melting.

(PHYSORG)- Bodo Bookhagen, assistant professor in the Department of Geography at UC Santa Barbara, co-authored a paper on this topic in Nature Geoscience, published this week. The first author is Dirk Scherler, Bookhagen's graduate student from Germany, who performed part of this research while studying at UCSB.

"With the aid of new remote-sensing methods and satellite images, we identified debris coverage to be an important contributor to glacial advance and retreat behaviors," said Bookhagen. "This parameter has been almost completely neglected in previous Himalayan and other mountainous region studies, although its impact has been known for some time."

The finding is one more element in a worldwide political controversy involving global warming. "Controversy about the current state and future evolution of Himalayan glaciers has been stirred up by erroneous reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)," according to the paper.

Free-electron laser anti-missile system passes milestone

There is progress on the Navy's anti-missile laser weapon.

Last month, scientists at the Los Alamos National Lab demonstrated they are capable of producing the electrons needed to generate those megawatt-class laser beams. A preliminary design review began Thursday and continues today in Virginia, according to the Office of Naval Research.

"Until now, we didn't have the evidence to support our models," Dinh Nguyen, senior project leader for the Free Electron Laser program at the New Mexico lab, said in a news release.

Flying Robotic Builders (video)

Is the the building method of the future? The prototypes sound like an angry swarm of mosquitoes.

Did the sun rise two days early in Greenland?

Credit: NOAA At The Ends of the Earth Collection, Rear Admiral Harley D. Nygren, NOAA Corps (ret.)

Resident of the town of Ilulissat are in the dark for part of winter. They eagerly await sunrise. This year they are reporting the sun rise occurred two days early. Scientists are struggling for an explanation.

(Live Science)- The town of Ilulissat sits just above the Arctic Circle, meaning its residents had been without any sunlight for a good chunk of the winter, and traditionally they'd expect to see their "first sunrise" on Jan. 13. 

News that the sun had peeked over the horizon on Jan. 11 appeared online in British and German-language publications and it appears to trace back to a story by the Greenland broadcasting company KNR that quotes residents who noticed the change. [Image Gallery: Sunrises and Sunsets]

Of about half a dozen scientists contacted, most were unaware of the report, which was circulating on the Internet. They offered a number of hypothetical explanations, including an illusion caused by an atmospheric effect and conflicting opinions about whether global warming might be to blame for melting along the edges of Greenland's ice sheet. With less ice, Greenland's elevation may take a dip such that the sun would have less distance to travel before appearing over the horizon. 

The Surprising Orion Nebula

(Credit: ESO and Igor Chekalin)

The Orion Nebula still has some surprises.

ScienceDaily (Jan. 21, 2011) — The Orion Nebula, also known as Messier 42, is one of the most easily recognisable and best-studied celestial objects. It is a huge complex of gas and dust where massive stars are forming and is the closest such region to the Earth. The glowing gas is so bright that it can be seen with the unaided eye and is a fascinating sight through a telescope. Despite its familiarity and closeness there is still much to learn about this stellar nursery. It was only in 2007, for instance, that the nebula was shown to be closer to us than previously thought: 1350 light-years, rather than about 1500 light-years.

Astronomers have used the Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at ESO's La Silla Observatory in Chile to observe the stars within Messier 42. They found that the faint red dwarfs in the star cluster associated with the glowing gas radiate much more light than had previously been thought, giving us further insights into this famous object and the stars that it hosts.

Florida couple plan to live permanently underneath the sea

Aquanauts Plan Permanent Underwater Colony

Meditiation Changes Brain Structure

Mindfulness meditation can change brain structure in only eigth weeks.

ScienceDaily (Jan. 21, 2011) — Participating in an 8-week mindfulness meditation program appears to make measurable changes in brain regions associated with memory, sense of self, empathy and stress. In a study that will appear in the January 30 issue of Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging, a team led by Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers report the results of their study, the first to document meditation-produced changes over time in the brain's grey matter.

"Although the practice of meditation is associated with a sense of peacefulness and physical relaxation, practitioners have long claimed that meditation also provides cognitive and psychological benefits that persist throughout the day," says Sara Lazar, PhD, of the MGH Psychiatric Neuroimaging Research Program, the study's senior author. "This study demonstrates that changes in brain structure may underlie some of these reported improvements and that people are not just feeling better because they are spending time relaxing."

Coming to the Battlefield Soon: Invisible Tanks

A British weapons company is testing new the new technology.

Invisible Tanks Could Hit Battlefield in Near Future

Meet Robo-Duck (video)

It is a wildlife rescue training tool. Are they serious?

Can Nanotech Medicine rebuild Body Parts?

Not today, but perhaps in the not to distant future.

ScienceDaily (Jan. 18, 2011) — To rebuild damaged parts of a human body from scratch is a dream that has long fired human imagination, from Mary Shelley's Doctor Frankenstein to modern day surgeons. Now, a team of European scientists, working in the frame of the EUREKA project ModPolEUV, has made a promising contribution to reconstructive surgery, thanks to an original multidisciplinary approach matching cutting-edge medicine to the latest developments in nanotechnology.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), an estimated 322,000 deaths globally per year are linked to severe injuries from fire and in many of these cases death could have been avoided with surgical intervention.

In this type of intervention, when major burn patients have insufficient skin left to graft on the most damaged part of their body, new skin has literally to be grown from the patient's own skin cells. However, the long delay in growing the skin can expose the burns patient to increased risk of infection and dehydration; so to help those cells to multiply, specialists use a particular kind of component called polymeric material. Because of their extraordinary range of properties, polymeric materials play a ubiquitous role in our daily life...

Celebrities, Politicians' iPads Hacked

Their email addresses were stolen.

2500 Year Old Beer Recipe

It would have tasted very different than today's brews.

(PhysOrg.com) -- A scientist studying an ancient Celtic site believes he has worked out the recipe they used for making beer around the year 500 BC.

Dr Hans-Peter Stika, an archaeobotanist from the University of Hohenheim in Stuttgart, Germany has been studying the remains of an early Iron Age Celtic settlement at Eberdingen-Hochdorf dating from around 500 BC, in particular the six oblong ditches dug for the process of making barley malt for beer. The excavated ditches contained thousands of grains of charred barley, which Dr Stika believes are the remains of the production of high quality barley malt needed for making beer.

Dr Stika reproduced several methods for making beer that the Celtic peoples in the Iron Age might have used, and concluded that the ditches were used to soak barley grains until they sprouted. Fires were then lit at either end of the ditch to slowly dry the sprouted grains and give the malt produced a dark color and smoky flavor.

Robot Japan 2011 Dance Contest (video)

Here are some of the mechanical participants of Tokyo's Robot Japan 2011 dance competition. Strange...

Can Brain Imaging Predict Video Game Aptitude?

Can Brain Imaging Predict Video Game Aptitude?

ScienceDaily (Jan. 13, 2011) — Researchers report that they can predict "with unprecedented accuracy" how well you will do on a complex task such as a strategic video game simply by analyzing activity in a specific region of your brain.

The findings, published in the online journal PLoS ONE, offer detailed insights into the brain structures that facilitate learning, and may lead to the development of training strategies tailored to individual strengths and weaknesses.

The new approach used established brain imaging techniques in a new way. Instead of measuring how brain activity differs before and after subjects learn a complex task, the researchers analyzed background activity in the basal ganglia, a group of brain structures known to be important for procedural learning, coordinated movement and feelings of reward.

Lego Robotics (video)

Elementary students compete in lego robotics competition

Utah Criminals Should Beware of the Crime Fighting Blimp (video)

Unmanned blimp with high-def camera takes aerial surveillance video.

Largest black hole: 6.6 billion solar masses

Gemini Observatory/AURA/Lynette Cook.

Astronomers calculate the black hole at the center of galaxy M87 is 6.6 billion solar masses.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Weighing 6.6 billion solar masses, the black hole at the center of galaxy M87 is the most massive black hole for which a precise mass has been measured. Using the Frederick C. Gillett Gemini Telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, a team of astronomers calculated the black hole’s mass, which is vastly larger than the black hole in the center of the Milky Way, which is about 4 million solar masses.

Astronomer Karl Gebhardt of the University of Texas, Austin, presented the results of the team’s research on Wednesday, January 12, at the 217th meeting of the American Astronomical Society. He said that the black hole’s event horizon, which is 20 billion km across, is four times larger than Neptune’s orbit and three times larger than Pluto’s orbit. In other words, the black hole “could swallow our solar system whole.”

Astronomy: High-Energy Surprises in 'Constant' Crab Nebula

Hubble Space Telescope Astronomy Poster Print

The Crab Nebula is considered a cornerstone of high-energy astrophysics. Astronomers are measuring its pulse.

ScienceDaily (Jan. 13, 2011) — The combined data from several NASA satellites has astonished astronomers by revealing unexpected changes in X-ray emission from the Crab Nebula, once thought to be the steadiest high-energy source in the sky.

"For 40 years, most astronomers regarded the Crab as a standard candle," said Colleen Wilson-Hodge, an astrophysicist at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., who presented the findings Jan. 12, 2011 at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Seattle. "Now, for the first time, we're clearly seeing how much our candle flickers."

Cornell University psychologist attemps to prove ESP

He thinks he has done it and has submitted a paper and had it accepted for publication in a major scientific journal.

Sonic Black Hole

Researches have created a sonic black hole in the lab. Sound goes in but can't escape.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Black holes get their name because they absorb all incoming light, and are so dense that none of that light can escape their event horizon. In a new study, scientists have created a sonic analogue of a black hole in the lab – that is, a sonic black hole in which sound waves rather than light waves are absorbed and cannot escape. The scientists hope that the short-lived sonic black hole could allow them to observe and study the elusive Hawking radiation that is predicted to be emitted by traditional black holes, which has so far been a very difficult task.

The scientists, Oren Lahav and coauthors from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, Israel, have published their study on the sonic black hole in a recent issue of Physical Review Letters.

The researchers created the sonic black hole in a Bose-Einstein condensate made of 100,000 rubidium atoms slowed to their lowest quantum state in a magnetic trap. This cold cluster of atoms acts like a single, large quantum mechanical object. In order to transform this condensate into a sonic black hole, the scientists had to find a way to accelerate some of the condensate to supersonic speeds so that the condensate would contain some regions of supersonic flow and some regions of subsonic flow.

Video: Private Space Travel

The future of commercial space travel

Where did the moon get water?

New research indicates the moon's water came from comets.

ScienceDaily (Jan. 12, 2011) — Researchers at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, continue to chip away at the mysterious existence of water on the moon -- this time by discovering the origin of lunar water.

Larry Taylor, a distinguished professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, was the one last year to discover trace amounts of water on the moon. This discovery debunked beliefs held since the return of the first Apollo rocks that the moon was bone-dry.

Then, he discovered water was actually pretty abundant and ubiquitous -- enough so a human settlement on the moon is not unquestionable.

Now, Taylor and a team of researchers have determined the lunar water may have originated from comets smashing into the moon soon after it formed.

Stunning New Images of the Universe

The images are from the 'Sloan Digital Survey'.

Via MSNBC News:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Oxytocin linked to xenophobia

If you thought Oxytocin was just a "love drug", you may need to think again.

(Scientific American)- Oxytocin is often thought of as a "love drug," and is linked with all kinds of feel-good emotions in people such as trust, empathy and generosity. Increasingly, however, scientists are finding that the hormone has a dark side—and now researchers have discovered it also can promote ethnocentrism, potentially fueling xenophobia, prejudice and violence.

Past studies have shown that oxytocin fosters social feelings—between mates, for example, or mother and child—which explains why this "cuddle chemical" might be linked with goody-goody behavior such as altruism. Social feelings, however, are not always positive ones, reasoned social psychologist Carsten de Dreu of the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. For instance, ethnocentric people view their own group as better than others—they feel closer to their compatriots, but potentially at the expense of outsiders.

Video: Inside the Mind of Jared Loughner

Shooter's mental health is examined.

Scary: If aliens exist, they probably want to destroy us

This is a scary new study. If aliens exist, they would likely be a lot like us. Should we still want SETI to be a success?

(CSM)- When considering the prospect of alien life, humankind should prepare for the worst, according to a new study: Either we're alone, or any aliens out there are acquisitive and resource-hungry, just like us.

These two unpalatable options are pretty much the only possibilities, according to the new study. That's because evolution is predictable, and alien biospheres should thus produce intelligent creatures much like us, with technological prowess and an ever-increasing need for resources...

There is reason to be wary of such creatures, according to Conway Morris.

"If intelligent aliens exist, they will look just like us, and given our far-from-glorious history, this should give us pause for thought," he writes in the study, which was published today (Jan. 10) in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A.

Oldest domesticated dog in North America remains found

9400 years old... He appears to have been eaten.

(PhysOrg.com) -- A University of Maine graduate student has discovered evidence of the oldest identifiable domestic dog in the Americas.

Samuel Belknap III, a graduate research assistant working under the direction of Kristin Sobolik in UMaine’s Department of Anthropology and Climate Change Institute, found a 9,400-year-old skull fragment of a domestic dog during analysis of an intact human paleofecal sample.

The fact that the bone was found in human waste provides the earliest proof that humans in the New World used domesticated dogs as food sources.

Shot in the Head: Gabrielle Gifford's Prognosis

Doctors Ablow and Siegel discuss the prognosis and challenges.

Supermassive Black Hole

(Credit: Reines, et al., NRAO/AUI/NSF, NASA)

A supermassive Black Hole has been discovered in a nearby dwarf galaxy.

ScienceDaily (Jan. 10, 2011) — The surprising discovery of a supermassive black hole in a small nearby galaxy has given astronomers a tantalizing look at how black holes and galaxies may have grown in the early history of the Universe. Finding a black hole a million times more massive than the Sun in a star-forming dwarf galaxy is a strong indication that supermassive black holes formed before the buildup of galaxies, the astronomers said.

The galaxy, called Henize 2-10, 30 million light-years from Earth, has been studied for years, and is forming stars very rapidly. Irregularly shaped and about 3,000 light-years across (compared to 100,000 for our own Milky Way), it resembles what scientists think were some of the first galaxies to form in the early Universe.

Very Cool: iPad light painting

iPad future art. Very nice.

Making Future Magic: iPad light painting from Dentsu London on Vimeo.

Touch Screen Computers Vs The iPad?

Will Touch Screen Computers Compete With The iPad?

Strange Video: Russian Girl Flying in Woods (video)

This video of a girl purportedly levitating is getting a lot of buzz. You decide.

British engineers develop lasers to fight off pirates

They could shoot some pirate's eye out. I'm OK with that.

Via The Telegraph:

British engineers are developing a new type of defence system that uses lasers to incapacitate pirates by dazzling them as they approach a ship.

The non-lethal weapon, which has been developed by defence company BAE Systems, is effective against moving targets more than a mile away.

The company has started developing the laser in response to the growing threat from pirates to commercial vessels, particularly off the coast of Somalia where there have been several high profile hijackings.

The device effectively hides the vessel carrying it in a bright green glare from the laser, forcing the pirates off course and leaving them unable to aim their weapons accurately.

Medical Breakthroughs for 2011 (video)

'Top 10 Medical Innovations for 2011.'

Ford Jumps Into All Elecric Car Market

Ford Unveils it's first all electric vehicle.

(PHYSORG)- Ford unveiled its first strictly electric car on Friday, a Focus which is expected to get up to 100 miles (160 kilometers) on a single charge and will be available in North America late this year.

Alan Mulally, chief executive of the number two US automaker, introduced the four-door passenger car at the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Mulally declined to detail the hatchback's total range or how much it would cost, but a Ford spokesman said the Focus Electric's mileage on a single charge would be "competitive" with similar electric vehicles such as the Nissan Leaf.