What are the health risks of space travel?
Astronauts are limited to spending six months on the International Space Station, around 200 miles above Earth, for a good reason.
The loss of bone and muscle mass they experience in space is so profound that they cannot stay any longer. But what about the health impact of forthcoming suborbital flights for space tourists who are not fit, highly-trained individuals? According to North American scientists writing in the British Medical Journal article, GPs should be prepared to answer patients' queries about their suitability for space travel in the near future. |  |
Do we have the right to pardon Turing?
Stephen Hawking and a number of his peers have signed a letter that appears in the Telegraph today, calling for the government to pardon the legendary mathematician and computer scientist, Alan Turing. Turing, a major force in cracking the German naval Enigma code, was charged with gross indecency in 1952 for the crime of committing homosexual acts, ejected from GCHQ and subjected to a hormone 'treatment' – chemical castration – that left him impotent. The father of computer science died two years later aged just 41. Although he received a formal apology from Gordon Brown in 2009, a petition calling for a pardon was denied earlier this year.
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Paralysed woman's thoughts control robotic arm
Unrivalled control of a robotic arm has been achieved using a paralysed woman's thoughts, a US study says.
Jan Scheuermann, who is 53 and paralysed from the neck down, was able to deftly grasp and move a variety of objects just like a normal arm. Brain implants were used to control the robotic arm, in the study reported in the Lancet medical journal. Experts in the field said it was an "unprecedented performance" and a "remarkable achievement". |  |
Physicists May Have Accidentally Found Two Higgs Bosons Instead Of Just One
Scientists at Cern who successfully found the Higgs Boson particle earlier this year might have accidentally found two.
According to data just released by researchers working at the Atlas and Large Hadron Collider experiments, there seem to be two Higgs Boson particles with extremely similar, but different, mass. The results - which are intriguing although unconfirmed - have emerged out of an oddity in the original data which showed the particle, which put simply 'gives mass' to other particles, decaying into two photons more often than it should. |  |
Japan in pole position to host particle smasher
As Europe and the United States struggle through the worst economic crisis in decades, Japan has emerged as the great hope for the future of particle physics. An international consensus is rapidly forming that the island nation is the only possible host for the International Linear Collider (ILC), a multi-billion-dollar machine that will sustain the next generation of researchers.
"Japan is it," says physicist Barry Barish, the head of the global design effort for the ILC. |  |
Faults Under Japan's Nuclear Power
Faults Under Japan's Nuclear Power:
A second nuclear plant in Japan sits atop a possibly active seismic fault, government-appointed experts said Friday, days after the first facility was said to be at risk.
A panel appointed by the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) said fractured strips of earth beneath the Higashidori plant's compound in northern Japan may be active faults, meaning it would likely have to be scrapped.
A second nuclear plant in Japan sits atop a possibly active seismic fault, government-appointed experts said Friday, days after the first facility was said to be at risk.
A panel appointed by the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) said fractured strips of earth beneath the Higashidori plant's compound in northern Japan may be active faults, meaning it would likely have to be scrapped.
Radioactive hot spots remain at former research facility's site
Half a century after America's first partial nuclear meltdown, hundreds of radioactive hot spots remain at a former research facility overlooking the west San Fernando Valley, according to a recently released federal study.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's $41-million survey of the facility, now owned by Boeing Co. and NASA, is expected to provide a precise map for state and federal agencies hoping to clean up the site by 2017. |  |
Test Could Reveal Which Side of the Looking Glass We're On
OK, so let's assume that nothing is real in the sense that we understand reality. We and everyone and everything we know are part of a computer simulation created by an advanced post-human intelligence. Scientists have considered the theory and come up with arguments for and against it. Before now, though, no one has suggested a test could be run to find out one way or another. Do we want to know?
For those who spend enough time playing World of Warcraft, the line between what is "real" and what isn't probably blurs from time to time. However, a far deeper and more philosophical question has been raised: whether life, the universe and everything is actually just a computer simulation.
For those who spend enough time playing World of Warcraft, the line between what is "real" and what isn't probably blurs from time to time. However, a far deeper and more philosophical question has been raised: whether life, the universe and everything is actually just a computer simulation.
Math formula gives new glimpse into the magical mind of Ramanujan
December 22 marks the 125th anniversary of the birth of Srinivasa Ramanujan, an Indian mathematician renowned for somehow intuiting extraordinary numerical patterns and connections without the use of proofs or modern mathematical tools. A devout Hindu, Ramanujan said that his findings were divine, revealed to him in dreams by the goddess Namagiri.
“I wanted to do something special, in the spirit of Ramanujan, to mark the anniversary,” says Emory mathematician Ken Ono. “It’s fascinating to me to explore his writings and imagine how his brain may have worked. It’s like being a mathematical anthropologist.” |  |
Cairo's landmark Egyptian Museum to receive facelift
Following a brief inspection of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo's iconic Tahrir Square on Sunday, Minister of State for Antiquities Mohamed Ibrahim gave the go-ahead for a long-awaited initiative aimed at developing the famous museum.
Egyptian Museum Director Salwa Abdel-Rahman said the development project would be completed in three phases. The first phase will involve the development of Hall 32, home to a large collection of Old Kingdom artefacts unearthed at the Saqqara Necropolis; and Hall 37, which displays the funerary collection of Queen Hetepheres, mother of King Khufu, the builder of Egypt's Great Pyramid. |  |
Huge Asteroid's Flyby; 3-Mile Wide Asteroid Caught on Video
New video recorded last week shows a flyby of a giant asteroid near Earth.
The asteroid known as 4179 Toutatis approached Earth's vicinity on Dec. 12 and was still able to be seen by telescope the day after. The massive 3-mile-wide asteroid was caught on video by scientists at NASA's Deep Space Network antenna in Goldstone, Calif. The 40 second long video can be seen at Space.com and was put together using a combination of around 64 radar images gathered from Toutatis's two day pass. The high-quality images reveal the details of the asteroid's composition including ridges and bright glints that may be surface boulders. |  |
Twin Probes' Moon Crash Today: How to Watch Live
Two NASA moon probes are slated to slam into the rim of a lunar crater today (Dec. 17), and the space agency will give viewers a behind-the-scenes look at the dramatic action.
The twin Grail spacecraft, known as Ebb and Flow, will crash intentionally near the moon's north pole at 5:28 p.m. EST (2228 GMT) today, bringing their gravity-mapping mission to a spectacular close. The event will be broadcast on NASA TV and streamed live on the agency's website, beginning at 5 p.m. EST (2200 GMT). |  |
Reservoirs can make local flooding worse, says study
Researchers say that large man-made reservoirs can increase the intensity of rainfall and could affect flood defences.
The scientists found that rain patterns around bodies of water in Chile were much higher than in similar areas without them. This "lake effect" could overwhelm flood defences which are often built without taking it into account. The study has been accepted for publication in the journal Hydrology. |  |
Drilling for a 2,000-Year-Old Ice Core
Australia announced plans to drill a 2,000 year-old ice core in the heart of Antarctica in a bid to retrieve a frozen record of how the planet has evolved and what might be in store.
The Aurora Basin North project involves scientists from Australia, France, Denmark and the United States who hope it will also advance the search for the scientific "holy grail" of the million-year-old ice core. |  |
Searching for Life Under the Antarctic Ice Sheet
The scientific community is on edge. On Wednesday, a British team of scientists and engineers will use a special hot water drill to bore through to a lake buried under three kilometers of Antarctic ice. Sediments taken from the lake bed could revolutionize what we know about past climates and the fortitude of life forms.
Life on Earth can sometimes seem unvanquishable. It blossoms even in the deepest oceans and on the highest mountains. It thrives in boiling hot springs and inside cold rocks. At least when it comes to microbes, it seems like they find almost nowhere too extreme, too toxic or too dark to live in. Or is there? |  |
Supreme Court to decide if human genes can be patented
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court announced Friday it will decide whether companies can patent human genes, a decision that could reshape medical research in the United States and the fight against diseases such as breast and ovarian cancer.
The justices' decision will likely resolve an ongoing battle between scientists who believe that genes carrying the secrets of life should not be exploited for commercial gain and companies that argue that a patent is a reward for years of expensive research that moves science forward.
The justices' decision will likely resolve an ongoing battle between scientists who believe that genes carrying the secrets of life should not be exploited for commercial gain and companies that argue that a patent is a reward for years of expensive research that moves science forward.
Fast-growing fish may never wind up on your plate
WASHINGTON (AP) — Salmon that's been genetically modified to grow twice as fast as normal could soon show up on your dinner plate. That is, if the company that makes the fish can stay afloat.
After weathering concerns about everything from the safety of humans eating the salmon to their impact on the environment, Aquabounty was poised to become the world's first company to sell fish whose DNA has been altered to speed up growth. |  |
Prehistoric Skeletons Reveal First Sicilians Avoided Seafood
Despite a seaside home overlooking the Mediterranean, the very first human settlers of Sicily weren't seafood lovers, new research finds.
In an analysis published today (Nov. 28) in the journal PLOS ONE, skeletal remains of the people who occupied the site around 10,000 years ago show no telltale signs of seafood eating. Instead, researchers say, these hunter-gatherers chowed down on game such as deer and boar. |  |
Unmasked: The truth behind Piltdown Man fraud to be revealed 100 years after it fooled the world
It was one of the most enduring hoaxes in history and fooled scientists into believing a crucial evolutionary 'missing link' had been found in England.
Now 100 years after the discovery of the Piltdown Man, a team of archeologists and anthropologists will finally be able to expose the truth behind the scam, and pinpoint who was responsible. The Geological Society will meet this week to discuss the results of their investigation into the elaborate hoax, almost a century to the day after the same society hailed its importance to the world. |  |
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