Monthly Archives: September 2005

First helical structure in the nano-world

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Although a commonplace structure in nature, the helix remains a mystery to scientific researchers. In biology, the structure is important as DNA is helical and so does the substructure of many proteins. Since its discovery about more than 50 years ago, the double helix has offered an important approach to interpret and make use of bio-organic structures. Yet, it is seldom to see a helical structure formed by inorganic crystal-state materials.

Recently a previously-unknown zinc oxide nanostructure that resembles the helical configuration of DNA has been brought about by a research team headed by Prof. WANG Zhong Lin, a researcher concurrently working for the Georgia Institute of Technology in US, Peking University and the National Center for Nanoscience and Technology of China (NCNST) at CAS in China. Hailed as an exciting event in the field, their work was reported in the September 9 issue of the journal Science.

PhysOrg

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Media Matters exposes Bennett: “[Y]ou could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down”

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Addressing a caller’s suggestion that the “lost revenue from the people who have been aborted in the last 30 years” would be enough to preserve Social Security’s solvency, radio host and former Reagan administration Secretary of Education Bill Bennett dismissed such “far-reaching, extensive extrapolations” by declaring that if “you wanted to reduce crime … if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down.” Bennett conceded that aborting all African-American babies “would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do,” then added again, “but the crime rate would go down.”

Bennett’s remark was apparently inspired by the claim that legalized abortion has reduced crime rates, which was posited in the book Freakonomics (William Morrow, May 2005) by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. But Levitt and Dubner argued that aborted fetuses would have been more likely to grow up poor and in single-parent or teenage-parent households and therefore more likely to commit crimes; they did not put forth Bennett’s race-based argument.

Media Matters

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Wild Gorillas Use Tools, Photos Reveal

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Researchers have observed and photographed wild gorillas using sticks and stumps to navigate a swampy forest clearing in the Republic of Congo. The images provide the first documented use of tools among wild gorillas.

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In one instance, a female gorilla named Leah tried to wade across a pool of water but found herself waist deep after just a few steps. She retreated, grabbed a branch sticking out of the water, and used it to gauge the water’s depth before wading deeper.

According to the researchers, Leah repeatedly tested the depth as she walked about 33 feet (10 meters) out into the pool, before returning to shore and her wailing infant.

In another instance, a female named Efi detached a stump from a bush and used it for support as she dug for herbs. She then made a bridge with the stump to help her cross a muddy patch of ground.

National Geographic

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Rational Mysticism by Sam Harris

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As a worldview, secularism has defined itself in opposition to the whirling absurdity of religion. Like atheism (with which it is more or less interchangeable), secularism is a negative dispensation. Being secular is not a positive virtue like being reasonable, wise, or loving. To be secular, one need do nothing more than live in perpetual opposition to the unsubstantiated claims of religious dogmatists. Consequently, secularism has negligible appeal to the culture at large (a practical concern) and negligible content (an intellectual concern). There is, in fact, not much to secularism that should be of interest to anyone, apart from the fact that it is all that stands between sensible people like ourselves and the mad hordes of religious imbeciles who have balkanized our world, impeded the progress of science, and now place civilization itself in jeopardy. Criticizing religious irrationality is absolutely essential. But secularism, being nothing more than the totality of such criticism, can lead its practitioners to reject important features of human experience simply because they have been traditionally associated with religious practice.

SecularHumanism.org

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Bird flu pandemic ‘could kill 150 million’

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A global influenza pandemic is imminent and will kill up to 150 million people, the UN official in charge of coordinating the worldwide response to an outbreak has warned.

David Nabarro, one of the most senior public health experts at the World Health Organisation, said outbreaks of bird flu, which have killed at least 65 people in Asia, could mutate into a form transmittable between people.

“The consequences in terms of human life when the pandemic does start are going to be extraordinary and very damaging,” he said.

Guardian Unlimited

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VirtuSphere: The First Step To The Holodeck

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VirtuSphere provides a mechnical basis for truly immersive virtual reality environments, permitting the user to move about in virtual space by simply walking.

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The device consists of a large hollow sphere which is mounted on a specially designed platform that allows the sphere to rotate freely as the user walks in any direction. The user wears a head-mounted display, which provides the virtual environment. Sensors under the sphere provide subject speed and direction to the computer running the simulation. Users can even ineract with objects in virtual space using a special manipulator.

Technovelgy via Gravity Lens

Google and Nasa, finally together

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Web search firm Google has formed a partnership with US space agency Nasa in an effort to harness new technology which could boost the space programme.

Google is to build a new office complex on the site of Nasa’s research facility in California, close to its own headquarters in Silicon Valley.

The two companies will co-operate in a range of areas including IT solutions, data management and nanotechnology.

BBC

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Mighty Mice Regrow Organs

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Genetically altered mice discovered accidentally at the Wistar Institute in Pennsylvania have the seemingly miraculous ability to regenerate like a salamander, and even regrow vital organs.

Researchers systematically amputated digits and damaged various organs of the mice, including the heart, liver and brain, most of which grew back.

The results stunned scientists because if such regeneration is possible in this mammal, it might also be possible in humans.

The researchers also made a remarkable second discovery: When cells from the regenerative mice were injected into normal mice, the normal mice adopted the ability to regenerate. And when the special mice bred with normal mice, their offspring inherited souped-up regeneration capabilities.

Wired
Article we posted a couple weeks ago.

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Physicists say universe evolution favored three and seven dimensions

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Physicists who work with a concept called string theory envision our universe as an eerie place with at least nine spatial dimensions, six of them hidden from us, perhaps curled up in some way so they are undetectable. The big question is why we experience the universe in only three spatial dimensions instead of four, or six, or nine.

Two theoretical researchers from the University of Washington and Harvard University think they might have found the answer. They believe the way our universe started and then diluted as it expanded ? what they call the relaxation principle ? favored formation of three- and seven-dimensional realities. The one we happen to experience has three dimensions.

EurekAlert via The Daily Grail

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Hypnotherapy An Effective Treatment For Irritable Bowel Syndrome

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Medics at The University of Manchester have discovered a way to treat Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) using hypnotherapy.

Research by Peter Whorwell, Professor of Medicine and Gastroenterology in the University’s Medical School and Director of the South Manchester Functional Bowel Service, has been researching the use of gut-directed hypnosis for over 20 years. Most recently, two hundred and fifty patients who have suffered from IBS for over two years were given twelve one-hour sessions, during which they were given an explanation of how the gut works and what causes their symptoms.

With a success-rate of about 70% Professor Whorwell believes that, although labour-intensive, hypnotherapy could be an extremely effective treatment for the condition; and a less expensive alternative to new, costly drugs coming onto the market.

Science Daily

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Hybrid grass may become fuel source

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crops5.jpgCHAMPAIGN, Ill., Sept. 28 (UPI)—University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign scientists say a hybrid grass that can grow 13 feet high may become a renewable source of fuel in the future.

The researchers said the grass produces a very efficient fuel, with an energy ratio of input to output less than 0.2. In contrast, the ratios exceed 0.8 for ethanol and biodiesel from canola, which are other plant-derived energy sources.

Science Daily

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New Orleans: Prisoners Abandoned to Floodwaters

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(New York, September 22, 2005)?As Hurricane Katrina began pounding New Orleans, the sheriff’s department abandoned hundreds of inmates imprisoned in the city?s jail, Human Rights Watch said today.

Inmates in Templeman III, one of several buildings in the Orleans Parish Prison compound, reported that as of Monday, August 29, there were no correctional officers in the building, which held more than 600 inmates. These inmates, including some who were locked in ground-floor cells, were not evacuated until Thursday, September 1, four days after flood waters in the jail had reached chest-level.

Human Rights Watch

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No Green Acres? Try Skyscrapers

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Tens of thousands of empty storage containers are stacked in towers along I-95 across from the harbor in Newark, New Jersey. They’re heaped there in perpetuity, too cheap to be shipped back to Asia but too expensive to melt down.

Where many might see a pile of garbage, Lior Hessel sees, of all things, an organic farm. Those storage containers would be ideal housing for miniature farms, he believes, stacked one upon another like an agricultural skyscraper, all growing fresh organic produce for millions of wealthy consumers. And since the crops would be grown with artificial lighting, servers, sensors and robots, the cost of labor would consist of a single computer technician’s salary.

Wired

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Cap allows navigation of virtual worlds by thought

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cap.jpgComputer scientists have created a hat that can read your thoughts. It allows you to stroll down a virtual street. All you have to do is think about walking.

Called a brain-computer interface, the device detects activity in certain brain areas linked to movement, and uses the signals to mimic that movement in a virtual world. The technology could one day help paralysed patients to move robotic arms, or help sufferers of motor neuron disease to type out words on a virtual keyboard.

“Just thinking about movement activates the same neurons as actually moving,” explains Gert Pfurtscheller of Graz University of Technology in Austria, who has been working on the device for around four years. By picking up on these bursts of nerve activity, the computer can decide whether you are thinking about moving your hands or feet, and react accordingly.

Nature via Better Humans

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