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Science

Submission + - Researchers zero in on protein that destroys HIV (physorg.com)

Submitted by Julie188
Julie188 writes: Using a $225,000 microscope, researchers have identified the key components of a protein called TRIM5a that destroys HIV in rhesus monkeys. The finding could lead to new TRIM5a-based treatments that would knock out HIV in humans, said senior researcher Edward M. Campbell, PhD, of Loyola University Health System.

Submission + - US/India call center wages reaching parity (ft.com)

Submitted by blurker
blurker writes: Quickly rising wages for Indian call center workers and declining wages for their counterparts in the US have brought labor costs within the range of parity. This does not even consider the possibility that the dollar will fall in currency markets as a result of large scale financial "quantitative easing". http://online.barrons.com/article/SB50001424052970203550704575398803625107086.html
Science

Submission + - Physicists say cosmic rays effect length of day

Submitted by Flash Modin
Flash Modin writes: If your Monday is dragging on too long, you might try blaming it on cosmic rays. In a paper published Friday by the journal Geophysical Research Letters, geophysicists from Paris and Moscow propose that the high energy protons and nuclei might have a surprising influence on Earth's length of day. The team claims that a previously noticed relationship between fluctuations in the length of day and the 11-year solar-cycle are actually caused by cosmic rays.The round-about argument is that cosmic rays effect cloud cover, which then changes the atmosphere's energy budget and has a significant enough effect on wind speeds to change the Earth's angular momentum. The net effect is only a few tenths of a millisecond, but the physicists claim the more important implication is in the overall debate over whether cosmic rays could be a cause of climate change by influencing cloud formation.
Science

Submission + - First discovery by an @Home project (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by pq
pq writes: In a paper published today in Science, astronomers are reporting the discovery of a radio pulsar in data acquired at the world's largest radio telescope and analyzed by hundreds of thousands of volunteers in 192 countries for the Einstein@Home project. This is the first scientific discovery by a distributed computing project, and specific credit is being given to Chris and Helen Colvin of Ames, Iowa, and Daniel Gebhardt of Germany. More at MSNBC etc.

Submission + - I sort my Legos by: 1

Submitted by nixman99
nixman99 writes: Poll:

Color
Shape
Color and shape
Function
Size
How much they hurt when I step on them

Submission + - BBC News - Why the US keeps minting coins people h (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In hidden vaults across the country, the US government is building a stockpile of $1 coins. The hoard has topped $1.1bn — imagine a stack of coins reaching almost seven times higher than the International Space Station — and the piles have grown so large the US Federal Reserve is running out of storage space.

Americans won't use the coins, preferring $1 notes. But the US keeps minting them anyway, and the Fed estimates it already has enough $1 coins to last the next 10 years.
Medicine

Submission + - Researchers Regenerate Nerves After Spinal Injury (gizmag.com)

Submitted by fergus07
fergus07 writes: About two percent of Americans — more than six million people — have some form of paralysis resulting from spinal cord injury, which is due primarily to the interruption of connections between the brain and spinal cord. Such paralysis and loss of function has long been considered untreatable, but a new approach has, for the first time, induced robust regeneration of nerve connections that control voluntary movement, showing the potential for new therapeutic approaches to paralysis and other motor function impairments and offering hope to sufferers.
Science

Submission + - Science turns authoritarian (american.com)

Submitted by Attila Dimedici
Attila Dimedici writes: This story suggests that one of the reasons that people have less trust in sientific pronouncements is because science reporting has stopped being a nuetral "Science has discovered..." and become more "Science says we must...". They tracked the usage of the following phrases using Lexis Nexis over the last 30 years:: "science says we must," "science says we should," "science tells us we must," "science tells us we should," "science commands," "science requires," "science dictates," and "science compels."
What they discovered was that the phrase "science tells us we must..." has increased in usage dramatically over that time frame. That increase was dramatically greater than that of the other phrases they searched for. The authors suggest that this increased usage of science to tell us what behaviors we should pursue (as opposed to earlier science reporting merely saying that "such and such behavior has this negative consequence" and allowing people to decide what action to take themselves based on that information) has damaged the credibility of science in the minds of the general public. Read the article yourselves and decide what you think of their hypothesis. http://www.american.com/archive/2010/july/science-turns-authoritarian
Math

Submission + - How to Destroy a Black Hole (technologyreview.com)

Submitted by eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: Physics (and especially astrophysics) is well known for pushing the boundaries of what is possible and a new paper discussing how to destroy a black hole proves there's still a lot head hurting to discover. How do they do it? Well, it's pretty simple. From the paper, "In general relativity, the mathematical condition for the existence of a black hole with an event horizon is simple. It is given by the following inequality: M^2 > (J/M)^2 + Q^2, where M is the mass of the black hole, J is its angular momentum and Q is its charge." The paper looks at what would happen if we evened that inequality out by throwing angular momentum and/or charge at the black hole. When that happens, the event horizon disappears. When the event horizon disappears, light escapes. When light escapes, it's no longer a black hole and now when you gaze at it ... nobody knows what you'd see. Pure infinity? One thing's for sure, since we got nothing in our physics toolboxes to handle the math on this proposed scenario it would most certainly reveal new laws of physics through observation if we could accomplish it. Unfortunately we're nowhere near packing up a bunch of angular momentum and charge and heading over to the nearest black hole to find out. It is, however, refreshing to see that physics is yet an ocean still brimming full with unseen wonders. You can find all the Greek on arxiv in prepublication.

Submission + - Visual VFX guru behind 2001 and Alien insists fake (shadowlocked.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In an interview, visual effects master Brian Johnson, who brought us the screen magic of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Alien, The Empire Strikes Back and Space:1999 insists that you need only check out one shot of NASA's footage to establish that the moon landing could not have been faked: "You only have to look at where the foot is hitting the dust and the dust comes off. There's no way on God's Earth that could be done on Earth under any circumstances"

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