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Medicine

Scientists Erase Specific Memories In Mice 320

Posted by samzenpus
from the where's-the-cheese dept.
Ostracus writes "It sounds like science fiction, but scientists say it might one day be possible to erase undesirable memories from the brain, selectively and safely. After exposing mice to emotionally powerful stimuli, such as a mild shock to their paws, the scientists then observed how well or poorly the animals subsequently recalled the particular trauma as their brain's expression of CaMKII was manipulated up and down. When the brain was made to overproduce CaMKII at the exact moment the mouse was prodded to retrieve the traumatic memory, the memory wasn't just blocked, it appeared to be fully erased."
Communications

Squirrels use infrared signalling to scare snakes

Submitted by arneMan
arneMan writes "A recent article in PNAS reveals a novel mode of communication between ground squirrels and rattlesnakes. Apparantly, squirrels can scare off snakes by employing a technique called "tail flagging" — frenetic back and forth waving of the tail, "harassing" the snake. Using infrared cameras, scientist have discovered that when encountering infrared sensitive rattle snakes, the tail also heats up, putting even more fear into the snake. Experiments using a robotic squirrel (!) confirms this. Interestingly, the squirrel can discriminate between infrared sensitive and non-sensitive snakes, only heating up the tail if it encounters the former kind. Only the abstract is availabe for non-subscribers, but here is a summary of the article along with some nice pics and movies."
Power

Scientists closer to gamma-ray annihilation lasers->

Submitted by ErikTheRed
ErikTheRed writes "Scientists have finally created Di-positronium, a new form of matter combining an electron and a positron. The discovery, which according to this BBC article reported in the journal Nature, is a key step in the creation of ultrapowerful lasers known as gamma-ray annihilation lasers. These would be useful in starting fusion reactions. Now all we need are some friggin' sharks..."
Link to Original Source
Handhelds

China copies iPhone; makes it even better->

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes "China duplicates a lot of well know products; now they are duplicating the iPhone. Yet apparently they are making it better. From the article "The miniOne looked just like Apple's iPhone, down to the slick no-button interface. But it was more. It ran popular mobile software that the iPhone wouldn't. It worked with nearly every worldwide cellphone carrier, not just AT&T, and not only in the U.S. It promised to cost half as much as the iPhone and be available to 10 times as many consumers." The cloned iPhone uses a Linux-based system. "The cloners hire a team of between 20 and 40 engineers to begin decoding the circuit boards. At the same time, coders start to develop an operating system for the phone with a similar feature set. (The typical cloner either uses off-the-shelf code, writes something entirely new, or modifies a publicly available Linux-based system.) ""
Link to Original Source
Space

'98 Quietly Loses Title as Warmest Year Ever in US 1

Submitted by
pln2bz
pln2bz writes "NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies is in the process of adjusting its United States temperature data, which could impact the worldwide temperature data. Four of the top 10 warmest years in the US are now from the 1930's: 1934, 1931, 1938 and 1939, while only three of the top 10 are from the last 10 years: 1998, 2006 and 1999. Somewhat alarmingly, there has so far not been any announcement of the change."

We're here to give you a computer, not a religion. - attributed to Bob Pariseau, at the introduction of the Amiga