22575906
submission
thebchuckster writes:
Aurorae on many planets could make our own Northern and Southern lights look like a flickering candle, new research has shown.
It seems that aurorae on distant 'hot Jupiters' could be up to 1,000 times brighter than Earthly aurorae, rippling all the way from the equator to the poles.
22549734
submission
thebchuckster writes:
Global warming, a detectable trend in the 1980s and 1990s, all but disappeared in the 2000s.
A new study from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), published Thursday in journal "Science," suggested aerosols in the earth's stratosphere are the cause.
The buffer effect of aerosol begs an interesting question: could man manipulate global temperatures by artificial techniques like putting aerosols in the atmosphere?
22546960
submission
thebchuckster writes:
he Cretaceous period ended 65 million years ago with a bang—an asteroid impact—that did in the dinosaurs. But what about the other mass extinctions?
Now researchers teasing apart the record of mass extinction at the dawn of the dinosaur age have come up with a possible volcanic killer: a burst of methane gas triggered by volcanic greenhouse gases.
22542170
submission
thebchuckster writes:
A homeless man was arrested Monday, accused of putting a cold, opened can of beer inside a marked sea turtle nesting site in a Bonita Beach Park.
Michael Joseph Gasko, 47, faces charges of molesting an endangered sea turtle nest, and two counts of violation of park rules.
22525538
submission
thebchuckster writes:
Kuroilers are hybrid chickens, well suited to resource-poor village environments. They have been genetically selected to provide both meat and eggs and are able to survive and thrive on agricultural and household waste, requiring no additional feed.
The birds were developed by Keggfarms, a company based in Gurgaon, India and known for its pioneering efforts to improve rural conditions and provide nutritional security through household poultry keeping. Kuroilers were distributed in India to over 1 million households.
22524252
submission
thebchuckster writes:
The building block of the Caltech neural network is double-stranded DNA molecules with loose ends. These loose ends then receive the input of single-stranded DNA, which, through DNA strand replacement, releases an output DNA strand.
Using this input-output mechanism, the Caltech team assembled four neurons that give out specific DNA strand outputs that serve as both 'yes' or 'no' indicators in themselves and also inputs strands into other neurons.
22515842
submission
thebchuckster writes:
Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope discovered a fourth moon orbiting the icy dwarf planet Pluto. The tiny, new satellite – temporarily designated P4 — was uncovered in a Hubble survey searching for rings around the dwarf planet.
The new moon is the smallest discovered around Pluto. It has an estimated diameter of 8 to 21 miles (13 to 34 km). By comparison, Charon, Pluto's largest moon, is 648 miles (1,043 km) across, and the other moons, Nix and Hydra, are in the range of 20 to 70 miles in diameter (32 to 113 km).
22500954
submission
thebchuckster writes:
A northern snakehead fish — a toothy invader that can live out of water — has been spotted in Anne Arundel County.
That discovery set off a flurry of worry over the fish, which can live for a few days out of water, thanks to air chambers that function as primitive lungs. It's also a prolific predator, and can position itself at the top of the aquatic food chain, crowding out native fish.
22490724
submission
thebchuckster writes:
Scientists already know that the melting of ice platforms in the Arctic Circle forces polar bears to swim as much as hundreds of miles to search for new land or ice platforms.
The study found that during swims longer than 30 miles, 45 percent of polar bear cubs who swam with their mothers died during the swim.
22488190
submission
thebchuckster writes:
Google+ makes demands on free time users simply don’t have, LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner has claimed, going on to suggest that the new Google service will struggle as it doesn’t fit into the established triumvirate (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn) of popular social networks.
22472218
submission
thebchuckster writes:
Time cloaking is possible because of a kind of duality between space and time in electromagnetic theory. In particular, the diffraction of a beam of light in space is mathematically equivalent to the temporal propagation of light through a dispersive medium. In other words, diffraction and dispersion are symmetric in spacetime.
That immediately leads to an interesting idea. Just as its easy to make a lens that focuses light in space using diffraction, so it is possible to use dispersion to make a lens that focuses in time.
22469262
submission
thebchuckster writes:
NASA's Dawn, locked in orbit around Vesta, has sent back the first ever close-up image of the asteroid (photos below).
"So far, the images received to date reveal a complex surface that seems to have preserved some of the earliest events in Vesta's history, as well as logging the onslaught that Vesta has suffered in the intervening eons," said Dawn principal investigator Christopher Russell
22440908
submission
thebchuckster writes:
Researchers from Cornell say that by using a bit of electromagnetics wizardry they can create a 'hole' in space and keep it hidden — spatial cloaking. Invisible time.
22415506
submission
thebchuckster writes:
Scientists are seeking the help of the Australian and US navies to repel Somali pirates who are threatening one of the world's key climate monitoring programmes.
They hope to deploy about 20 robotic instruments in a no-go area north of Mauritius. The instruments, which record ocean heat and salinity patterns, are programmed to submerge and eventually resurface to upload their data to satellites
22388438
submission
thebchuckster writes:
The sphere is 17-inches, features eight movable rudders, and can hover in the air for at least eight minutes. While reaching speeds of up to 37 miles per hour, the sphere deftly moves through the air without much effort. It doesn't take much to get it up in the air and moving, and will be adept at going into tight areas.
