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Space

Super-Earths Discovered Orbiting Nearby, Sun-Like Star 242

Posted by Soulskill from the i-for-one dept.
likuidkewl writes "Two super-earths, 5 and 7.5 times the size of our home, were found to be orbiting 61 Virginis a mere 28 light years away. 'These detections indicate that low-mass planets are quite common around nearby stars. The discovery of potentially habitable nearby worlds may be just a few years away,' said Steven Vogt, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at UCSC. Among hundreds of our nearest stellar neighbors, 61 Vir stands out as being the most nearly similar to the Sun in terms of age, mass, and other essential properties."
Idle

Canadian Blood Services Promotes Pseudoscience 219

Posted by samzenpus from the type-A-negative-personality dept.
trianglecat writes "The not-for-profit agency Canadian Blood Services has a section of their website based on the Japanese cultural belief of ketsueki-gata, which claims that a person's blood group determines or predicts their personality type. Disappointing for a self-proclaimed 'science-based' organization. The Ottawa Skeptics, based in the nation's capital, appear to be taking some action."
Biotech

Progress In Brain-Based Lie Detection 84

Posted by kdawson from the just-lie-down-in-this-here-big-tube dept.
A Cognitive Neuroscientist writes "A new study, led by Harvard Psychologist Joshua Greene and forthcoming in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, may represent progress on the front of using brain imaging techniques, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging, to detect lies. According to Harvard's press release, Greene's is 'the first study to examine brain activity of people telling actual lies,' as opposed to prior studies in which subjects were merely instructed to lie. The results suggest that one key step in distinguishing honest from dishonest individuals may involve focusing on a small set of brain regions that are responsible for executive control and attention. However, given that the actual paper is yet to be published, it's unclear whether the study is prone to some of the methodological and interpretive complications that have recently plagued similar brain imaging studies."
Space

First Light Images From Herschel Satellite Released 35

Posted by Soulskill from the pretty-pictures dept.
davecl writes "The first images from the Herschel satellite have been released by ESA. The images are of the galaxy M51 and show a lot of structure and other features never seen before. Coverage of these results can be found on the ESA website and on the Herschel mission blog. There's a lot of work still to be done on tuning the satellite and instruments for optimum performance, but these very early results already show the promise of this mission. I work on this project and can say that these results are really impressive at this early stage!"

Computers Key To Air France Crash 911

Posted by kdawson from the who-or-what-do-you-trust dept.
Michael_Curator writes "It's no secret that commercial airplanes are heavily computerized, but as the mystery of Air France Flight 447 unfolds, we need to come to grips with the fact that in many cases, airline pilots' hands are tied when it comes to responding effectively to an emergency situation. Boeing planes allow pilots to take over from computers during emergency situations, Airbus planes do not. It's not a design flaw — it's a philosophical divide. It's essentially a question of what do you trust most: a human being's ingenuity or a computer's infinitely faster access and reaction to information. It's not surprising that an American company errs on the side of individual freedom while a European company is more inclined to favor an approach that relies on systems. As passengers, we should have the right to ask whether we're putting our lives in the hands of a computer rather than the battle-tested pilot sitting up front, and we should have right to deplane if we don't like the answer."
Earth

Microbes 100M Years Old Found In Termite Guts 145

Posted by kdawson from the mutualism-in-action dept.
viyh writes with coverage on MSNBC of the discovery of ancient microbes fossilized in the gut of a termite. "One hundred million years ago a termite was wounded and its abdomen split open. The resin of a pine tree slowly enveloped its body and the contents of its gut. In what is now the Hukawng Valley in Myanmar, the resin fossilized and was buried until it was chipped out of an amber mine. The resin had seeped into the termite's wound and preserved even the microscopic organisms in its gut. These microbes are the forebears of the microbes that live in the guts of today's termites and help them digest wood. ... The amber preserved the microbes with exquisite detail, including internal features like the nuclei. ... Termites are related to cockroaches and split from them in evolutionary time at about the same time the termite in the amber was trapped."
Image

Robotic Penguins 118

Posted by samzenpus from the unending-march-of-the-penguins dept.
Corporate Troll writes "Robotic penguins were unveiled by German engineering firm Festo this week. Using their flippers, the mechanical penguins (video) can paddle through water just like real ones, while larger helium-filled designs can "swim" through the air. The penguins are on show at the Hannover Messe Trade Exhibition in Germany. Each penguin carries 3D sonar which is used to monitor its surroundings and avoid collisions with walls or other penguins."
Power

Three Mile Island Memories 309

Posted by Soulskill from the if-it-ain't-broke,-send-it-through-congress dept.
theodp writes "Thirty years after the partial nuclear core meltdown at Three Mile Island, Robert Cringely describes the terrible TMI user interface, blaming a confluence of bad design decisions — some made by Congress — for making the accident vastly worse. While computers could be used to monitor the reactor, US law prohibited using computers to directly control nuclear power plants — men would do that. So, when the (one) computer noticed a problem, it would set off audible and visual alarms, and send a problem description to a line printer. Simple, except the computer noticed 700 things wrong in the first few minutes of the TMI accident, causing the one audible alarm to ring continuously until it was shut off as useless. The one visual alarm blinked for days, indicating nothing useful. And the print queue was quickly flooded with 700 error reports followed by thousands of updates and corrections, making it almost instantly hours behind. The operators had to guess at what the problem was."

Comment Re:Good To See Grownups In Charge (Score 1) 133

by Nova77 (#27021709) Attached to: NASA Funding Boost, But No Shuttle Extension in Obama Budget

I don't think this is the point. The manned planes are already being replaced by UAVs (the F-22 is probably going to be the last major air-superiority aircraft), and in the near future the F-15 and F-16 can be "cheaply" replaced by F-35.
Too bad for such beautiful baby, but when you have a robot that can sustain 15g there's simply no game.
United States

Iowa Seeks To Remove Electoral College 1088

Posted by CmdrTaco from the not-cancelling-their-caucus-i-bet dept.
Zebano writes "Since changing the US constitution is too much work, the Iowa senate is considering a bill that would send all 7 of Iowa's electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote in a presidential election. This would only go into affect after enough states totaling 270 electoral votes (enough to elect a president) adopted similar resolutions."
Power

Fusion-Fission System Burns Hot Radioactive Waste 432

Posted by kdawson from the super-x-divertor dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A hybrid fission-fusion process has been developed that can be used in some traditional fission reactors to process radioactive waste and reduce the amount of waste produced by 99%. This process uses magnetic bottle techniques developed from fusion research. This seems like the first viable solution to the radioactive waste problem of traditional nuclear reactors. This could be a big breakthrough in the search for environmentally friendly energy sources. Lots of work remains to take the concept to an engineering prototype and then to a production reactor."

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