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Submission + - Static Electricity Defies Simple Explanation (sciencemag.org) 3

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: If you’ve ever wiggled a balloon against your hair, you know that rubbing together two different materials can generate static electricity. But rubbing bits of the same material can create static, too. Now, researchers have shot down a decades-old idea of how that same-stuff static comes about.

Submission + - Is Evolution Predictable? (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: If the clock rewound, would organisms evolve the same way they did before? Humble stick insects may hold the answer to that long-running question in biology. Through studies of these bugs, whose bodies match the leaves the insects live on, researchers have found that although groups of the bug have evolved similar appearances, they achieved that mostly via different changes in their DNA. “I think it says that repeatability of evolution is very low,” says Andrew Hendry, an evolutionary biologist at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, who was not involved with the work.
Security

Submission + - SPAM: Widespread Attacks Exploit Newly Patched IE Bug

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: The first widespread attack to leverage the Internet Explorer flaw that Microsoft patched in an emergency update Thursday morning has surfaced. By midday Thursday Symantec had spotted hundreds of Web sites that hosted the attack code. The attack installs a Trojan horse program that is able to bypass some security products and then give hackers access to the system, said Joshua Talbot, a security intelligence manager with Symantec. Once it has infected a PC, the Trojan sends a notification e-mail to the attackers, using a U.S.-based, free e-mail service that Symantec declined to name.
Link to Original Source
Space

Submission + - Space photos taken from shed stun astromoners (telegraph.co.uk)

Submitted by krou
krou writes: Amateur astronomer Peter Shah has stunned astronomers around the world with amazing photos of the universe taken from his garden shed. Shah spent £20,000 on the equipment, hooking up a telescope in his shed to his home computer, and the results are being compared to images taken by the Hubble Telescope. "Most men like to potter about in their garden shed," said Shah, "but mine is a bit more high tech than most. I have fitted it with a sliding roof so I can sit in comfort and look at the heavens. I have a very modest set up but it just goes to show that a window to the universe is there for all of us – even with the smallest budgets. I had to be patient and take the images over a period of several months because the skies in Britain are often clouded over and you need clear conditions." His images include the Monkey's head nebula, M33 Pinwheel Galaxy, Andromeda Galaxy and the Flaming Star Nebula, and are being put together for a book.
NASA

Submission + - SPAM: NASA WISE telescope pops cover, starts taking pics

Submitted by coondoggie
coondoggie writes: NASA today said its Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer spacecraft successfully popped the cover off its infrared telescope and began “celestial treasure hunt” mission of sending back what will be millions of images of space. The WISE lens cap served as a safety system keeping the ultra-sensitive lens and telescope system safe until the spacecraft positioned itself correctly in orbit. The cap also served as the top to a Thermos-like bottle that chilled the instrument. WISE’s infrared telescope and detectors are kept chilled inside a Thermos-like tank of solid hydrogen, called a cryostat.
[spam URL stripped]
Link to Original Source
Science

Submission + - Soviet Scientist Turns Foxes Into Puppies (overpill.com)

Submitted by gamebittk
gamebittk writes: In the 1950s, Soviet scientist Dmitri Belyaev set out to breed a tamer fox that would be easier for their handlers in the Russian fur industry to work with. Much to the scientist's shock, changes no one had expected emerged after just 10 generations. The foxes began behaving playfully, were smaller in size, and even changed color — much like dogs.

Submission + - BBC Lowers HDTV bitrate, users notice

Submitted by aws910
aws910 writes: According to an article on the bbc website, BBC HD lowered the bitrate of their broadcasts by almost 50% and are surprised that users noticed. From the article: "The replacement encoders work at a bitrate of 9.7Mbps (megabits per second), while their predecessors worked at 16Mbps, the standard for other broadcasters". The BBC claims "We did extensive testing on the new encoders which showed that they could produce pictures at the same or even better quality than the old encoders..." I got a good laugh off of this, but is it really possible to get better quality from a lower bitrate?

Submission + - 26 Gigapixel photo sets new world's record (google.com) 2

Submitted by FrenchSilk
FrenchSilk writes: The largest gigapixel photograph ever created with a DSLR camera was made by A.F.B. Media GmbH in Dresden, Germany. 1655 images, each 21.6 megapixels in size, were taken with a Canon 5D Mark II and a 400 mm lens over a period of 176 minutes. The images were stitched on a 16 processor system with 48 G of main memory, taking 94 hours to create the final result. The interactive view can be found here: http://www.dresden-26-gigapixels.com/dresden26GP.
Science

Submission + - Caltech Scientists Film Photons with Electrons (caltech.edu)

Submitted by al0ha
al0ha writes: Techniques recently invented by researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech)—which allow the real-time, real-space visualization of fleeting changes in the structure of nanoscale matter—have been used to image the evanescent electrical fields produced by the interaction of electrons and photons, and to track changes in atomic-scale structures.

Further info by viewing the story link, also covered in the Dec 17 issue of Nature.

Submission + - Russians Claim More Climate Data Was Manipulated (telegraph.co.uk) 6

Submitted by DustyShadow
DustyShadow writes: On Tuesday, the Moscow-based Institute of Economic Analysis (IEA) claimed that the Hadley Center for Climate Change had probably tampered with Russian-climate data. The IEA believes that Russian meteorological-station data did not substantiate the anthropogenic global-warming theory. Analysts say Russian meteorological stations cover most of the country’s territory, and that the Hadley Center had used data submitted by only 25% of such stations in its reports. Over 40% of Russian territory was not included in global-temperature calculations for some other reasons, rather than the lack of meteorological stations and observations. The data of stations located in areas not listed in the Hadley CRU survey often does not show any substantial warming in the late 20th century and the early 21st century.
Science

Submission + - 94 New Species Described by CA Academy of Sciences (treehugger.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Researchers at the California Academy of Sciences traversed four continents and two oceans to uncover 94 new species in 2009, proving that while sometimes in this digital age the world can feel like a small place, much of it has yet to be explored. Among the 94 discoveries were 65 arthropods, 14 plants, 8 fishes, 5 sea slugs, one coral, and one fossil mammal. Why does it matter? As Dr. David Mindell, Dean of Science and Research Collections at the Academy, explained, “Humans rely on healthy ecosystems, made up of organisms and their environments. Creating a comprehensive inventory of life on our planet is critical for understanding and managing resources. Yet a great many life-forms remain to be discovered and described."

Submission + - Scientists crack 'entire genetic code' of cancer (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by Entropy98
Entropy98 writes: From the article: "Scientists have unlocked the entire genetic code of two of the most common cancers — skin and lung — a move they say could revolutionise cancer care.

Not only will the cancer maps pave the way for blood tests to spot tumours far earlier, they will also yield new drug targets, say the Wellcome Trust team. The scientists found the DNA code for a skin cancer called melanoma contained more than 30,000 errors almost entirely caused by too much sun exposure.

The lung cancer DNA code had more than 23,000 errors largely triggered by cigarette smoke exposure.

From this, the experts estimate a typical smoker acquires one new mutation for every 15 cigarettes they smoke.

Although many of these mutations will be harmless, some will trigger cancer."

Yet another step towards curing cancer. Though it will probably take many years to study so many mutations. My moneys still on viruses as the cure for cancer.

Submission + - Nearby "Super Earth" may have atmosphere (sciencedaily.com)

Submitted by
Luminary Crush
Luminary Crush writes: "Astronomers announced that they have discovered a "super-Earth" which seems to have an atmosphere orbiting a red dwarf star 40 light-years from Earth. They found the distant planet with a small fleet of ground-based telescopes no larger than those many amateur astronomers have in their backyards. Although the super-Earth is too hot to sustain life, the discovery shows that current, ground-based technologies are capable of finding almost-Earth-sized planets in warm, life-friendly orbits."

Submission + - Yellowstone Supervolcano larger than first thought (ksl.com)

Submitted by drewtheman
drewtheman writes: New studies of the plumbing that feeds the Yellowstone supervolcano in Wyoming's Yellowstone National Park shows the plume and the magma chamber under the volcano are larger than first thought and contradicts claims that only shallow hot rock exists. University of Utah research professor of geophysics Robert Smith led four separate studies that verify a plume of hot and molten rock at least 410 miles deep that rises at an angle from the northwest.
Books

Submission + - Copyright Industries oppose Treaty for Blind (wired.com)

Submitted by langelgjm
langelgjm writes: According to Wired, "A broad swath of American enterprise ranging from major software makers to motion picture and music companies are joining forces to oppose a new international treaty that would make books more accessible to the blind." With the exception of Google, almost every major industry player has expressed disapproval of the treaty, which would allow cross-border sharing of digitized books accessible to the blind and visually impaired. Google's chief copyright counsel believes the industry-wide opposition is mainly due to “opposition to a larger agenda of limitations and exceptions... We believe this is an unproductive approach to solving what is a discrete, long-standing problem that affects a group that needs and deserves the protections of the international community.”

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