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| Britain Approves Human Cloning |
Posted by
timothy
on Tuesday March 05, @04:49PM
from the please-be-careful-with-those-things dept. albat0r writes: "The scientific community in Britain scored a huge victory on February 27th. A very influential and powerful committee in the House of Lords ruled that embryo cloning should be allowed to proceed-but only under strict conditions. The United States currently has ban on all forms of human cloning."
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) Computers Seek The Call Of An Extinct Bird |
Posted by
timothy
on Tuesday March 05, @03:54PM
from the tweet-echelon-tweet dept. Buran writes: "As a self-proclaimed geek and a relative (and fascinated!) newcomer to the world of birding, I found this article in the >New York Times Science Tuesday about the search for the ivory-billed woodpecker to be rather interesting. The bird, which was listed as extinct in 1997, has not been definitively sighted since the 1950s, but a recent reported sighting (in 1999) has led to a redoubled effort to find it. The geek side is this: Since it would be impractical for a human to sift through 5,000 hours of recorded sound (two and a half years, they estmate) to listen for the bird's distinctive call, the Cornell researchers are working on algorithms that can pick out interesting sections of digitally recorded sound, taken from microphones placed throughout the study area, for a human (who can outdo a computer any day at making the final determination) to review. I am hopeful that the search will return a positive result."
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Read More... | 12 of 17 comments
) Spacecraft Teamwork Ferrets Out Jupiter's Secrets |
Posted by
timothy
on Tuesday March 05, @01:56PM
from the working-out-of-the-office dept. Judebert writes "Working together, Galileo and Cassini found how the solar wind affects Jupiter, shaping its magnetosphere (the biggest object in the solar system with distinct boundaries) and triggering auroras. They also detected the magnetic footprints of Jupiter's moons in the auroras. The Hubble and Chandra also had a role in this display of inter-planetary teamwork.
Of course, the big benefit you receive from your tax dollars is all the pretty pictures! New desktop images for me!"
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Read More... | 10 of 12 comments
) Nist: New Optical Clock More Accurate Than Cesium |
Posted by
chrisd
on Monday March 04, @11:10PM
from the lonely-exhibitionsist-ion dept. LordPhatal writes "NIST researchers have demonstrated a new kind of atomic clock that has the potential to be up to 1,000 times more accurate than today's best clock. The new clock is based on an energy transition in a single trapped mercury ion.
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Read More... | 32 of 38 comments
) Table Top Fusion Courtesy of Tiny Bubbles |
Posted by
chrisd
on Monday March 04, @08:22PM
from the don-ho-was-right-all-along dept. Erik Baard writes: "The peer-reviewed journal Science is carrying a cover story about the possibility of table top fusion. Not cold fusion, mind you, but the apparatus might look that way to some. Oak Ridge and other labs say they have gotten the fingerprints of fusion (neutron production) from collapsing bubbles in liquid, a process that heats a local area to temperatures as hot as the surface of the sun, and releases photons.
The disputes are already here -- notably from Dr. Robert Park of the American Physical Society and from critical reviewers who say they haven't repeated the neutron production. But the authors say the critics didn't calibrate their equipment correctly. Articles regarding the discovery can be found on
Eureka Alert " CD: Looks legit, but Pons and Fleishman (and the University of Utah for that matter) talked a good game. I suppose I'll belive in tabletop fusion when a generator comes atached to my next laptop. The author of this post also has a longer article up at the Village Voice
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) Frog Cells Turned Drug Detectors |
Posted by
timothy
on Monday March 04, @09:42AM
from the gattica-tech dept. An Anonymous Coward writes: "Saw on Webdrift that New Scientist has an article on color-changing frog cells and that they could be used to drug test athletes. Apparently the cells are particularly good at detecting opiate drugs, and you don't even have to know which one you're testing for!"
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Read More... | 7 of 12 comments
) Odyssey Sends Back Images of Mars |
Posted by
timothy
on Sunday March 03, @10:35PM
from the still-reddish dept. shift8key writes: "Mars Odyseey finally reached orbit and sent back some good pictures.
The New York Times (free registration) has a fairly good
article with some images. NASA's site allows for
tracking of Odyssey, with updates every ten minutes."
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Read More... | 5 of 8 comments
) New Hand-Held Detector Determines Radiation Type |
Posted by
timothy
on Sunday March 03, @05:35PM
from the camcorder-batteries dept. Red Leader writes: "This article covers a new portable radiation detector. A serious problem with conventional Geiger counters is that they don't indicate the type of radiation they're picking up. Thus, fissile material can be disguised as medical stuffs. This device uses a 'low-power cryogenic cooling mechanism originally designed for the aerospace industry' to cool a germainum detector rather than a really big thick-walled steel tank of liquid nitrogen."
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) Planet-Hunting Observatory Being Assembled |
Posted by
timothy
on Sunday March 03, @12:22PM
from the put-out-a-large-salt-lick dept. Default.cfg writes: "The telescope system for NASA’s Space Infrared Telescope Facility arrived February 20 at Lockheed Martin Space Systems Co., Sunnyvale, Calif., where it will be integrated with the spacecraft. The system, called the cryogenic telescope assembly, contains the telescope, liquid helium cooling tank and three science instruments. It was shipped on February 19 from Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo., where it was built.
The Space Infrared Telescope Facility, scheduled to launch on January 9, 2003, will study the early universe and hunt for planet-forming regions in dust disks around nearby stars. It will also detect objects by looking for the heat they emit in the infrared portion of the electromagnetic spectrum.
The Space Infrared Telescope Facility is the fourth and final mission under NASA's Great Observatories Program, which includes the Hubble Space Telescope, the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory and the Chandra Advanced X-ray Observatory. The observatory is also the first new mission of NASA's Origins Program, which will study the formation of galaxies, stars, planets and life, and seek to answer the questions: Where did we come from? Are we alone?"
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) 42 Worlds in 32 Days |
Posted by
timothy
on Saturday March 02, @06:36PM
from the beats-old-phineas-soundly dept. Odie writes: "Since the first discovery of a planet
around another star in 1995, some 60+ planetary systems have been
discovered. That’s about one every two
month, most of them uninhabitable Jupiter-sized heavyweights. Not much
statistics to put in the
Drake equation. Recently though,
the OGLE team has come up with more than 42 new
candidates. Nice in itself, but
what is spectacular is that they spent only 32 days finding them! At that rate COROT
should soon find plenty of worlds to explore for you budding Starfleet sailors!
"
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