Powerful Stellar Explosion
Astronomers have made the best ever determination of the power of a supernova explosion that was visible from Earth long ago. By observing the remnant of a supernova and a light echo from the initial outburst, they have established the validity of a powerful new method for studying supernovas.
Using data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, ESA’s XMM-Newton Observatory, and the Gemini Observatory, two teams of researchers studied the supernova remnant and the supernova light echo that are located in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a small galaxy about 160,000 light years from Earth. They concluded that the supernova occurred about 400 years ago (in Earth’s time frame), and was unusually bright and energetic.
Popularity: 10% [?]
March 20, 2008 | Filed Under Astronomy | Leave a CommentEarly Americans Arrived Earlier
A team led by two Texas A&M University anthropologists now believes the first Americans came to this country 1,000 to 2,000 years earlier than the 13,500 years ago previously thought, which could shift historic timelines.
The team’s findings are outlined in a review article in “Science” magazine titled “The Late Pleistocene Dispersal of Modern Humans in the Americas,” which synthesizes new data suggesting the migration from Alaska started about 15,000 years ago.
Popularity: 31% [?]
March 20, 2008 | Filed Under History | Leave a Comment3-D Camera with 12,616 Lenses
The camera you own has one main lens and produces a flat, two-dimensional photograph, whether you hold it in your hand or view it on your computer screen. On the other hand, a camera with two lenses (or two cameras placed apart from each other) can take more interesting 3-D photos.
But what if your digital camera saw the world through thousands of tiny lenses, each a miniature camera unto itself” You’d get a 2-D photo, but you’d also get something potentially more valuable: an electronic “depth map” containing the distance from the camera to every object in the picture, a kind of super 3-D.
Popularity: 10% [?]
March 20, 2008 | Filed Under Technology | Leave a CommentRobot Fetches Objects with Just a Point and a Click
Robots are fluent in their native language of 1 and 0 absolutes but struggle to grasp the nuances and imprecise nature of human language. While scientists are making slow, incremental progress in their quest to create a robot that responds to speech, gestures and body language, a more straightforward method of communication may help robots find their way into homes sooner.
A team of researchers led by Charlie Kemp, director of the Center for Healthcare Robotics in the Health Systems Institute at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University, have found a way to instruct a robot to find and deliver an item it may have never seen before using a more direct manner of communication — a laser pointer.
Popularity: 9% [?]
March 20, 2008 | Filed Under Technology | Leave a CommentAncient Lemur’s Little Finger Poses Mystery
Analysis of the first hand bones belonging to an ancient lemur has revealed a mysterious joint structure that has scientists puzzled.
Pierre Lemelin, an assistant professor of anatomy at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, and a team of fellow American researchers have analyzed the first hand bones ever found of Hadropithecus stenognathus, a lemur that lived 2,000 years ago. The bones were discovered in 2003 in a cave in southeastern Madagascar, an island nation off the coast of Africa in the Indian Ocean. Hadropithecus is related to the modern-day sifaka, a type of lemur with acrobatic leaping skills. A lemur is a monkey-like animal with a long tail and large eyes.
Popularity: 8% [?]
March 20, 2008 | Filed Under Biology | Leave a CommentDisgusting Videos Used to Study Coping Methods
“Control yourself!”
Most of us haven’t heard that admonition since our last childhood tantrum. Nonetheless, it’s something we often tell ourselves, consciously or not, as we deal with life’s daily ups and downs. The ability to regulate one’s emotions is critical to successfully interacting with others. How we go about achieving that self-control has an equally important effect on our own well-being.
Now, researchers at Stanford have conducted the first-ever brain imaging study that directly contrasts two different techniques for emotion regulation. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to observe neural activity in people’s brains as they employed each of the two methods in coping with one of the most visceral of human emotions: disgust.
Popularity: 6% [?]
March 20, 2008 | Filed Under Humans | Leave a CommentHyperactive Girls Face Problems as Adults
Young girls who are hyperactive are more likely to get hooked on smoking, under-perform in school or jobs and gravitate towards mentally abusive relationships as adults, according to a joint study by researchers from the Université de Montréal and the University College London (UCL).
The study, published in the latest issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry, followed 881 Canadian girls from the ages of six to 21 years to see how hyperactive or aggressive behaviour in childhood could affect early adulthood. The research team found that one in 10 girls monitored showed high levels of hyperactive behaviour. Another one in ten girls showed both high levels of hyperactive and physically aggressive behaviour.
Popularity: 6% [?]
March 20, 2008 | Filed Under Humans | Leave a CommentDifference in Eating Habits Between Men and Women
When it comes to what we eat, men and women really are different according to scientific research presented today (March 19) at the 2008 International Conference on Emerging Infectious Diseases in Atlanta, Georgia. In general, men are more likely to report eating meat and poultry items and women are more likely to report eating fruits and vegetables.
The findings come from the most recent population survey of the Foodborne Disease Active Surveillance Network (FoodNet). From May 2006 to April 2007 over 14,000 American adults participated in an extensive survey outlining their eating habits, including high risk foods for foodborne illness.
Popularity: 7% [?]
March 19, 2008 | Filed Under Humans | Leave a CommentReducing Carbon Emissions Could Help - Not Harm - US Economy
A national policy to cut carbon emissions by as much as 40 percent over the next 20 years could still result in increased economic growth, according to an interactive website that reviews 25 of the leading economic models used to predict the economic impacts of reducing emissions.
“As Congress prepares to debate new legislation to address the threat of climate change, opponents claim that the costs of adopting the leading proposals would be ruinous to the U.S. economy. The world’s leading economists who have studied the issue say that’s wrong — and you can find out for yourself,” said Robert Repetto, professor in the practice of economics and sustainable development at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies who created the site.
Popularity: 34% [?]
March 19, 2008 | Filed Under Geology | Leave a CommentSensor for Homemade Bombs
A team of chemists and physicists at the University of California, San Diego has developed a tiny, inexpensive sensor chip capable of detecting trace amounts of hydrogen peroxide, a chemical used in the most common form of homemade explosives.
The invention and operation of this penny-sized electronic sensor, capable of sniffing out hydrogen peroxide vapor in the parts-per-billion range from peroxide-based explosives, such as those used in the 2005 bombing of the London transit system, is detailed in a paper in this week’s issue of the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
Popularity: 9% [?]
March 19, 2008 | Filed Under Technology | Leave a Comment
