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Education

Science Wins Over Creationism In South Korea 302

Posted by Soulskill from the bribed-with-vespene-gas dept.
ananyo writes "South Korea's government has urged textbook publishers to ignore calls to remove two examples of evolution from high-school textbooks. The move marks a change of heart for the government, which had earlier forwarded a petition from the 'Society for Textbook Revise' to publishers and told them to make their own minds up about the demands. The petition called for details about the evolution of the horse and of the avian ancestor Archaeopteryx to be removed from the books. In May, news emerged that publishers were planning to drop the offending sections, sparking outrage among some scientists. The resulting furor prompted the government to set up an 11-member panel, led by the Korean Academy of Science and Technology. On 5 September, the panel concluded that Archaeopteryx must be included in Korean science textbooks. And, while accepting that the textbooks' explanation of the evolution of the horse was too simplistic, the panel said the entry should be revised rather than removed or replaced with a different example, such as the evolution of whales."
Earth

Arctic Sea Ice Hits Record Low 370

Posted by samzenpus from the learn-to-swim dept.
Titus Andronicus writes "Angela Fritz and Jeff Masters of Weather Underground analyze this year's record ongoing Arctic ice melt. Arctic sea ice extent, area, and volume are all at record lows for the post-1979 satellite era. The ice is expected to continue melting for perhaps another couple of weeks. Extreme sea ice melting might help cause greater numbers of more powerful Arctic storms, help to accelerate the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, and help to accelerate global warming itself, due to the increased absorption of solar energy into the ocean."
Medicine

Rare Form of Autism Could Be Curable With Protein Supplements 163

Posted by samzenpus from the social-eaters dept.
ananyo writes "A rare, hereditary form of autism has been found — and it may be treatable with protein supplements. Genome sequencing of six children with autism has revealed mutations in a gene that stops several essential amino acids being depleted. Mice lacking this gene developed neurological problems related to autism that were reversed by dietary changes (abstract). According to Joseph Gleeson, a child neurologist at the University of California, San Diego, who led the study, 'This might represent the first treatable form of autism.' It is possible that some other forms of autism may also be linked to uncommon metabolic disorders — and so treatable through dietary changes, according to the scientists quoted in the piece."
Shark

Florida Researchers Create Shortest Light Pulse Ever Recorded 76

Posted by timothy from the don't-blink-or-you'll-miss-it dept.
SchrodingerZ writes "Researchers at the University of Central Florida have created the shortest laser pulse ever recorded, lasting only 67 attoseconds. An attosecond is a mere quintillionith of a single second (1/1,000,000,000,000,000,000). The record-breaking project was run by UCF Professor Zenghu Chang, using an extreme ultraviolet laser pulse. '"Dr. Chang's success in making ever-shorter light pulses helps open a new door to a previously hidden world, where we can watch electrons move in atoms and molecules, and follow chemical reactions as they take place," said Michael Johnson, the dean of the UCF College of Sciences and a physicist.' Its hoped that these short laser blasts will pave the way to better understand quantum mechanics in ways we have never before witnessed. In 2008 the previous record was set at 80 attoseconds, the pulse created at the Max Planck Institute in Garching, Germany."
Crime

Dutch Police Ask 8000+ Citizens To Provide Their DNA 374

Posted by timothy from the just-a-swab-between-the-cheek-and-gums dept.
sciencewatcher writes "In an attempt to solve a rape and murder of a 16-year-old girl, the Dutch police have asked 8080 men to provide their DNA. All these people lived 5 km or less from the crime scene at the time of the murder. This reopened cold case is the first large-scale attempt not to hunt the rapist and killer but to locate his close or distant male relatives. All data gathered will be destroyed after the match with this particular murder. There seems to be great public support for this attempt." Shades of The Blooding.
Communications

Quantum Teleportation Sends Information 143 Kilometers 333

Posted by timothy from the like-a-coal-mine-in-the-canaries dept.
SchrodingerZ writes "Scientists from around the world have collaborated to achieve quantum teleportation over 143 kilometers in free space. Quantum information was sent between the Canary Islands of La Palma and Tenerife. Quantum teleportation is not how it is made out in Star Trek, though. Instead of sending an object (in this case a photon) from one location to another; the information of its quantum state is sent, making a photon on the other end look identical to the original. 'Teleportation across 143 kilometres is a crucial milestone in this research, since that is roughly the minimum distance between the ground and orbiting satellites.' It is the hope of the research team that this experiment will lead to commercial use of quantum teleportation to interact with satellites and ground stations. This will increase the efficiency of satellite communication and help with the expansion of quantum internet usage. The full paper on the experiment can be found [note: abstract only, full article paywalled] in the journal Nature."
Mars

NASA Working on Mars Menu 220

Posted by samzenpus from the we're-going-to-need-a-bigger-cooler dept.
DevotedSkeptic writes in with a story about the work going into feeding astronauts on a mission to Mars. "The menu must sustain a group of six to eight astronauts, keep them healthy and happy and also offer a broad array of food. That's no simple feat considering it will likely take six months to get to the Red Planet, astronauts will have to stay there 18 months and then it will take another six months to return to Earth. Imagine having to shop for a family's three-year supply of groceries all at once and having enough meals planned in advance for that length of time. 'Mars is different just because it's so far away,' said Maya Cooper, a senior research scientist with Lockheed Martin who is leading the efforts to build the menu. 'We don't have the option to send a vehicle every six months and send more food as we do for the International Space Station.'"
ISS

Space Station Saved By a Toothbrush? 179

Posted by samzenpus from the break-out-the-emergency-floss dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Denise Chow reports that two spacewalking astronauts successfully replaced a vital power unit on the International Space Station today, defeating a stubborn bolt that prevented the astronauts from properly installing the power unit on the ISS's backbone-like truss with the help of some improvised tools made of spare parts and a toothbrush. Astronauts Sunita Williams and Akihiko Hoshide started by removing the power box, called a main bus switching unit (MBSU), from where it had been temporarily tied down with a tether, then spent several hours troubleshooting the unit and the two bolts that are designed to secure it in place on the space station's truss. After undoing the bolts, the spacewalkers examined them for possible damage, and used improvised cleaning tools and a pressurized can of nitrogen gas to clean out the metal shavings from the bolt receptacles. 'I see a lot of metal shavings coming out,' Hoshide said as he maneuvered a wire cleaner around one of the bolt holders. Williams and Hoshide then lubricated a spare bolt and manually threaded it into the place where the real bolt was eventually driven, in an effort to ensure that the receptacle was clear of any debris. Then the two applied grease to the sticky bolt as well as extra pressure and plain old jiggling until finally 4½ hours into the spacewalk, Hoshide reported: 'It is locked.' When Hoshide reported that the troublesome bolt was finally locked into place, the flight managers erupted in applause while astronaut Jack Fischer at Mission Control told the astronauts 'that is a little slice of awesome pie.'"
Medicine

The UK's New Minister For Magic 526

Posted by Soulskill from the pure-and-undiluted dept.
An anonymous reader sends this depressing excerpt from New Scientist: "A serious blow to science-based medical practices has been dealt in the UK with the appointment of Jeremy Hunt as Health Secretary. The fortunes of the UK's National Health Service (NHS) are about to be transformed with the help of the magical waters of homeopathic medicine. Top marks to The Telegraph's science writer Tom Chivers for quickly picking up on talk that the UK's new health minister, Jeremy Hunt – who replaced Andrew Lansley yesterday in a government reshuffle – thinks that homeopathy works, and should be provided at public expense by the NHS."
Space

Bill Clinton Backs 100 Year Starship 299

Posted by Soulskill from the enthused-about-green-women dept.
astroengine writes "The light-years between the stars is vast — a seemingly insurmountable quarantine that cuts our solar system off from the rest of the galaxy. But to a growing number of interstellar enthusiasts who will meet in Houston, Texas, for the 100YSS Public Symposium next week, interstellar distances may not be as insurmountable as they seem. What's more, they even have the support of former U.S. President Bill Clinton."
Biotech

Function of 80% of the Human Genome Charted 112

Posted by Soulskill from the scientists-are-busy-busy-people dept.
ananyo writes "In what is likely to be a historic moment in science, ENCODE, the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements, has published 30 papers in Nature, Genome Research and Genome Biology today, assigning some sort of function to roughly 80% of the genome, including more than 70,000 'promoter' regions — the sites, just upstream of genes, where proteins bind to control gene expression — and nearly 400,000 'enhancer' regions that regulate expression of distant genes. The project was designed to pick up where the Human Genome Project left off. Although that massive effort revealed the blueprint of human biology, it quickly became clear that the instruction manual for reading the blueprint was sketchy at best. Researchers could identify in its 3 billion letters many of the regions that code for proteins, but those make up little more than 1% of the genome, contained in around 20,000 genes. ENCODE, which started in 2003, aims to catalog the 'functional' DNA sequences between genes, learn when and in which cells they are active and trace their effects on how the genome is packaged, regulated and read. Nature has set up an ENCODE site with an explorer, that groups the papers by topic, and collects all the papers, which are available free."
NASA

NASA Voyage To Explore Link Between Sea Saltiness and Climate 44

Posted by Soulskill from the another-climate-thing-to-argue-about dept.
DevotedSkeptic sends this excerpt from NASA: "A NASA-sponsored expedition is set to sail to the North Atlantic's saltiest spot to get a detailed, 3-D picture of how salt content fluctuates in the ocean's upper layers and how these variations are related to shifts in rainfall patterns around the planet. The research voyage is part of a multi-year mission, dubbed the Salinity Processes in the Upper Ocean Regional Study (SPURS), which will deploy multiple instruments in different regions of the ocean. ... They will return with new data to aid in understanding one of the most worrisome effects of climate change — the acceleration of Earth's water cycle. As global temperatures go up, evaporation increases, altering the frequency, strength, and distribution of rainfall around the planet, with far-reaching implications for life on Earth."
Medicine

'Magic Carpet' Could Help Prevent Falls Among the Elderly 87

Posted by Soulskill from the let-the-sound-take-you-away dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Falls are a major cause of injury and death among over-70s, and account for more than 50% of hospital admissions for accidental injury. Thus, being able to identify changes in people's walking patterns and gait in the natural environment, such as in a corridor in a nursing home, could help identity mobility problems early on. Now, BBC reports that researchers have shown off a 'magic carpet' that can detect falls and may even predict mobility problems. Beneath the carpet is a mesh of optical fibers that detect and plot movement as pressure bends them, changing the light detected at the carpet's edges. These deflected light patterns help electronics 'learn' walking patterns and detect if they are deteriorating. With over 19,700 deaths in the elderly in the U.S. in 2008 from unintentional fall injuries and 2.2 million nonfatal fall injuries among older adults treated in emergency departments, spotting subtle changes in a person's walking habits may help identify changes that might go unnoticed by family members or care-givers. 'The carpet can gather a wide range of information about a person's condition; from biomechanical to chemical sensing of body fluids, enabling holistic sensing to provide an environment that detects and responds to changes in patient condition,' says Patricia Scully from The University of Manchester's Photon Science Institute."
NASA

35 Years Later, Voyager 1 Is Heading For the Stars 226

Posted by Soulskill from the watch-out-for-black-holes dept.
DevotedSkeptic writes with news that today is the 35th anniversary of Voyager 1's launch. (Voyager 2 reached the same anniversary on August 20.) Voyager 1 is roughly 18 billion kilometers from the sun, slowly but steadily pushing through the heliosheath and toward interstellar space. From the article: "Perhaps no one on Earth will relish the moment more than 76-year-old Ed Stone, who has toiled on the project from the start. 'We're anxious to get outside and find what's out there,' he said. When NASA's Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 first rocketed out of Earth's grip in 1977, no one knew how long they would live. Now, they are the longest-operating spacecraft in history and the most distant, at billions of miles from Earth but in different directions. ... Voyager 1 is in uncharted celestial territory. One thing is clear: The boundary that separates the solar system and interstellar space is near, but it could take days, months or years to cross that milestone. ... These days, a handful of engineers diligently listen for the Voyagers from a satellite campus not far from the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which built the spacecraft. The control room, with its cubicles and carpeting, could be mistaken for an insurance office if not for a blue sign overhead that reads 'Mission Controller' and a warning on a computer: 'Voyager mission critical hardware. Please do not touch!' There are no full-time scientists left on the mission, but 20 part-timers analyze the data streamed back. Since the spacecraft are so far out, it takes 17 hours for a radio signal from Voyager 1 to travel to Earth. For Voyager 2, it takes about 13 hours."
NASA

Partisan Food Fight Erupts Over NASA, Commercial Space 164

Posted by Soulskill from the we-strongly-support-things-that-poll-well dept.
RocketAcademy writes "Until recently, space policy has been a non-partisan issue. Even when politicians disagreed on space-policy issues, that disagreement rarely aligned with party lines. That has changed in the last few years. Now, one organization is throwing fuel on the political fire. The Space Frontier Foundation has called Republicans the Party of Big Government Space. SFF is upset about the GOP platform, which lacks specifics about space policy. According to the SFF, the GOP 'has nothing but hackneyed praise for NASA, and doesn't even mention the increasing role of the private sector.' The Obama campaign quickly echoed the statement. But NASA Watch points out that the Democratic platform is even less specific than the GOP's. Others express concerns that partisanship harms space policy."
United States

Obama and Romney Respond To ScienceDebate.org Questionnaire 608

Posted by Soulskill from the pi-is-exactly-3 dept.
rhsanborn writes "President Barack Obama and Republican Presidential Nominee Mitt Romney have both responded to a questionnaire on the 'most important science policy questions facing the United States.' The questionnaire was created by ScienceDebate.org, a group consisting of many influential organizations in science and engineering. The questions are on many topics including research, internet regulation, and climate change."
Medicine

UK Paraplegic Woman First To Take Robotic Suit Home 116

Posted by Soulskill from the can-we-call-it-a-mech dept.
An anonymous reader writes "It might be a ways off, but every day we get closer to the possibility of William Gibson's short story The Winter Market becoming a plausible reality. Viable consumer exoskeleton for the paralyzed? Check, finally. Quoting Reuters: 'The exoskeleton is activated by the wearer tilting their balance to indicate the desire to take a step. It supports the body's weight and also allows the person to go up or down stairs, as well as sit or stand up independently. It costs 45,000 pounds and although clinical studies are ongoing that could back a case for health authorities to fund purchases of the device, the developers argue that savings on the treatment of ailments related to inactivity could offset the cost.'"
Biotech

Wood Pulp Extract Stronger Than Carbon Fiber Or Kevlar 208

Posted by timothy from the and-so-delicious-too dept.
Zothecula writes "The Forest Products Laboratory of the US Forest Service has opened a US$1.7 million pilot plant for the production of cellulose nanocrystals (CNC) from wood by-products materials such as wood chips and sawdust. Prepared properly, CNCs are stronger and stiffer than Kevlar or carbon fibers, so that putting CNC into composite materials results in high strength, low weight products. In addition, the cost of CNCs is less than ten percent of the cost of Kevlar fiber or carbon fiber. These qualities have attracted the interest of the military for use in lightweight armor and ballistic glass (CNCs are transparent), as well as companies in the automotive, aerospace, electronics, consumer products, and medical industries."
Businesses

Ask Slashdot: Dealing With Disabilities In the Workplace? 292

Posted by timothy from the getting-a-handle-on-things dept.
mpol writes "The job market can be hard right now, depending on your background and location. Having a disability makes things even more interesting. Seven years ago I suffered from a psychosis, and I was diagnosed with schizophrenia. I have been recovering quite well, and last year I started searching for a paying job. I found one, but it didn't turn out to be the right place, so I'm back at my volunteer job as web developer. My current workplace is quite unique, as there are several people who have had a psychosis in the past, or have been diagnosed with autism. When I look at myself I know that I have some things that will always play a role: I'm very sensitive to the atmosphere in the workplace for example. I also need clear communication, more so than other people. Furthermore, a workweek of maybe 20-25 hours is the max for me. I tried self-employment, but motivation and discipline are a bit hard to come by, and it's not something that will work for me long-term. In theory it's perfect, in practice not so much. I'm not sure what my short-term future will look like, and for this year I'm quite happy where I am, but next year I might go searching for a salaried job again. I'm wondering if there are more people on Slashdot who have a job in ICT, or are seeking one, and also have disabilities. How did you land at your job, and what issues do you run into in daily practice?"
Space

Nuclear Powered LEDs For Space Farming 287

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the 1950s-science-strikes-back dept.
DevotedSkeptic writes with an interesting article on possible lighting sources for growing food on the moon and other off-world locations. From the article: "... Agriculture remains the key to living and working off-world. All the mineral ore in the solar system can't replace the fact that for extended periods on the Moon or Mars, future off-worlders will need bio-regenerative systems in order to prosper. Here on earth, researchers still debate how best to make those possible, but nuclear-powered state of the art LED technology is arguably what will drive photosynthesis so necessary to provide both food and oxygen for future lunar colonists. ... Although during the two weeks that make up the long lunar day astronauts might be able to funnel refracted sunlight into covered greenhouses or subsurface lava tunnels, they will be left without a light source during the long lunar night. Current solar-powered battery storage technology isn't adequate to sustain artificial light sources for two weeks at the time. Thus, the most practical solution is simply to use some sort of Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator, not unlike the one powering the current Mars Science lab, to power the LEDs that will spur photosynthesis in lunar greenhouses. ... On earth, Mitchell says it takes roughly 50 square meters of agriculture to provide both food and oxygen life to support one human. But, as he points out, who can say how productive plants are ultimately going to be on the moon, in gravity that is only one sixth that of earth?"

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