New Kepler Planets in Resonance

post from Centauri Dreams on 26 August 2010 02:40:54 PM. © Centauri Dreams

Somewhere around 2000 light years away in the direction of the constellation Lyra is a Sun-like star orbited by at least two Saturn-class planets. What?s interesting about this news, as just discussed in the Kepler press conference I?ve been listening to[...]

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http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=14108&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaig
n=new-kepler-planets-in-resonance

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How Kodak Built a FrankenCamera to Take Digital
Photos in 1975

post from CR4 - Recent Blog Entries on 26 August 2010 02:39:02 PM. © CR4 - Recent Blog Entries

From Gizmodo: During the frigid Rochester winter of 1975, researchers at Kodak pieced together the future a quarter of a century early. Built from scavenged parts, the team had created their first "film-less" camera—an idea far ahead of its time. Read the whole arti

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http://cr4.globalspec.com/blogentry/13796/How-Kodak-Built-a-FrankenCamera-to-Take
-Digital-Photos-in-1975?from_rss=1

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How the brain shifts between sleep/awake states
under anesthesia

post from Machines Like Us - Science at the speed of thought on 26 August 2010 02:34:24 PM. © Machines Like Us - Science at the speed of thought

Despite the fact that an estimated 25 million patients per year in the U.S. undergo surgeries using general anesthesia, scientists have only been able to hypothesize exactly how anesthetics interact with the central nervous system.

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http://machineslikeus.com/news/how-brain-shifts-between-sleepawake-states-under-a
nesthesia

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SPEECH Act now a law: big win for libel reform!

post from Bad Astronomy on 26 August 2010 02:30:39 PM. © Bad Astronomy

American authors, journalists, and bloggers can breath a sigh of relief: with broad bipartisan support, a short time ago President Obama signed a bill into law that makes sure that the awful and regressive libel laws in the UK cannot be enforced here in[...]

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http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/BadAstronomyBlog/~3/u0YN2tzm5gU/

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Arghhhh!!! Us vs. Darwin

post from Fish Feet on 26 August 2010 02:16:26 PM. © Fish Feet

What a week! We hadn't expected for the publicity on our paper in Biology Letters to be quite so extensive and controversial. And we certainly hadn't intended to be cast opposite to Darwin.

On the one hand we have had some unfortunate exaggerations, most notably the Huffington Post which writes Darwin May Have Been WRONG (Seriously does the editor think putting it in all caps makes it true??!!!?)

But on the positive end we have had some more fair minded reporting of the research, a few examples:

By the way, if you are interested in reading the paper for yourself (readers will note we did not mention Darwin once in our paper) it is available to download at my academia.edu page.

Thank you to everyone who has provided feedback and some critical thinking towards the research. Next week... back to normality:)

Sahney, S., Benton, M.J. and Paul Ferry 2010. Links between global taxonomic diversity, ecological diversity and the expansion of vertebrates on land. Biology Letters 6:544-547.
Download PDFSarda Sahney of the University of Bristol writes Fish Feet, a science blog about biodiversity, conservation, palaeontology, evolution and current controversies. Recent topics include the frilled shark, living fossils, white tigers, polar bears who hunt beluga whales and the world's largest dinosaur

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Doctors' religious beliefs strongly influence
end-of-life decisions

post from Machines Like Us - Science at the speed of thought on 26 August 2010 02:06:28 PM. © Machines Like Us - Science at the speed of thought

Atheist or agnostic doctors are almost twice as willing to take decisions that they think will hasten the end of a very sick patient's life as doctors who are deeply religious, suggests research published online in the Journal of Medical Ethics.

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http://machineslikeus.com/news/doctors-religious-beliefs-strongly-influence-end-l
ife-decisions

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Whoops! The 10 Greatest (Accidental) Inventions
of All Time

post from CR4 - Recent Blog Entries on 26 August 2010 01:48:10 PM. © CR4 - Recent Blog Entries

From Gizmodo: "Everything comes to him who hustles while he waits," Thomas Edison once said. But is hustling all it takes? Is progress always deliberate? Sometimes genius arrives not by choice—but by chance. Below are our ten favorite serendipitous innovations. Read

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http://cr4.globalspec.com/blogentry/13795/Whoops-The-10-Greatest-Accidental-Inven
tions-of-All-Time?from_rss=1

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Analysis of Ashkenazi Jewish genomes reveals
diversity

post from Machines Like Us - Science at the speed of thought on 26 August 2010 01:37:16 PM. © Machines Like Us - Science at the speed of thought

Through genomic analysis, researchers at Emory University School of Medicine have shown that the Ashkenazi Jewish population is genetically more diverse than people of European descent, despite previous assumptions that Ashkenazi Jews have been an isolated population.

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http://machineslikeus.com/news/analysis-ashkenazi-jewish-genomes-reveals-diversit
y

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Meteorite evidence favors explosive origins

I think I lost this story this week amidst the widespread coverage of a new solar system discovered with seven planets -- but astronomers at Arizona State (Go Lumberjacks!) published new research in the journal Nature Geoscience on Sunday about our own solar system's origins.

The ASU researchers acquired a small piece of a meteorite from a private dealer that had gotten the space rock off a local in Morocco after it was found in the Sahara desert. When the team analyzed the meteor, they found it was as much as 2 million years older than the previously accepted age of the solar system - or 4,568.2?million years old - making it the oldest object ever discovered on earth. While that is only a slight difference when compared to a 4.5 billion year old system, they also found the meteorite had some peculiar properties about it.

The meteorite contains a type of iron that can only be formed when a star goes supernova. Previous theories of the solar system's origins held that it was created isolated from other stars, but recent research has pointed to an alternate theory that our solar nebula might have condensed with help from a star exploding nearby.

This new discovery should help push the scientific consensus towards such an alternative and dramatic beginning.

From the Arizona State University news site:

"This relatively small age adjustment means that there was as much as twice the amount of iron-60, a certain short-lived isotope of iron, in the early Solar System than previously determined. This higher initial abundance of this isotope in the Solar System can only be explained by supernova injection," said (Audrey) Bouvier, a faculty research associate in the School of Earth and Space Exploration (SESE) in ASU?s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. "This supernova event, and possibly others, could have triggered the formation of the Solar System. By studying meteorites and their isotopic characteristics, we bring new clues about the stellar environment of our Sun at birth."

Read the ASU researchers paper here.

A good article about it in NatGeo.

Scientific American too.

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http://physicsbuzz.physicscentral.com/2010/08/meteorite-evidence-favors-explosive
.html

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Walking boosts brain connectivity, function

post from Machines Like Us - Science at the speed of thought on 26 August 2010 12:45:04 PM. © Machines Like Us - Science at the speed of thought

A group of "professional couch potatoes," as one researcher described them, has proven that even moderate exercise ? in this case walking at one's own pace for 40 minutes three times a week ? can enhance the connectivity of important brain circuits, combat declines in brain function associated with aging and increase performance on cognitive tasks.

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http://machineslikeus.com/news/walking-boosts-brain-connectivity-function

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