Basic Yellow 1 Dye Is a Worm Wonder Drug

It increases the lifespan for nematode worms by 50% and slows the progression of Alzheimer's.

ScienceDaily (Mar. 31, 2011) — Basic Yellow 1, a dye used in neuroscience laboratories around the world to detect damaged protein in Alzheimer's disease, is a wonder drug for nematode worms. In a study appearing in Nature, the dye, also known as Thioflavin T (ThT), extended lifespan in healthy nematode worms by more than 50 percent and slowed the disease process in worms bred to mimic aspects of Alzheimer's. The research, conducted at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging, could open new ways to intervene in aging and age-related disease.

The study highlights a process called protein homeostasis -- the ability of an organism to maintain the proper structure and balance of its proteins, which are the building blocks of life. Genetic studies have long indicated that protein homeostasis is a major contributor to longevity in complex animals. Many degenerative diseases have been linked to a breakdown in the process. Buck faculty member Gordon Lithgow, PhD, who led the research, said this study points to the use of compounds to support protein homeostasis, something that ThT, did as the worms aged.

Portal 2: The game for non-gamers

'Portal 2' brings double the trouble

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Top Paleoclimatologist Predicts New Ice Age

This thinking is out of the current mainstream of paleoclimatologists, but George Kukla believes the current period of global warming could be a harbinger of a coming ice age.

(Helium)- Geologic records show that Ice Ages are the norm, punctuated by brief periods of warming. Now one of the most highly respected paleoclimatologists has weighed in and is warning everyone to prepare for a new Ice Age.

A new Ice Age? Then what's all the brouhaha about man-made global warming over the past 20 years?

George Kukla, 77, retired professor of paleoclimatology at Columbia University and researcher at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory responds, "The only thing to worry about global warming is the damage that can be done by worrying. Why are some scientists worried? Perhaps because they feel that to stop worrying may mean to stop being paid."

The "Earth has experienced an ongoing cycle of ice ages dating back millions of years. Cold, glacial periods affecting the polar to mid-latitudes persist for about 100,000 years, punctuated by briefer, warmer periods called interglacials," Kukla says.

Co-author of an important section of the book "Natural Climate Variability on Decade to Century Time Scales," Kukla asserts all Ice Ages start with a period of global warming. They are the the harbingers of new Ice Ages. Actually, he explains, warming is good. Ice Ages are deadly and may even kill millions.

Treadmill Tests for Poison Frogs?

Poison frogs are more fit than others. It is due to their foraging for food.

ScienceDaily (Mar. 29, 2011) — In forests in Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela, and Panamá, Santos subjected nearly 500 poison frogs -- representing more than 50 species -- to a frog fitness test. He measured their oxygen uptake during exercise using a rotating plastic tube, turning the tube like a hamster wheel to make the frogs walk.

Santos estimated the frogs' metabolic rates while at rest, and again after four minutes of exercise. The result? The most dazzling and deadly species had higher aerobic capacity than their drab, nontoxic cousins.
"They're better able to extract oxygen from each breath and transport it to their muscles, just like well-trained athletes," Santos said.

Poisonous species owe their athletic prowess to their unusual foraging habits, explained co-author David Cannatella of the University of Texas at Austin. Unlike snakes and other poisonous animals which make their own venom, poison frogs get their toxins from their food.

Is It Safe to Kiss Your Pet?

With faces like those, who can resist.

What is on Mercury: Messenge Sends First Photo

The first photo of NASA's Messenger probe while in orbit around Mercury.

Bright Low Energy Light Bulb Wins Design Award

The only catch is it costs $32.

The Violent Death of Iron Age Man

He was the victim of a gruesome ritual killing.

ScienceDaily (Mar. 28, 2011) — An Iron Age man whose skull and brain was unearthed during excavations at the University of York was the victim of a gruesome ritual killing, according to new research.

Scientists say that fractures and marks on the bones suggest the man, who was aged between 26 and 45, died most probably from hanging, after which he was carefully decapitated and his head was then buried on its own.

Archaeologists discovered the remains in 2008 in one of a series of Iron Age pits on the site of the University's £750 million campus expansion at Heslington East. Brain material was still in the skull which dates back around 2500 years, making it one the oldest surviving brains in Europe.

A multi-disciplinary team of scientists, including archaeologists, chemists, bio-archaeologists and neurologists, was assembled to attempt to establish how the man's brain, could have survived when all the other soft tissue had decayed leaving only the bone.

UFO Video Shot Over Denver Area (video)

You decide if this UFO video shows something otherworldly.

(YouTube)- We were in Lafayette, CO in my cousin's backyard facing west. The lights appeared to be approximately 3000-6000 feet high, coming from the West-Southwest and moving to the southeast. When they disappeared, they seemed to be directly over Denver. I was only visiting on my vacation, so I am not positive about the exact location or direction we were facing, but I am sure we were looking towards the west. We viewed the lights for approximately 15-20 minutes before they disappeared.

As seen on Good Morning America! (Pt 2) UFO Sighting in Lafayette (Denver area), Colorado 3/20/11 

Can Quantum Mechanics Explain How We Smell?

The idea is controversial, but gaining ground.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Since 1996, when biophysicist Luca Turin first suggested that quantum mechanics may help explain how we smell various odors, the idea has met with controversy. In the past 15 years, some studies have found evidence supporting the theory, while other studies have found problems with it. Now Turin - who is currently at MIT and the Fleming Biomedical Sciences Research Centre in Vari, Greece - along with his colleagues, has published a study that provides further evidence for the vibration theory of smell, and may make the theory a bit less controversial.

In the traditional “lock and key” model of smell, odorant molecules of different shapes and sizes fit into different receptors, similar to the current understanding of how drugs affect the body. When a molecule enters a receptor, the receptor sends a signal to the brain, and we smell that molecule.

However, there is one problem with this model, which is that some molecules with nearly identical shapes smell very different. This evidence suggests that some other criteria in addition to size and shape must cause receptors to react differently and to send different signals to the brain.

According to Turin’s theory, the additional criteria are the vibrational frequencies of odorant molecules. A molecule’s vibrational frequency can cause electrons in the nasal receptors to tunnel between two energy states if the vibrational frequency matches the energy difference of the two states. Tunneling is a quantum mechanical phenomenon, since the electrons do not have enough energy to move between the two states by classical means.

Read more here.

More Shocking Japan Tsunami Video

More incredible video has been released of the Japan Tsunami.

ULTIMATE XBOX DESTRUCTION: Russian Dimtri gets revenge for the red ring of death

Older XBOX 360's has a serious flaw. The often died with the red ring of death. Russian Dimtri gets revenge with guns and explosives.

River water flowing into sea water can be a battery

Image credit: ACS

New entropy battery captures energy from the imbalance of salinity in fresh water and seawater.

(PhysOrg.com) -- A team of researchers, led by Dr. Yi Cui, of Stanford and Dr. Bruce Logan from Penn State University have succeeded in developing an entropy battery that pulls energy from the imbalance of salinity in fresh water and seawater. Their paper, published in Nano Letters, describes a deceptively simple process whereby an entropy battery is used to capture the energy that is naturally released when river water flows into the sea.

Up to now, this kind of process has been accomplished by passing seawater though a membrane which unfortunately is too costly to merit creating large-scale operations.
Read more here.

Herbs Can Help With Stress

 They are called "Adaptogens".

Natural Remedies for Stress

Researchers plan to drill six mile deep hole

Wikimedea Commons

A Japanese drill ship will drill the deepest hole ever!

(FOX News)- It's no journey to the center of the Earth. Not yet, anyway.

But scientists do intend to drill the deepest hole ever made in the Earth's crust, deep beneath the oceans off the coast of Costa Rica, an effort to collect samples of the planet's mantle for the first time ever, according to a report at National Geographic News. 

Samples pulled from deep within the planet -- extracted by a Japanese drill ship equipped with a whopping six miles of drilling pipe -- would rival moon rocks in terms of scientific importance, they claim. 

Bigfoot video shot in North Carolina

Is this video of Bigfoot real or fake?


Via YouTube:

On the evening of Tuesday, March 22, 2011 while driving down Golden Valley Church Road I and a friend Carolyn Wright observed the Big-Foot Knobby or one similar to it cross the road in front of the truck we were in and run into the woods. It came from out of the field from the direction of the creek...

Bigfoot, video

Were the First North Americans Texans?

The earliest dated North American site is now in Taxas. it dates back 15,500 years ago.

(PHYSORG)- New discoveries at a Central Texas archaeological site by a Texas A&M University-led research team prove that people lived in the region far earlier – as much as 2,500 years earlier – than previously believed, rewriting what anthropologists know about when the first inhabitants arrived in North America. That pushes the arrival date back to about 15,500 years ago.

Michael Waters, director of Texas A&M's Center for the Study of First Americans, along with researchers from Baylor University, the University of Illinois-Chicago, the University of Minnesota, and Texas State University, have found the oldest archaeological evidence for human occupation in Texas and North America at the Debra L.

Friedkin site, located about 40 miles northwest of Austin. Their work is published in the current issue of Science magazine.

Coolest timelapse video of the Northern Lights (with music)

In The Land Of The Northern Lights

In The Land Of The Northern Lights from Ole Christian Salomonsen on Vimeo.

Want a robot to vacuum your house?

iRobot's Scooba 230

Want a robot to vacuum your house?

Long-necked dinosaur "missing link" found

A new fossil found in Argentina is completing the evolutionary history of long-necked dinosaurs.

(PHYSORG)- Fossils of a recently discovered dinosaur species in Argentina is a "missing link" in the evolution of the long-necked giants that roamed the earth millions of years ago, paleontologists said.

Long-neck, long-tail plant-eaters like Diplodocus, Brachiosaurus and Brontomerus -- the largest land creatures ever to walk on earth -- are dinosaurs known as sauropods. They lived some 170 million years ago.

Paleontologists see the recently discovered Leonerasaurus Taquetransis as the connection between the smaller prosauropods -- also known as near-sauropods -- like Sellosaurus and Plateosaurus from the Triassic period (248-205 million years ago) to their much larger descendants, the sauropods.

Cool video: Mindstorms Aircraft Factory

Mindstorms Aircraft Factory 

Mindstorms Aircraft Factory video

Could bees reveal the key to dementia?

A Norwegian researcher has succeeded in reversing the aging process in
bees brains.

ScienceDaily (Mar. 23, 2011) — Norwegian researcher Gro Amdam has succeeded in reversing the aging process in the bee brain -- findings which she believes may bring hope to people with dementia.

"No one really believes that the fountain of youth exists," says Professor Amdam. "We accept that as we age, our health and mental acuity will decline. But recent findings indicate that aging doesn't have to be synonymous with going downhill."

Professor Amdam's research subjects are bees, the workings of whose brain cells are surprisingly similar to ours, she explains. So when she finds the secrets behind what makes a bee brain tick, the knowledge may well apply to humans, too.

Top Games For Your iPad 2

Top Games For Your iPad 2

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Top Games For Your iPad 2

Habitable planet search should be extended to white dwarfs?

Eric Agol from the University of Washington makes a strong case.

(PhysOrg.com) -- The search for habitable planets similar to Earth has routinely focused around active nuclear burning stars. However, in a recently published paper by Eric Agol from the University of Washington, the idea to expand the search to white dwarfs shows promise.

A white dwarf star is similar to the size of Earth and is believed to be in the final stages of a stars evolutionary process. It is no longer supporting nuclear reactions and is essentially only a glowing core. Unlike our sun, a white dwarf is no longer producing reactions, and is in a cooling process. Although cooling, a white dwarfs surface temperature is around 5000K.

According to Agol, the surface temperature of an average white dwarf would be able to provide a habitable zone for planets within an orbit no closer than 0.01 AU.

Habitable planet search should be extended to white dwarfs?

The World Has Been Tweeting For 5 Years

 Twitter was 5 years old yesterday. Many consider it a passing social media fad, but Twitter has played an important communication role in revolutions and natural disasters worldwide.

Sunflowers can aid in cancer treatment?

Is there a cancer drug hiding in sunflower seeds?

(PHYSORG)- University of Queensland scientists have found sunflower proteins and their processing machinery are hijacked to make rogue protein rings in a discovery that could open the door to cheaper, plant-based drug manufacturing.

Dr Joshua Mylne, who led the research, has a personal connection with sunflowers - his grandfather, Alan Lemon, introduced them to Australian farms, creating a multimillion-dollar industry.

Now, Dr Mylne hopes his research has uncovered another use for these plants through the manufacture of cheap therapeutic drugs.

Dr Mylne and Professor David Craik from UQ's Institute for Molecular Bioscience unpicked the way sunflower seeds assemble protein rings, one of which has previously demonstrated potential as a drug for cancer.

Take a look inside a nuclear reactor (video)

 This is Purdue University's research reactor.

Cool Pic of the Day

Chasma Boreale valley on Mars.

(PHYSORG)- This scene combines images taken during the period from December 2002 to February 2005 by the Thermal Emission Imaging System instrument on NASA's Mars Odyssey was part of a special series of images marking the orbiter as the longest-working Mars spacecraft in history

NASA Video Explains Last Nights Super Moon

 NASA video explains super moon phenomenon.


If you missed the super moon, here is a nice (with music) video from India.

A New Way To Look At Space

(Image: Chris Regan/CNSI)

Is space infinitely divisible? Maybe not according to physicists at UCLA.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Physicists at UCLA set out to design a better transistor and ended up discovering a new way to think about the structure of space.

Space is usually considered infinitely divisible — given any two positions, there is always a position halfway between. But in a recent study aimed at developing ultra-fast transistors using graphene, researchers from the UCLA Department of Physics and Astronomy and the California NanoSystems Institute show that dividing space into discrete locations, like a chessboard, may explain how point-like electrons, which have no finite radius, manage to carry their intrinsic angular momentum, or "spin."

While studying graphene's electronic properties, professor Chris Regan and graduate student Matthew Mecklenburg found that a particle can acquire spin by living in a space with two types of positions — dark tiles and light tiles. The particle seems to spin if the tiles are so close together that their separation cannot be detected.

"An electron's spin might arise because space at very small distances is not smooth, but rather segmented, like a chessboard," Regan said. Read more here.

New Tsunami Escape Footage, Japan (video)

The last half is horrifying. Watch it till the end.

NASA MESSENGER spacecraft is now in orbit around Mercury

(Credit: NASA)

This is the first time a spacecraft has achieved orbit around Mercury. Our knowledge of this hot planet is about to expand.

ScienceDaily (Mar. 17, 2011) — NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft successfully achieved orbit around Mercury at approximately 9 p.m. EDT Thursday. This marks the first time a spacecraft has accomplished this engineering and scientific milestone at our solar system's innermost planet.

"This mission will continue to revolutionize our understanding of Mercury during the coming year," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, who was at MESSENGER mission control at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., as engineers received telemetry data confirming orbit insertion. "NASA science is rewriting text books. MESSENGER is a great example of how our scientists are innovating to push the envelope of human knowledge."

New engine could triple fuel efficiency (video)

The new engine prototype is built with a disc-shaped shock wave generator. It reducece emmissions by 90% and increases efficiency form 15% to 60%.

Norbert Mueller describes his wave disk generator

Video: Debunking Radiation Myths in the U.S.

We all receive radiation every day. Small doses shouldn't worry you.

Naval Sonar Linked to Whale Strandings

Sonar and whale strandings have long been linked. Now there is more evidence.

ScienceDaily (Mar. 16, 2011) — Scientists have long been aware of a link between naval sonar exercises and unusual mass strandings of beaked whales. Evidence of such a link triggered a series of lawsuits in which environmental groups sued the U.S. Navy to limit sonar exercises to reduce risk to whales. In 2008, this conflict rose to the level of the US Supreme Court which had to balance potential threat to whales from sonar against the military risk posed by naval forces inadequately trained to use sonar to detect enemy submarines. The court ruled that the Navy could continue training, but that it was essential for the Navy to develop better methods to protect the whales.

The knowledge most critical to protecting these whales from risk of sonar involves measuring the threshold between safe and risky exposure levels, but until now it has not been known how beaked whales respond to sonar, much less the levels that pose a problem. "We know so little about beaked whales because they prefer deep waters far offshore, where they can dive on one breath of air to depths of over a mile for up to an hour and a half," said Peter Tyack, a senior scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI).

Now, an international team of researchers reports in a paper led by Tyack the first data on how beaked whales respond to naval sonar exercises. Their results suggest that sonar indeed affects the behavior and movement of whales. Read more here.

New breathtaking video of Saturn

This video  made using ONLY NASA/JPL photos taken by the Cassini Spacecraft.

5.6k Saturn Cassini Photographic Animation from stephen v2 on Vimeo.

Is the Large Hadron Collider the world's first time machine?

Unfortunately, time travel is limited to these special particles called Higgs singlets.

(PhysOrg) -- If the latest theory of Tom Weiler and Chui Man Ho is right, the Large Hadron Collider – the world's largest atom smasher that started regular operation last year – could be the first machine capable causing matter to travel backwards in time.
"Our theory is a long shot," admitted Weiler, who is a physics professor at Vanderbilt University, "but it doesn't violate any laws of physics or experimental constraints."

One of the major goals of the collider is to find the elusive Higgs boson: the particle that physicists invoke to explain why particles like protons, neutrons and electrons have mass. If the collider succeeds in producing the Higgs boson, some scientists predict that it will create a second particle, called the Higgs singlet, at the same time.

According to Weiler and Ho's theory, these singlets should have the ability to jump into an extra, fifth dimension where they can move either forward or backward in time and reappear in the future or past.

"One of the attractive things about this approach to time travel is that it avoids all the big paradoxes," Weiler said. "Because time travel is limited to these special particles, it is not possible for a man to travel back in time and murder one of his parents before he himself is born, for example. However, if scientists could control the production of Higgs singlets, they might be able to send messages to the past or future."

Video: Japanese Earthquake Tsunami Wave arrives in Emeryville CA

Japanese Earthquake Tsunami Wave arrives in Emeryville CA 

Room temperature star discovered

Artist's impression of a brown dwarf. Image credit: NASA/JPL

It's a brown dwarf dubbed WD 0806-661 B and it's only 63 light years from Earth.

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa., March 14 (UPI) -- U.S. astronomers have discovered a brown dwarf star that contradicts the perception of all stars being hot -- this one is, in fact, room temperature, they say.

Like normal stars, brown dwarfs form from collapsing gas clouds, but they don't become massive enough to sustain nuclear reactions, so they briefly shine red from the heat of formation then fade.

Still, before discovering this latest star, the coolest known brown dwarfs were determined to be hot enough to roast any astronauts who might approach too close, NewScientist.com reported Monday.

Read more: http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2011/03/14/Astronomers-detect-room-temperature-star/UPI-20511300147417/#ixzz1Gchu0c8I

3D Projection Mapping (video)

Battles - IPT2 - 3D Zoetrope Mapping

Battles - IPT2 - 3D Zoetrope Mapping from Retchy on Vimeo.

Neanderthals Controlled Fire for 400,000 Years

Credit: JPL/NASA

Neanderthals may have been smarter than you expected. A New study has found they controlled fire in Europe for almost 400,000 years.

(PHYSORG)- A new study involving the University of Colorado Boulder shows clear evidence of the continuous control of fire by Neanderthals in Europe dating back roughly 400,000 years, yet another indication that they weren't dimwitted brutes as often portrayed.

The conclusion comes from the study of scores of ancient archaeological research sites in Europe that show convincing evidence of long-term fire control by Neanderthals, said Paola Villa, a curator at the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History. Villa co-authored a paper on the new study with Professor Wil Roebroeks of Leiden University in the Netherlands.

"Until now, many scientists have thought Neanderthals had some fires but did not have continuous use of fire," said Villa. "We were not expecting to find a record of so many Neanderthal sites exhibiting such good evidence of the sustained use of fire over time."

A paper on the subject was published in the March 14 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Video: Japan’s Shinmoedake Volcano Erupts

 Japan can not get a break. Video of Shinmoedake Volcano erupting.

Spectacular Video From Japan Earthquake - Ground shifts, water seeps during quake in Chiba, Japan

Here is another interesting video shot during the Japan earthquake. Cracks appear and close in the ground and water seeps.

What next for Japan? Volcano Erupts

Credit: REUTERS

You have to wonder if this eruption is linked to the monster 8.9 earthquake.

A volcano in southwestern Japan erupted Sunday after nearly two weeks of relative silence, sending ash and rocks up to four kilometres (two and a half miles) into the air, a local official says.

It was not immediately clear if the eruption was a direct result of the massive 8.9-magnitude earthquake that rocked northern areas Friday, unleashing a fierce tsunami and sparking fears that more than 10,000 may have been killed.

Speechless: Before and After Images from Japan Earthquake

Before and after images from Japan's earthquake and tsunami will leave you speechless.

Exposure to high levels of prenatal testosterone may make you child a genius

 
Being gifted may have a lot to do with receiving an an excess level of a natural hormone in the womb

ScienceDaily (Mar. 12, 2011) — A longstanding debate as to whether genius is a byproduct of good genes or good environment has an upstart challenger that may take the discussion in an entirely new direction. University of Alberta researcher Marty Mrazik says being bright may be due to an excess level of a natural hormone.

Mrazik, a professor in the Faculty of Education's educational psychology department, and a colleague from Rider University in the U.S., have published a paper in Roeper Review linking giftedness (having an IQ score of 130 or higher) to prenatal exposure of higher levels of testosterone. Mrazik hypothesizes that, in the same way that physical and cognitive deficiencies can be developed in utero, so, too, could similar exposure to this naturally occurring chemical result in giftedness.

Tokyo skyscrapers sway in wind like trees

Dramatic footage shot at the time of the earthquake.

NASA Images Show Japan Flooding and Quake Damage From Space

Click image for larger view.

Credit NASA

More pictures here.

Monster Earthquake Moved Japan Main Island 8 feet

The incredible 8.9-magnitude quake has moved the main island of Japan by 8 feet according to one GPS station. it also seems to have shifted the earth's axis by 4 inches.

(CNN) -- The powerful earthquake that unleashed a devastating tsunami Friday appears to have moved the main island of Japan by 8 feet (2.4 meters) and shifted the Earth on its axis.

"At this point, we know that one GPS station moved (8 feet), and we have seen a map from GSI (Geospatial Information Authority) in Japan showing the pattern of shift over a large area is consistent with about that much shift of the land mass," said Kenneth Hudnut, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).

Reports from the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology in Italy estimated the 8.9-magnitude quake shifted the planet on its axis by nearly 4 inches (10 centimeters).

Video: Explosion Causes Radiation Leak at Japanese Nuclear Plant (raw video)

You can see the explosion in the video posted below. The roof blows off one building  and an unspecified amount of radiation is reportedly leaked.

WASHINGTON — An explosion at a nuclear power plant in northern Japan on Saturday blew the roof off one building, brought down walls and caused a radiation leak of unspecified proportions, Japanese officials said, after Friday’s huge earthquake caused critical failures in the plant’s cooling system.

The chief cabinet secretary, Yukio Edano, confirmed earlier news reports of an explosion at the Fukishima Daiichi nuclear plant, 15o miles north of Tokyo, saying: “We are looking into the cause and the situation and we’ll make that public when we have further information.” He was speaking amid fears that a disastrous meltdown could be imminent after critical cooling failures at that plant and another nearby, Daini, after both were shut down. 

Video of blast at Fukushima nuke plant, radiation leak reported

Massive Whirlpool Formed Off Japan After Quake (video)

Massive whirlpool seen after 8.9 earthquake rocks Japan. Here is a video

Runaway Star Creates Bow Shock Wave (with picture)

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

This star is a speed demon!

ScienceDaily (Mar. 11, 2011) — Just as some drivers obey the speed limit while others treat every road as if it were the Autobahn, some stars move through space faster than others. NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, captured this image of the star Alpha Camelopardalis, or Alpha Cam, in astronomer-speak, speeding through the sky like a motorcyclist zipping through rush-hour traffic. The supergiant star Alpha Cam is the bright star in the middle of this image, surrounded on one side by an arc-shaped cloud of dust and gas -- a bow shock -- which is colored red in this infrared view.

Such fast-moving stars are called runaway stars. The distance and speed of Alpha Cam is somewhat uncertain. It is probably somewhere between 1,600 and 6,900 light-years away and moving at an astonishing rate of somewhere between 680 and 4,200 kilometers per second (between 1.5 and 9.4 million mph). It turns out that WISE is particularly adept at imaging bow shocks from runaway stars. 

Incredible Video of Massive Wall of Water Sweeping Ashore in Japan

This Japan Tsunami video is incredible and horrifying!

WTH: Office Affairs Video Game

 You might want to miss this one. LOL.

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Game-Changer: Israeli Anti-Rocket System Intercepts RPG Fired at Tank

Terrorists love hand-held rocket weapons. They offer a lot of punch in a small package and are very difficult to defend. For the first time ever,  a miniature Trophy system mounted on an IDF tank has automatically intercepted a Rocket Propelled Grenade attack.

It happened so quickly and functioned so flawlessly that the IDF tank crews doing routine duties last Tuesday near the security fence in the southern Gaza Strip frontline didn't even notice anything unusual.

They didn't immediately realize that they had just witnessed history in the making and that the lives of a fourman crew had been spared when the miniature Trophy system, fixed onto all tanks in the Gaza sector, recognized that a rocket propelled grenade (RPG) had been launched at one of the tanks.

Trophy intercepted the RPG with a neutralizer and blew up the incoming projectile in mid-air, with no harm wrought to either the tank or to the corpsmen in its belly.

33 Years Later: Voyager 1 Still Delivering Useful Data

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Voyager 1 is being reoriented for the first time in 22 years to gather data on the sun's stream of charged particles.

(PhysOrg.com) -- In which direction is the sun's stream of charged particles banking when it nears the edge of the solar system? The answer, scientists know, is blowing in the wind. It's just a matter of getting NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft in the right orientation to detect it.

To enable Voyager 1's Low Energy Charged Particle instrument to gather these data, the spacecraft performed a maneuver on March 7 that it hadn't done for 21 years, except in a preparatory test last month.

At 9:10 a.m. PST (12:10 p.m. EST), humanity's most distant spacecraft rolled 70 degrees counterclockwise as seen from Earth from its normal orientation and held the position by spinning gyroscopes for two hours, 33 minutes. The last time either of the two Voyager spacecraft rolled and stopped in a gyro-controlled orientation was Feb. 14, 1990, when Voyager 1 snapped a family portrait of the planets strewn like tiny gems around our sun.

Invasion of the Caterpillars

Pretty cool or pretty creepy?

(WTSB) The green and yellowish caterpillars are hanging from just about everything...off the playground equipment, off the trees and even off of cars and people if you happen to get in the way.

"I feel like they're climbing on me. They're hanging on trees, they're hanging off of the children's equipment and it's just ooey gooey," said June Chittenden.

Jane Morse, with the Pinellas County Extension says the caterpillars are the larvae of either oak leafrollers or oakleaftier moths.

Anthropologists: Stone Tools Influenced Hand Development

Ever wonder why our hands grip so well? Anthropologists claim our hands evolved to fit the stone tools we used.

ScienceDaily (Mar. 8, 2011) — New research from anthropologists at the University of Kent has confirmed Charles Darwin's speculation that the evolution of unique features in the human hand was influenced by increased tool use in our ancestors.

Research over the last century has certainly confirmed the existence of a suite of features in the bones and musculature of the human hand and wrist associated with specific gripping and manipulatory capabilities that are different from those of other extant great apes. These features have fuelled suggestions that, at some point since humans split from the last common ancestor of living apes, the human hand evolved away from features adapted for locomotion toward alternative functions.

Disney's "Up" house created in real life: Flies with 300 balloons (video)

The task of flying a real house with balloons proved difficult, but not completely impossible.

(PhysOrg.com) -- How hard can it be to lift a house with helium balloons? A National Geographic team of scientists, engineers, and balloon pilots has demonstrated how to achieve such a feat, which was filmed for a new TV series called “How Hard Can It Be?” They conclude that, although it’s very difficult, it’s not impossible.

It took the team about two weeks to plan, build, and lift the house into the air using balloons. They needed about 300 weather balloons, each of which inflated to a height of 8 feet, in order to lift the 2,000-pound, 16x16-foot yellow house.

The Creepiest Robot Ever (video)

This realistic android creeps many people out.

Incredibly cool or insanely creepy? Yes, that is an actual robot.

Japanese researchers have blurred the lines between man and machine with their latest robot, the incredibly realistic Geminoid DK.

It is the third of the Geminoid series, a line of androids designed by Hiroshi Ishiguro, a professor at Osaka University and his team at Japan's Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International (ATR) in Nara.

 Yes. this really is a robot.

'Battle: Los Angeles' Official Trailer (video)

Aaron Eckhart in alien invasion flick opens in U.S. theaters March 11, 2011

Can eating apples extend you life?

There is evidence it increases the lifespan of test animals by 10%.

ScienceDaily (Mar. 8, 2011) — Scientists are reporting the first evidence that consumption of a healthful antioxidant substance in apples extends the average lifespan of test animals, and does so by 10 percent. The new results, obtained with fruit flies -- stand-ins for humans in hundreds of research projects each year -- bolster similar findings on apple antioxidants in other animal tests.

The study appears in ACS's Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

Spectacular Video of Kilauea Volcano eruption in Hawaii (video)

Aerial video of Kilauea Volcano eruption in Hawaii

3D Video of Live Cells in action (video)

A new microscope can take 3D videos on the cellular level.

The Nano Hummingbird (With video)

The military is getting a new spy tool. It is a drone hummingbird.

The drone, built by AeroVironment with funding from DARPA, is able to fly forwards, backwards, and sideways, as well as rotate clockwise and counterclockwise. Not only does the 'bot resemble its avian inspiration in size (it's only slightly larger than a hummingbird, with a 6.5-inch wingspan and a weight of 19 grams), it also looks impressively like a hummingbird in flight.

 

Ever see a thermal? This one is phenomenal! (video)

The best thermal marker ever! Beautiful. No. It's not a tornado.

Smoking Wars

A security guard was stabbed in Chicago after catching a couple smoking in a bar restroom.

A man was charged with stabbing a security guard after he and his girlfriend were caught smoking in the bathroom of a west suburban Naperville bar early this morning.

At 1:32 a.m., Naperville police were called to 16 Jefferson Avenue after a report of a stabbing, according to a release from police. Blackfinn American Saloon is located at that address, according to an online directory and the police news release.

Meanwhile, a Kentucky town is considering banning electronic cigarettes.

RICHMOND, Ky. -- A central Kentucky city is mulling a proposal to take its smoking ban a step further by prohibiting electronic cigarettes.

The proposal by the Madison County Board of Health has drawn varied reactions, with some supporting the measure and some saying it goes too far.

North American inhabitants had a sea based economy 12,000 years ago

The evidence for Late Pleistocene seafaring has been found on California islands.

ScienceDaily (Mar. 4, 2011) — Evidence for a diversified sea-based economy among North American inhabitants dating from 12,200 to 11,400 years ago is emerging from three sites on California's Channel Islands.

Reporting in the March 4 issue of Science, a 15-member team led by University of Oregon and Smithsonian Institution scholars describes the discovery of scores of stemmed projectile points and crescents dating to that time period. The artifacts are associated with the remains of shellfish, seals, geese, cormorants and fish.

Funded primarily by grants from the National Science Foundation, the team also found thousands of artifacts made from chert, a flint-like rock used to make projectile points and other stone tools.

Some of the intact projectiles are so delicate that their only practical use would have been for hunting on the water, said Jon Erlandson, professor of anthropology and director of the Museum of Natural and Cultural History at the University of Oregon. He has been conducting research on the islands for more than 30 years. Read more here.

British Government Releases Their Version of X Files

There are some interesting disclosures in the British government UFO file release.

British government declassifies UFO files

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Report: NASA Scientist Claims Evidence of Alien Life on Meteorite

FOX News is reporting a NASA scientist claims he has found evidence of a giant bacterium in a Meteorite.

Dr. Riccardo Guerrero / Journal of Cosmology

A photograph taken through a scanning electron microscope of a CI1 meteorite is similar in size and overall structure to the giant bacterium Titanospirillum velox, an organism found here on planet Earth, a NASA scientist said.

(FOX Science News)- We are not alone in the universe -- and alien life forms may have a lot more in common with life on Earth than we had previously thought.

That's the stunning conclusion one NASA scientist has come to, releasing his groundbreaking revelations in a new study in the March edition of the Journal of Cosmology

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/03/05/exclusive-nasa-scientists-claims-evidence-alien-life-meteorite/#ixzz1FjnE41nZ